The exclusion of non-European traditions
The canon of “Western philosophy” has been built on narratives that implicitly or explicitly exclude non-European traditions. Histories of philosophy rooted in European thought systematically marginalise or ignore African, Asian, Indigenous, and other non-Western philosophical traditions, treating European philosophy as universal whilst simultaneously positioning it as culturally specific.
Miller (2023) argues for moving from “the history of Western philosophy” toward “entangled histories of philosophy” that recognise the interconnectedness of philosophical traditions across cultures. This approach challenges the linear narrative of Western philosophy and reveals how European thought has been shaped by—whilst erasing—non-European influences.
Racism and Eurocentrism in canonical figures
Major philosophical figures have held explicitly racial or colonialist views that directly connect to the epistemic structures of the discipline. Kant, often positioned as the pinnacle of Enlightenment reason, developed a hierarchical theory of race that was not peripheral to but formative of his critical philosophy.
Strickland and Wang (2023) examine how racism and Eurocentrism operate within histories of philosophy, showing that the exclusion of non-European traditions isn’t merely an oversight but a constitutive feature of how “philosophy” itself has been defined and delimited.
Sandford’s analysis reveals that Kant’s early attempts to explain the unity and diversity of the human species—through his theory of “race,” germs, and natural predispositions—were not side projects but the testing ground for ideas that later became central to the first and third Critiques. In trying to show how one human genus could generate multiple hereditary “races,” Kant was forced into methodological questions about whether nature forms a system, how classification works, and when we must appeal to teleological judgment rather than mechanical explanation.
Sandford’s point is that Kant’s mature accounts of the systematic unity of nature, the regulative use of reason, and the principle of purposiveness were shaped by his engagement with natural history’s biggest puzzle: explaining organised beings, especially human variation. This does not mean the Critiques are racially grounded, but it does mean Kant’s race theory helped form the philosophical problems he later solved. The racist scaffolding wasn’t external to the philosophy—it was part of its construction.
Manufacturing continuity to justify empire
Anthony Pagden’s “The Law of Continuity” (2014) explores how European thinkers tried to create a seamless intellectual link between ancient, medieval, and early-modern forms of knowledge, even when the underlying assumptions radically changed. Early-modern political and legal theorists—especially those involved in justifying empire—leaned on an imagined continuity with Roman law, Aristotelian natural philosophy, and Christian theology to make their claims look timeless and universal.
This “continuity” wasn’t historical; it was a narrative device that let Europeans claim their ideas were the natural extension of an older, authoritative tradition. Pagden argues that this move smoothed over ruptures, contradictions, and the colonial violence embedded in practices like the “law of nations,” which cast European norms as globally binding.
The essay illustrates how philosophical systems can disguise political interests under the appearance of inherited necessity, and how concepts like natural law or universal reason gained legitimacy through this carefully crafted sense of intellectual inheritance. Philosophy became a tool of empire by claiming to be above history, whilst actively writing a history that served colonial power.
The logic of colonisation within analytic philosophy
Schuringa (2025) identifies how analytical-philosophy engages in its own form of colonisation—not merely of geographical territories but of intellectual traditions. This “philosophical-columbusing” appropriates radical traditions (Marxism, feminism, critical race theory) whilst neutralising their critical power.
Double forgetfulness
Analytic philosophy exhibits a peculiar double forgetfulness when approaching decolonisation:
- It forgets that it is itself a tradition among others
- It forgets that it is not coeval with “Western philosophy”
This allows analytic philosophy to equate decolonisation with exposure to “non-Western philosophy”—traditions alternative to Western philosophy. In this vanishing act, where analytic philosophy goes missing from the picture, it insulates itself from decolonial thought’s critical power.
“The tradition that is none cannot be touched, just as whiteness, the colour that is none, cannot be seen.”
The liberal marketplace
The ideology underlying analytic philosophy is liberalism. Participants in its discussions are conceived as entering a liberal marketplace of ideas where:
- Circulation on the market determines which ideas win out
- Each participant may enter the market as they see fit
- Entry conditions are not examined—all are assumed to be free, sovereign individuals
- The fiction of equal entry serves the interests of those who exercise power
This liberal framework prevents analytic philosophy from genuinely engaging with radical traditions that challenge methodological individualism, structural analysis, and liberal ideology itself.
Decolonising the discipline
Decolonising philosophy means confronting how the discipline has constituted itself through exclusion. This is not a matter of adding non-Western thinkers to reading lists whilst leaving pedagogy, methodology, and institutional structures untouched. It requires examining how philosophy departments determine what counts as “real philosophy” and whose knowledge gets dismissed as “cultural studies” or “ethnophilosophy.”
What decolonisation looks like in practice
When philosophy curricula treat Ibn Rushd (Averroes) or Nagarjuna as optional “comparative philosophy” whilst making Descartes and Hume compulsory, they embed a hierarchy where European thought is philosophy proper and non-European thought is regional variation. Decolonisation means treating all philosophical traditions as traditions—asking why we read Kant on ethics but not Confucius, why epistemology surveys begin with Greek sceptics but ignore Buddhist epistemology, why “philosophy of mind” excludes sophisticated Yogacara analyses of consciousness.
