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.”
Yet another overpaid, nutty professor shares his astounding wisdom and insight. Only a select few are fortunate enough to physically attend his profound lectures.
If you extended his logic by including denouncing global warming as an extension of white racist thought...you could make left heads explode!
So did Vonnegut, even though he was a leftist himself.
ok, then. . .that would explain alot
I’m not sure, because its all a bit convuluted, but I dont think hes saying that drawing rational conclusions is racist, I think hes saying that the very concept of rational conclusions is in itself racist. Presumably because it was mostly (but not completely) established by white males - and as we all know they are evil.
Reason built the car you drive and the food you eat Professor. Try living on emotion for a week.
This screed doesn’t even qualify as gobbledygook. It’s just pure crap.
The emperor (the Left) truly has no clothes today. One can say anything denigrating Western thought and religion and the zombie liberals drool with approval. The exact same reason why they tolerate Islam.
I’m with you completely. I always thought that Wesley Mouch and John Galt had more in common than either realized - they both, in their own ways, put Man at the center of the Universe.
To me, Atlas Shrugged is just 1167 pages of “get off my lawn”.
Cheers.
So if “reason” is a white male construct, then the corollary is that illogic and incoherence are the property of other races and genders?
If that’s case, its a very great compliment he’s paying to white males, and quite a slur on everyone else.
Wow! We are so screwed.
And I would submit that a non-rational society would be chaotic. Like, well, Baltimore.
That is not his main problem, which is that he would probably say, "I am one of the intellectual elite! I do not NEED to steer any particular course, let alone require this simplistic instruction manual."
I would complain about the coming dark ages, but that would be racist.
Face palm...Inscrutable logic and reason!
High IQ is racist.
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