Restoring philosophy - a multicultural statement

Overview of the book "Restoring Philosophy - A Multicultural Perspective" by Bryan Van Norden: Do American colleges and universities cause narrow-mindedness among their students by refusing to teach philosophical schools from China, India, Africa, and other non-Western cultures? This book, which contains sharp criticism of American higher education, answers yes. Despite living in a multicultural world, most philosophy departments in Western universities stubbornly insist that only Western philosophy is the true philosophy, and disdain everything outside European philosophical texts. This book criticizes Bryan Van Norden, a chair professor at the College of Philosophy at Wuhan University in China, for the European-centered academic philosophy, its isolation, and its collusion with nationalism, and issues a warning about the necessity for our educational institutions to return to their global counterparts. Bryan Van Norden, a specialist in Chinese philosophy, presents a comprehensive and multicultural approach to philosophical research in a sharp and powerful style that is not without controversy, offering many examples of how thinkers from the West and others can engage in fruitful dialogue. He explains that philosophy only achieves depth when it encompasses multiple perspectives. This book is simultaneously a statement advocating for multicultural education, an accessible introduction to Confucianism and Buddhism philosophy, a critique of racial centralism, and a rejection of the thinking that characterizes contemporary American policies. It defends the value of philosophy and humanities education and calls for a return to the search for life; this is the motto that characterized the philosophies of Confucius, Socrates, and Buddha. The origin of this book is a famous article published in the New York Times proposing to rename any philosophy department that does not teach non-Western philosophy as "Department of European and American Philosophy." From this standpoint, the book urges any student or researcher in philosophy to reconsider what it truly means to love wisdom.