Posted on 07/12/2015 3:05:42 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
A philosophy and religion professor at Syracuse University gave an interview to The New York Times Thursday in which he critiqued the notion of pure reason as simply being a “white male Euro-Christian construction.”
Prof. John Caputo was being interviewed by fellow philosophy professor George Yancy for the 13th installment of an interview series Yancy conducts with philosophers regarding racial topics.
Given its emphasis on first principles and abstract thought, it may be tempting to view academic philosophy as a turf where the race of participants matters little, but Caputo says that’s entirely untrue. In fact, race is of central importance, and it’s proven by the mundane phrases philosophers use.
“‘White’ is of the utmost relevance to philosophy, and postmodern theory helps us to see why,” Caputo says in the interview. “I was once criticized for using the expression ‘true north.’It reflected my Nordo-centrism, my critic said, and my insensitivity to people who live in the Southern Hemisphere. Of course, no such thing had ever crossed my mind, but that points to the problem. We tend to say ‘we’ and to assume who ‘we’ are, which once simply meant ‘we white male Euro-Christians.’
The end result of critiquing whiteness, Caputo suggests, is the realization that the supposed “reason” underlying philosophy is just another form of white privilege … or something of that nature.
“I think that what modern philosophers call ‘pure’ reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction,” he says. “White is not ‘neutral.’ ‘Pure’ reason is lily white, as if white is not a color or is closest to the purity of the sun, and everything else is ‘colored.’ Purification is a name for terror and deportation, and ‘white’ is a thick, dense, potent cultural signifier that is closely linked to rationalism and colonialism. What is not white is not rational. So white is philosophically relevant and needs to be philosophically critiqued — it affects what we mean by ‘reason’ — and ‘we’ white philosophers cannot ignore it.”
What does this all mean for regular people, such as the Times’ readers? Beneath all of the postmodern philosophical rhetoric, it’s not easy to tell, but much like the litany of recent academics hurrying to comment on “white privilege,” Caputo takes time to stick his finger in the eyes of the “Christian right” and, of all things, freedom — as if those two are the major arbiters behind all the woes America faces.
“The great scandal of the United States is that it has produced an anti-gospel, the extremes of appalling wealth and poverty,” he says. “But instead of playing the prophetic role of Amos denouncing the American Jeroboam, instead of working to close that gap, the policies of the right wing are exacerbating it … The popularity of such cruel ideas, their success in the ballot box, is terrifying to me. The trigger-happy practices of the police … on the streets of black America should alert everyone to how profoundly adrift American democracy has become — attacking the poor as freeloaders and criminals, a distorted and grotesque ideological exaggeration of freedom over equality. The scandal is that the Christian right has too often been complicit with a politics of greed and hatred of the other.”
If he can’t understand the term true north, I sure hope
he isn’t navigating anything.
Leftist moles deserve to be thrown on the bonfire of
Marxist writings along with every unworkable premise
they preach.
I’ve never read it. I am not a big Ayn Rand follower, but there are certainly worse philosophers. There are good things, but in my view, if you do not start with the Creator, you cannot possibly see the big picture. Reason is futile if you from the start eliminate God.
When I was in grad school, I walked past another student carrying a book with the title, Black Logic. I remember thinking, “WTF?”
If the story tellers - religion, government, education, and media - keep at it, Whitey McCracker-Honkey will be extinct through genocide by those who aren’t because they’ll keep telling telling the non-whites to do so.
Philosophy as it examines reason, logic, and the like, is predominantly a gift of Western Civilization, which in turn tends to be identified as a white, male emanation, although it incorporates people of many nations. It’s Western Civilization that gives these people fits. “Besides:
Monotheism
Code of Laws
Philosophy
Mathematics
Literacy
Chemistry
Physics
Modern Medicine
Sanitation
Electricity
Transportation
Electronics
Computers and
Space Travel
What has Western Civilization ever done for the world?”
WHAT the hell WAS that? What the HELL WAS THAT? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? What the hell was...that?
Sadly, after twenty-one years of close contact, I understood every word spoken and point that was made. As to the subject of the post I believe the gentleman has had far too much to think.
“No, I take that back. I am honored to be a college professor. I am ashamed that there are so many STUPID IDIOTS also calling themselves college professors.”
Academia has its rot, like everything else in this intellectually challenged age.
This is completely true.
And, it has given even the poorest of us access to wealth, knowledge, and longevity that even the most wealthy and powerful of the past could not even imagine.
So...what have other cultures done for me lately? Not too damned much.
“This guy would last 1:30 in a “law of the jungle” environment.”
I’d guess that due to his probable diet of kelp and grass clippings, he would not taste very good either.
Thinking Bad
Doing what your masters tell you to do Good
Well of course “Pure Reason” is racist seeing how logic is the enemy of the Left. Next we will be told it is homophobic as well.
“Overpaid professors with cushy jobs and tenure is a white male construct.”
Mao had just the right idea for this particular class of idiot - re-education camps.
The term "German engineering" is an advertising slogan rightly intended to convey exacting standards and the utmost quality. Aside from a few venues (such as Free Republic where PC is nearly nil), using the term "African Engineering" would result in banishment since it's perceived to be a racial slur. Think also of a term ending in "-rigged" oft-used in a similar manner.
Unreasonable as to why he should not be the student and his students his professors.
The biggest threats to America aren’t the ghettos, aren’t the illegals, aren’t the Middle East, and aren’t Islam. The biggest threat to this country are those guilty white leftists and their white privilege bullschiessen theories out of academia. These neo-fascists are worse than anything the Communists this to this country in the Cold War.
Kant's view of reason and reality is a disintegrated mode of thought that has lead to libtard emotionalistic thinking.Reason is the process that starts with observations and perceptions, which are integrated by an objective process into objective concepts, which are integrated into objective abstract principles by the method of logic.These principles become objective knowledge,truth, and values.Reason does not belong only to whites. It is man's means of survival and knowledge, and makes man different in kind from animals.
“Actually that is a correct reading so far as it goes but is not complete. The Greeks who got into reason pretty deeply in at least one strand of their philosophizing predated white male Christian Europeans by a few centuries and their philosophy informed white European Male reason to a large extent. I guess they could be white male European pre-Christians
It is why white male Europeans developed Western Civilization and made it rich in a historically very short time. No other demographic has accomplished anything close to that. “
The other group that moved the process along, at least in the West were the (As C.S. Lewis called them) those bearded, platitude muttering Asiatic Jews. They did not use reason per se but bequeathed a system of morality to us that fits within the rational framework DISCOVERED by the Greeks
They were not white either.
I don’t think nice will win this “debate”. I think we are in a cultural fight for our very life/existence. Yet we still have many who can’t see that. Once 20% to 25% do understand then it’s going to be game on and truly brutal. Brutal but necesary.
Well we know we deal with a lot of irrational people out there. I guess they are just confirming it.
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