Has Western philosophy been built on the exclusion of certain groups of people?

I wrote an essay for a contest, but my entry did not make it to the final.  I still believe that it made a few valid claims. These was my central argument:

I would like to propose four models that could be used to clarify what is meant when one considers this relationship between the foundations of philosophy and exclusion. Considered in order of pertinence they are: ignorance, displacement, concealment (ideology), and alienation.

If we can show that as philosophy developed it failed to even register the fact that certain groups of people were being excluded, we can define this problem as one of ignorance. In the dialogue that we imagined earlier, the old house, without the new owner’s knowledge, had to be torn in order for the new one to be built. The new owners took no part in the destruction. Applied to the case at hand, their exclusion is a necessary antecedent, but does not necessarily shape the development of philosophy. Philosophy could very well have developed without the exclusion. Of course, this does not excuse philosopher’s apparent ignorance, and having ignored historical events is still a blemish on the institution. We know that modern philosophy was not particularly concerned with events such as the colonization of Africa, America, and Asia; to slavery; and many other evils. Philosophers (and scientists, poets and other intellectuals) could have known better, and therefore, should have known better. However, this distraction cannot be said to be a structural failure of philosophy, only a moral one.

To claim that philosophy and exclusion are in a relationship of displacement, we would need to argue that philosophy not only ignored certain realities, but through their inaction allowed those same realities to be displaced, preventing them from becoming a matter of public discussion. For example, many thinkers claim that Western philosophy failed to prevent the emergence of totalitarian regimes in Europe, and therefore that the very foundations of philosophy should be reworked.

In order to claim that the relationship between philosophy and exclusion is one of concealment we must show that the cognitive structures that define philosophical thought also hide the nature of exclusion and thereby enable it. Philosophy is at fault not only by defect, by omission or by distraction, but by its very nature. For example, humanism and rationalism can be said to be projections of “possessive individualism” and of Capitalism, or alternatively, of a patriarchal social structure.

Finally, philosophy (and Western rationality in general) may stand in a relationship of alienation to certain groups, but only if what makes philosophy possible are the practices of exclusion and dispossession. This idea can be further examined in two distinct variants. The first defines the relationship between philosophy’s foundations and exclusion as a relation of exteriority, e.g., the claim that the dispossession of the working class allows for the creation of a separate class structure in which people are able to wonder about the ultimate meaning of reality. These people (intellectuals in general as well as philosophers) fulfill certain roles in the reproduction of the ruling class. We say that this is a relation of exteriority because while the existence of excluded groups makes philosophy possible (along with intellectual production in general), neither the content nor the form of philosophical production derives from the exclusion itself.

We can also argue that what philosophy’s self-proclaimed product is nothing but what has been dispossessed from the excluded masses. This is in line with the “alienation model” that Marx developed in his early writings.

 

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