Jay L. Garfield

Jay Lazar Garfield (born 13 November 1955) is a leading expert on Tibetan Buddhism. He also does research on the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics, and hermeneutics. He is currently Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities at Smith College, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Buddhist Studies at Harvard Divinity School, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Central University of Tibetan Studies.

Biography

Garfield attended Oberlin College, planning on studying psychology so that he could become a clinical psychologist. He took a philosophy course on a whim. He later explained: "by the time we opened Hume’s Treatise I was hooked. The attack on the self, on a real causal relation, on universals, and the defense of custom as a foundation not only of social organisation but of ontology and meaning stunned me."[1]

Garfield studied logic and the philosophy of mind at the University of Pittsburgh, working with Wilfred Sellars and Annette Baier. He had no training in non-Western philosophy prior to teaching at Hampshire College. However, on his first day at work a student walked into his office and asked him to chair his senior thesis on "Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka and the Social Contract Tradition." With the assistance of Robert Thurman, Garfield supervised the thesis, which gave him his first exposure to Buddhist philosophy.[2] Several years after that, Hampshire started a requirement that professors incorporate some kind of non-Western philosophy into their teaching, and this forced Garfield to learn more about Buddhism. Garfield eventually got an Indo-American Fellowship to study at the Central University of Tibetan Studies in India where he studied Nagarjuna with the Venerable Prof Geshe Yeshe Thabkhas. Garfield explained: "I fell in love with Nāgārjuna when I encountered his work. The clarity of philosophical vision, the rigour of analysis and the profound exploration of the most fundamental questions of metaphysics impressed me enormously. The radical attack on essence and on foundations resonated with ideas from Hume, Wittgenstein and Sellars, and the rich commentarial tradition provided a hermeneutical device for explicating those ideas."[3]

Garfield is married and has four children.[4]

Academic career

Garfield received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1975, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1986. He taught at Hampshire College from 1980-1995, then from 1996-1998 he was Professor and Head of the Department at Philosophy at the University of Tasmania. He has been a professor of philosophy at Smith College from 1999 to the present.

He is editor in chief of the journal Sophia, and is on the editorial boards of Philosophical Psychology, Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion, Australasian Philosophical Review, Philosophy East and West, American Institute of Buddhist Studies/Columbia Center for Buddhist Studies/Tibet House, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy.

Yale-NUS

Garfield was the inaugural Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor of Humanities and Head of Studies, Philosophy, at Yale-NUS from 2013-2016. He said, "This Professorship has given me the opportunity of a lifetime – working with motivated, creative and talented students and colleagues and working in a community committed to building something entirely new, an Asian liberal arts college with a truly global curriculum."[5] During his professorship at Yale-NUS, Garfield was one of six scholars who participated in a conference with the 14th Dalai Lama on "Mapping the Mind: A Dialogue between Modern Science and Buddhist Science."[6]

Controversy over "If Philosophy Won't Diversify"

Garfield has long been a critic of the narrow approach of Western philosophers. He has noted that "people in our profession are still happy to treat Western philosophy as the 'core' of the discipline, and as the umarked case. So, for instance, a course that addresses only classical Greek philosophy can be comfortably titled 'Ancient Philosophy,' not 'Ancient Western Philosophy,' and a course in metaphysics can be counted on to ignore all non-Western metaphysics. A course in Indian philosophy is not another course in the history of philosophy, but is part of the non-Western curriculum."[7] Because of his knowledge of Buddhism and commitment to encouraging the study of Asian philosophy, Garfield was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference on non-Western philosophical traditions organized by graduate students in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. However, he was "outraged" that there were only "one or two" members of the regular faculty in the department who attended the event, because he felt that this showed a lack of support for their own students' interest in non-Western philosophy.[8]

Garfield discussed this issue with another speaker at the conference, Bryan W. Van Norden, and they wrote an editorial that appeared in The Stone column of The New York Times in May of that year, entitled "If Philosophy Won't Diversify, Let's Call It What It Really Is."[9] In this editorial, they state: "we have urged our colleagues to look beyond the European canon in their own research and teaching." However, "progress has been minimal." Consequently, so long as "the profession as a whole remains resolutely Eurocentric," Garfield and Van Norden "ask those who sincerely believe that it does make sense to organize our discipline entirely around European and American figures and texts to pursue this agenda with honesty and openness. We therefore suggest that any department that regularly offers courses only on Western philosophy should rename itself 'Department of European and American Philosophy.'"

