Editor's note: On philosophy, a pandemic, and our international future

This is my first issue as editor-in-chief of The Philosophical Forum, and the beginning of what I hope to be a long and fruitful tenure at the helm of this esteemed journal. I would like to first thank the publishing team at Wiley for entrusting me with the continuation of the legacy of the Forum, and for giving me the freedom to take it where I think it is possible for it to go. The journal has a history of innovation in our field, and I look forward to seeing where it can go from here and to playing a role in its newest iteration, with the help of many others. The central focus of my work at the Forum will be to publish high-quality philosophy from across the diverse array of traditions around the world. I aim to make the journal an example of a truly global philosophical enterprise, rather than one limited to the Anglo-American West or any other region, culture, or tradition. For far too long, philosophy in the West has largely gone on with minimal to no engagement with philosophers and philosophical traditions outside of Anglo-America, Western Europe, and ethnically related enclaves such as Australia and New Zealand. This has been to the detriment of philosophy as a discipline. Numerous philosophers have decried this over the years and have struggled to change things (so far with limited success).1 And the problem is far wider than philosophy. The problem in our field is merely a local representation of a much broader problem in the Anglo-American West, particularly in the United States. I would like to tell you a story that hopefully drives home the need for more projects of the kind I propose here. A story that, like so many of recent years, begins in the spring of 2020. It was then that I realized that the wider social unwillingness to appreciate and collaborate with our international neighbors was truly a global disaster. By the winter of 2020 I was tired. Professionally, personally, existentially. I was sick of fighting and losing the same battles over and over. I was tired of struggling to help the field of philosophy become more expansive, global, and interdisciplinary in its scope, to help foster methodological pluralism, to generate interest in pursuing the kinds of “off the beaten path” research that made philosophy the well-known synonym for the life of the mind that it's known as today. I encountered the same resistance again and again, the same promises to change followed by the continued philosophical neglect of most of the world and the entrenchment in a narrow way of understanding philosophy. However hard I and other like-minded philosophers pushed to change things, philosophy pushed back harder. It seemed that this work would always be ignored, seen as expendable, on the fringe, and devalued by many philosophers. Was I just going to work on these things and yell from the rooftops about globalizing philosophy for the rest of my productive years, only for this to fall on deaf ears in the United States and make no difference at all? My efforts seemed to be going nowhere. And then March 2020, a month we will all remember for the rest of our lives, brought an even more alarming realization. As our schools shut down and the world went online, global events showed that the problem was far bigger than just the field of philosophy, or even academia as a whole. At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, doctors and medical experts in China were the only people in the world with either practical or research experience with the virus that eventually became known as SARS-CoV-2, and its associated disease. When the virus later took off first in Europe then later in the United States throughout March and into April of that year, scientists and physicians in the West struggled to understand the virus and the disease, in a race against the lightning-fast spread of the virus that quickly took hold of the world. Scientists and physicians in China, of course, had a head start of a couple of months on the rest of the world in understanding this virus. As the rest of the world looked on in shock in January and February 2020, the Chinese struggled to treat and understand the disease and the virus, as they imposed lockdowns across the country. It seemed for one brief moment that the virus might be contained in China, before it flared in late February in northern Italy, in Korea, then throughout Europe and to the rest of the world. By the time the virus took off in the United States in mid March, Chinese scientists and physicians working on the problem started to gain some initial understanding of the disease and the virus causing it. The obvious starting point for experts in the United States would be to consult with their counterparts in China, to learn from others who had been dealing with this new virus for months already. Almost inexplicably, that did not happen—at least in any large scale way. Not only did US-based experts routinely fail to turn to Chinese experts for help, but they often rejected those Chinese insights that did somehow make their way to US attention. Chinese doctors and scientists had some idea of the course of illness, as well as which strategies for treatment seemed to have some effectiveness. Of course, even in China they still did not have an enormous amount of knowledge about this new virus and its disease, but they had far more knowledge about it than anyone else in the world. Instead of devoting our effort to working with experts in China, the US largely chose to use the virus as yet another political weapon against China, spending more energy criticizing the Chinese government's responses to the increasing spread of the virus than we did trying to learn from their