Aims
This site is born of a fairly typical after-hours conversation that takes place between philosophers—a recounting of some of the stranger things that various prominent philosophers have said. Usually these are little more than a vague body of recollections: “Hegel said Africa has no history, didn’t he?” [pretty much], “Locke believed in mermaids” [ah, no], and “Didn’t Pythagoras have really weird views on beans?” [actually, it appears it was testicles] etc. There is of course, no central index in which to check all these statements. Given that they cover the entire history of the discipline, it is often extremely difficult for any individual (or even a small group) to verify any of these philosophy-related oddities, rumours, and—dare I say it—errors.
This site exists to collect, document, and comment upon the various missteps, mistakes, and plain absurdities of prominent philosophers, from it’s earliest beginnings to the present day. There are no sacred cows in philosophy, and scepticism of even the ‘great thinkers’ should be held as a general philosophical principle. Philosophy is, after all, an endeavour that is fundamentally discursive and critical. Fortunetely, it is also an endeavour where looking at mistakes or errors or reason can be particularly beneficial, if we uncover the why and how of those mistakes. With that in mind, a ‘philosophical misadventure’ can be an example of bad argumentation, an egregious or odious conclusion (that is unsupported by valid—sometimes, any— arguments), or simply prejudice masquerading as philosophy.
This site does not intend to denigrate or demean philosophy, and is certainly not a witch-hunt or smear campaign. It is presumed that anyone who reads these entries already has an interest in and knowledge of the general themes and history of philosophy, and as such will be able to contextualise them. (If you want an Introduction to Philosophy, this is definitely not it.) That Aristotle made a wayward conjecture as to the function of the brain doesn’t negate his enormous contribution to the Western philosophical tradition. David Hume’s racism has no bearing on his analyses of causation and induction, which are ultimately of far greater philosophical importance. Nonetheless, Hume was an extremely influential thinker—not just as a philosopher but as a historian and essayist—at a time that an important debate was beginning to take place about slavery, and made a discreditable contribution to that debate.
On this issue, Hume was not alone. A number of prominent Enlightenment-era philosophers held explicitly racist views and considered Europeans innately superior to the inhabitants of other parts of the world. How should contemporary philosophers react to such views? Accept the argument that these philosophers were simply the products of their environment and their prejudices simply reflect the prejudices of their time, thus excusing them? Maybe, but if there is any group within society that we would expect to rise above received prejudices and traditions it is philosophers, those whose discipline calls for constant engagement with, questioning of, and—when necessary—overturning of narrow-minded preconceptions. That so many major philosophers have obviously failed to do so hardly does the field credit. John Stuart Mill lived and wrote in a milieu every bit as chauvinistic and racist as that of Hume, Hegel, Kant, or Schopenhauer, but he managed to rise above it … almost. The others have—in part at least—failed to live up to the ideals of their discipline.
Without getting too earnest, this site aims to poke some well-established figures with a rather pointy stick. A number of the entires are minor footnotes in the history of philosophy, items of curiosity at best. Not everyone will find every entry to be an example of bad philosophy, but philosophy is hardly about agreeing with each other, and the comments are open. Some are little more than philosophical gossip, and their inclusion is, in spirit, light-hearted. But if there is an abundance of philosophers making openly racist and sexist comments contained herein, it is simply because philosophers have made an abundance of openly racist and sexist comments.
Comments
10 Comments so far
I can see some sense pointing out the racism. But why do you judge people for not knowing about scientific facts discovered centuries later?
Well, one reason is that they were often very speculative claims that were put forward as facts. Nonetheless, I do note that Aristotle should be given some leeway – with figures from antiquity this site should be seen as cataloguing rather than judging.
Another reason, however, is that a number of philosophers (and their claims) were very influential. Saint Aquinas, for example, appealed to Aristotle’s authority on the different gestation periods of human males and females seemingly without questioning them. And we’ve seen the early Kant following Hume’s lead on racial issues.
The above comment being sceptical of even the ‘great thinkers’ stands – the authority of their names and reputations alone can sometimes have a counter-productive influence.
If this is supposed to be a compendium of silly mistakes by philosophers, I think it is itself a pretty silly mistake. I fail to see the benefit to philosophy of raising up its most accomplished practitioners to mockery and ridicule. We also need to realise that many statements that some people now laugh at will turn out to be the accepted wisdom at some point in the future.
I think the above quote is grossly unfair – most of the accusations you make are addressed quite clearly in the ‘Aims’ above.