The article received 797 comments in just 12 hours. (None of the other Stone columns that month had over 500 comments.) Garfield later explained, "I woke up to all this email in my inbox [with] people asking, 'Are you okay?' 'Do you need to talk?'" Garfield soon realized that his colleagues were expressing concern for his well-being because so many of the comments on the article expressed "vitriolic racism and xenophobia. And some of it was clearly by philosophers and students of philosophy.'"[10] One typical comment was that Western philosophy deserves precedence because "there is a particular school of thought that caught fire, broke cultural boundaries, and laid the foundation of modern science (Does anyone want to fly in a plane built with non-western math?) and our least oppressive governmental systems."[11] On the other hand, there were also many supportive comments: "Hear! Hear! Inclusion is the order of the day. ... More wisdom from more perspectives — what could be better? We have so much to learn from each other, if only we listen."[12]

Garfield and Van Norden's article was almost immediately translated into Chinese,[13] and over twenty blogs in the English-speaking world have commented or hosted discussions, including Reddit.[14] Garfield and Van Norden's piece has continued to provoke strong reactions. Some have applauded their call for greater diversity in the US philosophical canon.[15][16] In addition, their piece has been featured in several recent essays arguing for greater diversity in philosophy.[17][18][19]

However, there has also been extensive criticism of the Garfield and Van Norden article. Two conservative editorials criticized the piece for failing to acknowledge the superiority of Western philosophy.[20][21] Two other articles argued that "philosophy" is, by definition, the tradition that grows out of Plato and Aristotle, so nothing outside that tradition could count as philosophy.[22][23] Professor Amy Olberding of the University of Oklahoma wrote a detailed reply to critics of Garfield and Van Norden, arguing that criticisms fall into a stereotypical pattern that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues.[24]

Publications

Books

Edited Collections

Articles and Book Chapters

References

  1. Marshall, Richard. "Buddhist Howls". 3AM Magazine. Retrieved 14 December 2016. Much of the rest of the Biography section of this article is from this same source.
  2. NUS Development Office. "Philosopher joins Yale-NUS as Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor". National University of Singapore Giving. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  3. Marshall, Richard. "Buddhist Howls". 3AM Magazine. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  4. "Jay's Complete CV at 11-16" (PDF). jaygarfield.org. Retrieved 15 December 2016.
  5. NUS Development Office. "Impact of philanthropy felt far and wide across Yale-NUS College". National University of Singapore Giving. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  6. "His Holiness the Dalai Lama Meets Scientists on ‘Mapping the Mind’". Central Tibetan Administration. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  7. Marshall, Richard. "Buddhist Howls". 3AM Magazine. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  8. "Jay Garfield: Engaging Buddhist Philosophy". The Wisdom Podcast. Retrieved 15 December 2016.
  9. Garfield, Jay L.; Van Norden, Bryan W. "If Philosophy Won't Diversify, Let's Call It What It Really Is". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  10. "Jay Garfield: Engaging Buddhist Philosophy". The Wisdom Podcast. Wisdom Publications. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  11. ., Shawn. "Comment on Garfield and Van Norden, "If Philosophy Won't Diversify"". New York Times. Retrieved 15 December 2016.
  12. Goldin, Ellen. "Comment on Garfield and Van Norden, "If Philosophy Won't Diversify"". New York Times. Retrieved 15 December 2016.
  13. Wu, Wanwei (translator); Garfield, Jay L.; Van Norden, Bryan W. "哲学若无多样性,只配称为欧美哲学". Aisixiang. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  14. "What's your take on the recent NYTimes article advocating diversification in philosophy departments in the west?". Reddit. Retrieved 10 December 2016.See notes below for some of the other websites
  15. Miller, James A. "Diversify or Die". Anotherpanacea. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  16. Whitaker, Justin. "Getting Buddhist Philosophy (and Other Non-Western Thought) into the Academy". American Buddhist Perspectives. Patheos. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  17. Levine, Peter. "The Lack of Diversity in Philosophy Is Blocking Its Progress". Aeon. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  18. Krishnamurthy, Meena. "Adamson, Greek-Responding Philosophy, and the Indian Subcontinent". Philosopher. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  19. Sayer, Emily. "Vassar College Wants More Diversified Courses". The Miscellany News. The Miscellany News. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  20. McArdle, Mairead. "NYT Op-Ed: Supremacy of Western Philosophy "Hard to Justify"". NewsBusters. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  21. McGarvey, Robert. "There's a Reason Western Philosophy Is Dominant". Troy Media. Troy Media. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  22. Tampio, Nicholas. "Not All Things Wise and Good Are Philosophy". Aeon. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  23. Peon, D. Kyle. "Yes--Let's Call Philosophy What It Really Is". Weekly Standard. Weekly Standard. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  24. Olberding, Amy. "When Someone Suggests Expanding the Canon...". Daily Nous. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
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