Journal of World Philosophies Author Meets Readers/60 _______________ Journal of World Philosophies 2 (Winter 2017): 48–81 Copyright © 2017 Dan Flory, Leah Kalmanson, Peter K. J. Park, Mark Larrimore and Sonia Sikka. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp• doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.2.2.04 Decolonizing the Department: Peter K. J. Park and the Profession of Philosophy ______________________________________________________________________________ LEAH KALMANSON Drake University, USA (leah.kalmanson@drake.edu) Peter K. J. Park’s book Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon is a call to action for academic philosophers. As Park shows, philosophical historiography, as we have come to know it, is a relatively recent invention indebted in large part to Immanuel Kant's adherence to a contentious theory of racial essentialism. Park argues that this racism undergirds Kant's work on the history of philosophy—it informs his arguments for the exclusion of African and Asian sources from the canon and his insistence that philosophy flowered spontaneously among the Greeks with no influence from the non-Greek-speaking world. Indeed, other philosophical historiographies available in Kant’s lifetime traced the origins of philosophy to a variety of regions, such as India or Egypt, and contextualized the work of the Athenians accordingly. Today, presumably, few philosophers would agree with the notion that the history of philosophy is a record of European cultural ascendancy reflecting the natural superiority of the white race; yet, as the following essay argues, the degree requirements for our programs of study, along with other curricular and departmental structures, together serve to transmit this outdated teleology and the racist narrative regarding white supremacism associated with it. Key words: philosophy and race; racism; history of philosophy; African philosophy; Asian philosophy I begin with a short story of the troubling classroom experience that prompted my commentary on Peter K. J. Park’s book Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon. In a class on philosophy and postcolonialism, my students and I were discussing the conclusion of the fourth chapter, which is one of the key points in Park’s argument, where he makes the case that Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) views on race are indeed racist. As Park asks, “Was Kant a racial thinker? According to Bernasconi, he was one of the founding theorists of race. Was Kant a racist? A first-time reader of ‘Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime’ may well be shocked and disturbed by Kant’s racial stereotypes and racist remarks” (93). Park elaborates that these statements include Kant’s conviction that no African person has ever made any artistic or scientific achievements, and that black skin color is proof of stupidity. We moved on to the next paragraph in Park’s book, which is the culmination of his major claim about Kant, in which he discusses the racial essentialism that informs Kant’s anthropology and history of philosophy. In Park’s words, “Kant taught that the Hindu race did not develop philosophy because they did not have that capacity. In his anthropology lectures, Kant explicitly attributes this lack not to the form of government or customs of the Asians, but to their descent (Abstammung). Montesquieu had famously argued that the form of government or customs of a people determined its character. Kant taught his students that it was the other way around. It is race that determines the form of government and the customs.” In other words, for Kant, it is no accident of history that philosophy only exists in Europe. Rather, white Europeans are the only people to have developed philosophy, while all non-white people lack philosophy, because of their inherent characteristics as members of different races. Park’s final remark in the fourth chapter holds that Kant was a central figure responsible for shaping the “modern scientific discourse of race” and for “the exclusion of Africa and Asia from the history of philosophy and for rising Eurocentrism in the discipline” (95). After making it through the upsetting comments about black skin color and concluding the chapter on this strong claim about racial essentialism, there was a moment of silence, as the students and I digested