experiences with it or consulting with their scientists and physicians. Western media piled on, questioning whether Chinese data on the virus could be trusted, because of instances of data manipulation by the Chinese government in the past.2 Curiously, few of these same skeptics ever questioned Western data on the virus or Western medical interventions, despite a wealth of instances of data manipulation by Western pharmaceutical companies in the past in the interest of generation of profit,3 and the enormous influence of these companies over policymakers and regulatory bodies.4 The new and quickly spreading Covid pandemic was a medical crisis, not a political one. It was a crisis that threatened the rest of the world as much as it threatened China. In such a situation, one would hope that nations and people would be able to work together to focus on the crisis at hand. Yet things did not happen that way. Our prejudices, insularity, and political leanings won the day over knowledge, learning, and science, as they usually do. And many people suffered and died due simply to our unwillingness to learn from people who we saw as outside of our cultural and political sphere. This happened continually throughout the pandemic (and happens still today in the ongoing crisis of this virus). In 2021, researchers in Cyprus found evidence of a new hybrid variant of the virus combining two existing and circulating variants. This research was widely questioned and dismissed, as Western experts publicly claimed that the research was likely carried out incorrectly. There were so many expert naysayers in the West who seemed convinced (without evidence) that the finding was just a matter of sloppy research that Nature published an article “Deltacron: The Story of the Variant That Wasn't”.5 Unfortunately for the writers of this story, the variant very much was. Months later, when UK researchers also found the new variant, the same agencies and experts in the West that had dismissed the claims of the Cypriot researchers took the variant as “confirmed”, despite lack of peer-reviewed publication from these British researchers (which they had demanded from the researchers from Cyprus as a condition for trust). What was the difference, other than this time the British had found the variant, rather than the Cypriots? Similarly, when the Omicron variant of the virus first made its way through South Africa, where it was discovered, South African physicians and experts noted that the disease associated with the variant was proving less severe than those associated with earlier variants. Western experts manifestly dismissed this as mere anecdote, and unconfirmed—a position a number of South African experts publicly took issue with, even decrying it as racist.6 When British researchers later concluded, just as the South Africans had, that the Omicron variant caused less severe disease (and on the basis of no better data than what the South Africans had), it was somehow taken as more reliable by Western experts, treated as “confirmed”, and reported by Western media as now basically scientific fact. Apparently we have been misled for all these years about scientific method, and what truly confirms a hypothesis is not experimental demonstration, but being claimed by people with the right nationality. British and French claims are necessarily reliable and trustworthy, while Chinese, Cypriot, and South African claims are dubious, probably false, or at least in need of further confirmation by British, French, or American proclamation. There were countless similar situations that unfolded through the pandemic. But we can find the problem in other areas too. Look at what's covered in our news in the United States, for example. How often do those of you in the US see stories on current events in Asia, Africa, or the Americas outside of Anglo-America? Right now, go find a news source from India, Nigeria, Peru, or any host of other countries outside of Anglo-America and Western Europe. Next, find a US news source. Look at the US news page, and see how long it takes you to find a single story from any of the other newspapers featured on its page. Likely, you'll find few to none. Or walk into any bookstore in the US, and check out their sections on the histories of various European countries and then their sections on the histories of the various other parts of the world. I'll bet I can accurately predict the differences between these sections, because I've seen many of them over the years. In the sections on European countries, you'll find general histories of France, England, Germany, etc. Biographies of important figures in the histories of these countries. Probably specific topical selections, such as books on certain cities, important events, battles, cultural movements. In the section on Africa, if they have one, you'll find almost nothing. It's apparently a continent that barely exists, let alone has a history. You may find one or two books on travel, the geography of the continent, or the story of colonization, slavery, etc. If you can find anything at all, it's likely going to be a story of how white Western people colonially approached the continent. Asia and Latin America will get similar treatment, though you'll likely find a bit more on East Asia. China and Japan will have a few volumes, although 99% of what is available on China will be polemic treatises about how the Chinese are gaining influence in the world, and how this is a dangerous thing. You may find books with stark titles like How China Is Taking Over the World (not a real title as far as I know, but an example of the kind of book I have in mind). These are so prevalent that I coined a phrase years ago to refer to these: “enemy books”. The China section