Thank you so much for putting together this very necessary site. I think it’s long overdue that someone deal with this aspect of philosophy, not to mention collect it all in one place so that we no longer have to rely on vague recollections. Great work.
I think that, over and above the basic interest and entertainment value such examples provide, a number of important epistemic points can be drawn in relation to them.
While some may be distressed to see notable historical intellectual figures put in the spotlight for their less admirable findings, the epistemic value of doing so is not insubstantial.
An exploration of the philosophical, ethical, and factual confusions of historical thinkers has instructive value in so far as they provide examples from which we may come to further see how, in a number of cases, the intellectual leaders of mankind (to use Popper’s term) did not buck the social conventions and conditioning they were subject to. We are afforded further opportunities in which to see how integral our background beliefs are to the inferences that we draw, of how background knowledge informs what questions we ask, and how this can effect what evidence we ignore.
It further indirectly highlights what in the epistemology of testimony is known as the problem of our vulnerability – our susceptibility to inculcation of false beliefs through our necessary reliance upon others for a vast number of our beliefs about the world.
It is possible for the disgruntled here to claim anachronism, but that is (in my view) to miss a valuable point about it all. It is precisely by considering these thinkers both within and outside of their historical and social context that many insights can be obtained. Nothing about this website passes over either of these considerations (as the Aims page clearly details). This website is both entertaining and epistemically valuable.
Greetings from a fellow kiwi. Thank you for this website. The articles are simultaneously illuminating and entertaining. Keep up the good work!
Nice site. In good philosophical fashion, I shine the beam of skepticism (not Scepticism) upon the idiot utterances of today. Of course, I do not exempt myself from this practice and my own misstatements.
So, what can we point to today? Which popular ideas will make it to your site when your distant descendants are its maintainers? I suspect our concept of money, economy, and credit will be scoffed at (in good Marxist fashion). But will that be important? Also, our energies toward weapons and war, which are misdirected in desperate futility, will be an object of future incredulity. And now that I am considering the current state of affairs here in the United States the methods of education, the structure of class, and the institutions of big religion will become mind-blowingly ridiculous. AND, importantly, the way in which we take care of ourselves, rather that we do not. That is, the Western medical industry is based on the “curing” of disease once bad health has reached the fourth stage.
Our medicine understands an illness as something that must be combated, opposed, and removed. It is rarely an issue in Western medicine that sickness is a manifestation of poor living. The three initial stages before the sickness manifests itself are concerned with physical, intellectual, and emotional behavior: these are preventative stages. (There is ground-breaking work in the field in the science of contemplative practices which are concomitant with physical wellbeing, nevertheless grossly overlooked. http://www.religionandhealth.org/about.htm) And this is further aggravated by the cabal of the researchers, medical professionals, and PHARMACY. Here is the most disgusting grab for money as people’s organs, limbs, and lives await treatment.
If philosophy is to make any serious move toward the facilitation of the improvement of men’s lives, then it must mine the riches of human technology and science. If we dare to combine science with religion and spirituality, then such horizons as Hegel and Kant envisioned will be reached. That is, with the ever-improving brilliance of our scientific studies, technological advances, and “objective lens,” we can turn inward toward the “intuitive self.” Then begins the process of self-actualization (in good existential fashion (or yogic!)) and/or self-realization. The realization that in order to be a happy and functional human being, he/she should question the foundation of those things one has learned from his teachers, priests, and parents. In doing so, in asking the “other” questions, one is bound to find answers. This is not to say that religion has no positive role, but the current role is megalomaniac. Religious leaders are themselves slave to ancient text. They regurgitate outdated wisdom and apply it to a luridly different time–modern times.
The new religiosity must admit that we are an ever-evolving species, that time itself is change, and that constant change is illumination. It cannot hang on to the idiocies of ancient beliefs which were born out of social events of that time, i.e. slavery, misogyny, and xenophobia, etc–each of which are intimately entwined with economics and religious beliefs…
I’ll trunk the ramble here. Your thoughts on the current trend of philosophy (post-modern or whatever is next) and the real possibility that we are getting it all wrong NOW?
I love it. The people we spend hours, months, & years studying are just as amiable to the bias of their times as we are to ours – this is a reminder that even those during the ‘enlightenment’, with its amazing “equality” etc. was embedded in its own bias… so, we too can we be unknowingly bias in our cocky ‘democratic’ and ‘neo’-enlightened’ ways.
One could actually ask, whats wrong about racism from a philosophical perspective? It´s mostly within a democratic and humanistic perspective that racism does not belong. And philosophy has been more or less in conflict with humanism since the days of Pericles and the sophists.