Research Articles (Sociology)

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Browsing Research Articles (Sociology) by Subject "Imperialism"

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    From the ‘History of Western Philosophy’ to entangled histories of philosophy: the Contribution of Ben Kies
    (Routledge, 2023) Miller ,Josh Platzky
    The idea of ‘Western Philosophy’ is the product of a legitimation project for European colonialism, through to post-second world war Pan-European identity formation and white supremacist projects. Thus argues Ben Kies (1917-1979), a South African public intellectual, schoolteacher, trade unionist, and activist-theorist. In his 1953 address to the Teachers’ League of South Africa, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘯-𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘗𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘊𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, Kies became one of the first people to argue explicitly that there is no such thing as ‘Western philosophy’. In this paper, I introduce Kies as a new figure in the historiography of philosophy with important insights, relevant today. I outline his three key arguments: that ‘Western Philosophy’ is the product of political mythmaking, that it is a recent, largely mid-twentieth century fabrication, and that there is an alternative to ‘Histories of Western Philosophy’, namely ‘mixed’ or entangled histories. I show that Kies’ claims are supported both by contemporary scholarship and bibliometric analysis. I thus argue that Kies is right to claim that the idea of a distinctive, hermetically sealed ‘Western Philosophy’ is a recent, political fabrication and should be abandoned. We should instead develop global, entangled historiography to make sense of philosophy and its history today.