This shifts the question from “How do we include more diverse voices?” to “How did European philosophy come to position itself as the only tradition that transcends particularity?” The answer involves examining how Kant’s racial hierarchy shaped his conception of reason, how Hegel’s philosophy of history positioned Africa outside history, how colonial domination created the material conditions for European philosophy’s claim to universality.
The work of recovery and recontextualisation
Decolonisation involves recovering philosophical work that has been systematically erased or misread. This means reading W.E.B. Du Bois not as a sociologist who occasionally philosophised but as a systematic philosopher whose work on double consciousness, the colour line, and the wages of whiteness constitutes major contributions to phenomenology, social ontology, and political philosophy. It means recognising that what gets classified as “Indigenous knowledge” or “oral tradition” often embodies sophisticated epistemological and metaphysical frameworks that challenge Western assumptions about knowledge, personhood, and relationality.
But recovery is not enough. Decolonisation requires examining how philosophy has actively colonised other intellectual traditions. When analytic philosophy appropriates feminist standpoint theory or critical race theory whilst stripping away their structural critique and political commitments—repackaging them as liberal arguments about representation and inclusion—it performs the same colonising move that European empires enacted materially. The “social turn” in analytic philosophy risks becoming another form of extraction: mining radical traditions for philosophical resources whilst leaving their critical power behind.
Institutional realities and resistance
Philosophy departments face material constraints. Hiring decisions favour candidates working in established “core areas.” Publication in prestigious journals requires conforming to methodological norms that exclude alternative approaches. Tenure and promotion committees reward work legible to disciplinary gatekeepers. These institutional structures reproduce the discipline’s colonial genealogy even when individuals have good intentions.
Yet decolonisation is happening, often led by philosophers working at the margins or outside traditional philosophy departments. The work of scholars like Kristie Dotson, Charles Mills, Linda Martín Alcoff, and others demonstrates what philosophy becomes when it stops pretending to speak from nowhere. They show that examining philosophy’s racist foundations is not “identity politics” but rigorous philosophical work that reveals how supposedly neutral concepts like “rationality,” “objectivity,” and “knowledge” have always been racialized and gendered.
What is at stake
This is not about adding diversity to an unchanged canon. It is about fundamentally questioning how the discipline constitutes itself, whose knowledge counts, and what philosophy can become when it stops pretending to be universal whilst remaining violently particular. It means recognising that philosophy departments’ overwhelming whiteness is not an accidental demographic fact but the predictable result of a discipline that has defined itself through exclusion—and continues to do so every time it treats European philosophy as philosophy itself.
Critical Indigenous Studies and philosophy’s colonial foundations
Critical Indigenous Studies challenges philosophy’s colonial foundations in ways that exceed what decolonisation discourse typically addresses. Where decolonisation often focuses on including non-European philosophical traditions, Indigenous scholars demonstrate how philosophy itself operates on stolen land as part of ongoing settler colonialism.
Indigenous sovereignty fundamentally challenges the legitimacy of universities where philosophy gets practiced. These institutions occupy territories appropriated through violence. They benefit from wealth accumulated through dispossession. Their existence depends on denying Indigenous authority over lands they occupy.
Philosophy’s epistemological frameworks reproduce colonial knowledge production. The subject position of the knower remains unmarked despite being specifically white and settler. Claims to objective knowledge obscure how whiteness structures what counts as legitimate philosophy. Indigenous knowledge gets dismissed as cultural belief whilst Western epistemology appears as universal reason.
White possessive logic operates through how philosophy appropriates and defines. When philosophers study Indigenous knowledge, they claim authority to interpret, represent and theorise. This transforms Indigenous epistemologies into objects for philosophical analysis rather than recognising them as legitimate knowledge systems on their own terms.
The distinction between decolonisation and reconciliation proves crucial. Reconciliation maintains settler sovereignty whilst expressing regret about historical violence. Decolonisation challenges the fundamental legitimacy of settler occupation and institutional structures. Philosophy that truly decolonises must address its complicity in ongoing dispossession rather than merely expanding the canon.
Indigenous philosophers like Kyle Whyte, Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Linda Tuhiwai Smith demonstrate what philosophy becomes when grounded in Indigenous standpoints. Their work centres relationality, responsibility to land and collective self-determination. These priorities differ fundamentally from liberal individualism and Cartesian subject-object divisions structuring Western philosophy.
Genuine engagement requires more than reading Indigenous philosophers. It requires recognising that philosophy occurs on stolen land and questioning whether academic philosophy can be reformed or whether decolonisation demands entirely different modes of knowledge production accountable to Indigenous communities rather than disciplinary conventions.
References
- Miller - 2023 - From the History of Western Philosophy to Entangled Histories of Philosophy
- Strickland & Wang - 2023 - Racism and Eurocentrism in Histories of Philosophy
- Pagden - 2014 - Law of Continuity
- Schuringa, C. (2025). A Social History of Analytic Philosophy: How Politics Has Shaped an Apolitical Philosophy, Chapter 10: “Colonizing Philosophy”