at your local bookstore (for those of you in the US) will probably consist of mostly enemy books, as will the section on the Middle East, where you can expect to find enemy books of the “why they hate us” variety—books about terrorists, extremism, the so-called problems of Islam, or dictators and tyrants. The situation in our bookstores mirrors our concerns in international relations, where the “non-West” is treated in an altogether different way. Its concerns are less important, its ideas less compelling, its conflicts less tragic or in need of our attention. It is rendered invisible to the West in a way the West is never invisible to the rest of the world. The West has yet to shed the colonial attitudes of its past, anachronisms which have no place in a world of independent and equal nations, a globally connected world facing a number of enormous crises requiring people to think and work together. I began to realize that there was no easy way out of this mess. Turning my back on philosophy wasn't going to enable me to find a place where internationalization was welcomed. Resistance to the rest of the world, I observed, was endemic to my culture. So I could either fight the battles here in academia, in a place I knew well, or fight them somewhere completely unknown. Even if I lost those battles here, and even if winning them would do little in the overall scheme of things, I stood a better chance here than anywhere else, even if that chance was close to zero. Even if I continued to fail to make a difference, I had no alternative but to try. And in some ways, the neglect of the world in the practice of professional philosophy in the West seems an easier problem to solve than in other areas. This neglect cannot be chalked up completely to linguistic differences. While there is a great deal of scholarship in philosophy (and every other academic field) around the world conducted in languages other than English, many scholars outside of the Anglo-American world can and often do write in English. Philosophy in large swaths of the world neglected in Anglo-American venues is done almost wholly in English. A good example of the neglect of English-language philosophy can be seen when we look at what philosophers often mean by the “English-speaking world”. The Philosophical Gourmet Report purports to rank philosophy departments in the English-speaking world, which it lists as including: the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. This is a puzzling list, if it is truly meant to capture the English-speaking world. This list does not even represent most of the countries in which English is the majority language, let alone the countries where English is a widely spoken official language and the exclusive or predominant language of academia. For one, where is India? Or the numerous nations of the Anglo-Caribbean? Or English-speaking countries throughout Africa, such as Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and others? Many US universities maintain lists often including over 40 nations from which international applicants do not have to provide proof of English-language proficiency because English is either the official language or a “predominant native language”. And if we add to this number nations such as India, in which English is widely spoken and in which higher education is conducted almost entirely in English, the list at least doubles in size. Nearly all academic philosophy in the former parts of the British Empire, for example, is done in English. Yet where are Indian, Caribbean, or African philosophers and philosophical traditions in venues in the US? In addition, an enormous amount of philosophy produced in nations where English is not the majority or a widely spoken language, such as nations throughout Asia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere, is done in English. Yet where is the work of these philosophers in venues in the US? For better or worse, the English language has become a kind of academic lingua franca akin to Latin in the Medieval European world, Arabic in the Islamic world, or Classical Chinese in East Asian history. This is not altogether a bad thing—due to the unfortunate facts of the British Empire, the language spread further across the globe than almost any other, rivaled only by Spanish and Arabic. What the British Empire started was bolstered by the (arguably imperial) global military and economic influence of the United States in the late 19th and 20th centuries, which made the English language useful for a wider range of people across the world. And English (with Spanish as second) likely has the widest extent among otherwise unrelated cultures. Arabic tends to travel with Islam, so the nations and peoples sharing Arabic tend also to share a religion. English was decoupled from such cultural transmission for the most part, because it traveled on the basis of colonialism and trade (a situation somewhat similar to the spread of the Spanish language). Despite the often oppressive and inhumane causes for its spread, the wide use of the English language today gives us the opportunity to communicate with one another across national, cultural, ethnic, and other divides. So it turns out that we in the United States can access the language of many scholars outside of the Anglo-American world. Indeed, they often send their English-language work to our journals. It is imperative, for the future of our philosophy, indeed for the future of academia and the larger project in which we are all engaged— learning, teaching, and expanding the knowledge of the human race—that we communicate with one another, learn from one another, build with one another. There are far too many threats to inquiry, critical thinking, learning, and generating knowledge today for us to ignore the possibilities of what we can build together. Both at home and around the world, powerful leaders, movements, institutions, and other forces that depend on ignorance and hatred work to undermine the aims we devote our lives and work to. Humanity's future must be international and globally inclusive, because if we do not learn from one another and work together to solve the existential problems we face, such as climate change, pandemics, and war, we may not survive at all. The same is the case for philosophy, which is in danger of remaining stuck where it is until the world moves on and it gets left behind. We can and must do better. Philosophy will not change unless and until we change whatever it is about our society that is responsible for this insidious attitude (both in the West and elsewhere). But we have to start somewhere, and we can try to create change, even if at a small scale, from within academic fields like philosophy where we can demonstrate the fruits of opening up to the world. We can be at the forefront of the movement for humanity's international future instead of cleaving to our old ways and being reactionary relics of the past impeding human development. There are many who are desperate for change. The philosophers of the rest of the world are no less intelligent and thoughtful than are those of us in the “English-speaking world” as defined by the Philosophical Gourmet Report. And those philosophers have ideas and insights that the rest of us have never considered. In medical science, when we neglect or dismiss new ideas originating in the rest of the world, we pay the heavy price of suffering avoidable illness and death. Likewise, when we neglect the philosophy of the rest of the world, we pay the price of losing knowledge that we could have had, losing powerful and elegant solutions to the philosophical problems that occupy us. Some crucial questions face us. Can we create a space where scholars from around the world can be included, and hopefully read, by other scholars around the world? Can we open up a within the US and US-based academia to access research from around the not just here in our narrow These are critical questions as yet but these questions my initial for what The Philosophical Forum might My hope is to together independent of philosophical or culture. And it turns out that this journal is a for such a Over the years it was in its first in and then its current in The Philosophical Forum has published a wide of philosophical work in very different areas. For much of its it had the aim of together what was long seen in the West as the two and of and This was an and the journal has this through its years in Some of the most work on the of philosophy has been published in this journal. It is now time to forward to a new the between different and But one might do we do this mean that we will no publish from US-based That we will international That we will of the philosophical as in the Anglo-American What I is to build an philosophical not simply to to a different kind of The of Western philosophy and philosophy those who in them outside the will still be but they will be just two among many equal to other rather than the or And the I take here to this is but that we have largely to do in Western simply with other scholars around the world, interest in their it them the effort to their and their work for a global In future of The Philosophical Forum, we will focus more on numerous philosophical traditions and between these in of time and culture, language, and In to being a home for a more international I aim to The Philosophical Forum including experimental and work as This is a place to try out new to the of what is to create new questions and new as well as with There of course, a between the project of together people in different traditions of and the of new ways of about philosophy any other and change happen not through that philosophy has yet to through and through new things, and The most powerful mind in the world still has an that is by its and what it When we understand we realize that if we to truly we have to our with others. It has always been this despite the stories we tell to history so as to the story of of the of great innovation and of the These all with new between of with opening up one or to with another. The of philosophy and in the world with the Empire of together and ideas from to the The Islamic of was by with and of ideas from China to and Europe. of the with the of the West into the areas of the old in Asia and the of people and The in Europe with first the trade of the and then the between Europe and the Americas starting in the The with the of like the British Empire, and the this made does not happen in a or in of cultural only happens when we one another, and the new ideas this cultural happen only with The Philosophical Forum of course, a journal in the United States. Yet when I took over as my was to make the journal together an international and was I on from the and a that is A be a place we think and work of of philosophical And I will do my to see The Philosophical Forum forward a and truly philosophical that might help us new ways of we need on our In this in the first issue of my tenure as of The Philosophical Forum, I would like to philosophers and those working in areas with philosophy to this ongoing project of of opening up philosophy to a truly global rather than one only within different us and help us help what philosophy can and in the in of We do not have to be stuck in the of the way philosophy has been done in the past in the West, simply because it has been done that way. We can do better than do

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.