NEWSLETTER | The American Philosophical Association Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies FALL 2020 VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 1 WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A PHILOSOPHER OF ASIAN DESCENT? Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Jaegwon Kim FROM THE EDITORS A. Minh Nguyen and Yarran Hominh Editors’ Introduction: What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher of Asian Descent? ARTICLES M. Ashraf Adeel The Rock on My Chest Kenneth Aizawa The Not-So-Lonely Journey of a Japanese American Philosopher Yubraj Aryal Fashioning Oneself as a Philosopher of Asian Descent Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay The Unbearable Lightness of Being an Asian American Philosopher Celia T. Bardwell-Jones What Does It Mean to Be a Philosopher of Filipina American Descent? Julianne Chung What Am I? Kenny Easwaran One Life in Philosophy Saba Fatima Philosophy, Liberation, and Other Roads Less Travelled: Being Asian in Philosophy VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 1 FALL 2020 © 2020 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION ISSN 2155-9708 TABLE OF CONTENTS, CONT. Dien Ho Anthony Nguyen Thinking While Asian Ambiguity, Alienation, and Authenticity Masato Ishida Ann A. Pang-White Does He Get Paid? My Philosophy Journey to the West Yoichi Ishida Jin Y. Park In Praise of Teachers Doing Philosophy at the Margin Justin Khoo Yuriko Saito Mixed, but not Diluted My Journey Across the Pacific David H. Kim Falguni A. Sheth Frenemy Philosophy The Fluidity of Identity: Moving Toward a Philosophy of Race Halla Kim Criss-Crossing the Philosophical Saam Trivedi Borderlines: What Is It Like to Be a “Wogs” and Philosophers Philosopher of Asian Descent? Anand Jayprakash Vaidya Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach The Story of One Male Asian American Making Meaning of Practices in Academic Philosopher Philosophy Audrey Yap Emily S. Lee Fit or Flight: Ethical Decision-Making as a A Small Act of Rebellion Toward Model Minority Philosophy as a Gift Mi-Kyoung (Mitzi) Lee MEMORIAL NOTICE How I Came to Be a Philosopher Paul Guyer, Justin Broackes, and Bernard Reginster Keya Maitra In Memoriam: Jaegwon Kim (1934–2019) From Accidental to Integral: My Journey with Doing Philosophy ASIAN PHILOSOPHY BLOGS Gary Mar Breathing Living History into Haunted Places SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND INFORMATION Bo Mou Facing Challenges and Re-Advancing: Toward Constructive Engagement Karen Ng The Past, the Present, and the Owl of Minerva APA NEWSLETTER ON Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies A. MINH NGUYEN, EDITOR VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 1 | FALL 2020 Geographically and ethnoculturally, our contributors’ or FROM THE EDITORS their parents’ countries of origin span the majority of the Asian continent, stretching from South Asia (India, Nepal, Editors’ Introduction: What Is It Like to Pakistan) across East Asia (China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan) to Southeast Asia (Malaysia, the Philippines, Be a Philosopher of Asian Descent? Vietnam). Their work covers topics from justice in Aristotle’s moral and political philosophy to Zhuangzi as a skeptic and A. Minh Nguyen, Editor a fctionalist, from the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita and FLORIDA GULF COAST UNIVERSITY the Buddhism-deconstruction encounter to virtue ethics [email protected] and virtue epistemology in the Quran, from the meaning of if and the normativity of meaning and content to Du Yarran Hominh, Associate Editor Bois and Fanon on the philosophy and phenomenology COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY of race, from decision theory without representation [email protected] theorems to microaggression and epistemic uncertainty as a woman of color, from the aesthetics of the familiar I. INTRODUCTION AND DEDICATION to decolonial skepticism about imperial grand narratives. Previous issues of this newsletter focus on important topics, Their academic career and employment status ranges from historical fgures, and emerging trends in the feld of Asian graduate student to tenured full professor, from part-time and Asian American philosophies.1 For this fall 2020 issue, adjunct to endowed distinguished chair, across a variety of we would like to take a diferent tack and look instead at institutions, including schools of art and design, institutes the other half of this committee’s brief: Asian and Asian of health professions, regional public colleges, private American philosophers. Hence, our theme is what it is like research universities, Jesuit higher-educational institutions, to be a philosopher of Asian descent. and fagship state universities. To read these contributions, then, is to get some sense of what it is to be a philosopher Asian and Asian American philosophers comprise 6.10 simpliciter in North America as well as a philosopher of percent to 6.92 percent of the APA’s membership who Asian descent. reported their race/ethnicity in recent (FY2016 to FY2018) demographic surveys.2 However, that fgure may be an This huge internal diversity, coupled with our desire to overestimation because, aside from the fact that nearly half have our contributors enjoy the space to tell their stories of APA members did not report those data,3 the percentage in their own voices, has led to this issue being of longer of North American recipients of doctoral degrees in length than is typical. In our view, that length is balanced philosophy who identify themselves as Asian or Asian out by the benefts of a broad range of stories, histories, American has been no higher than 4.66 percent—in most anecdotes, refections, speculations, insights, hopes, and years, well below 4.66 percent—since the mid-1990s.4 dreams presented here. Our intention is not only to provide Nonetheless, given that wide pool of life and philosophical a snapshot of what it is like to be an Asian or Asian American experience and given the huge diversity within the group philosopher at this time, but also for this issue to serve as that we label “Asian,” the editors thought that an issue a document of sociological and historical interest. We hope presenting the stories of some of the members of that at the very least that this issue ofers some insight into the group, in their own voices, would be of interest both to many and varied ways in which one can be a philosopher those who identify themselves as Asian or Asian American of Asian descent. and to the wider philosophical community. We would like to dedicate this issue to the memory of We thus invited a selection of Asian and Asian American Jaegwon Kim (1934–2019), celebrated for his pioneering philosophers to submit essays on the theme. We provided work in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, potential contributors with an extensive list of guiding and the philosophy of science and his service as president questions, but contributors were free to address the theme of the Central Division of the American Philosophical as they saw ft.5 We received twenty-nine contributions Association in 1988-1989. We had asked Professor Kim to (without the global COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant contribute to this issue barely a week before his passing, unprecedented disruptions to all aspects of life, we would and we are honored to have in his contribution’s stead a have received at least a dozen more), which together memorial notice from the Department of Philosophy at represent a wide—though, of course, incomplete—cross- Brown University, where he spent much of his professional section of Asian and Asian American philosophers. academic life. APA NEWSLETTER | ASIAN AND ASIAN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHIES II. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A PHILOSOPHER interdisciplinary) and research interests (topics at the OF ASIAN DESCENT? intersection of epistemology, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and aesthetics), she says, “are There are a number of themes that recur throughout these at least as ‘mixed’ as I am.”7 The relation between work refections. The frst, one that perhaps encompasses all and background (broadly construed so as to include self- the others, is what it means to be a philosopher of Asian conception) is also dynamic and fruitful in a converse way. descent. How does one, as a philosopher and as a person, In part thanks to her philosophical work, Chung has now take up that social position and identity, those histories come to understand that just as “cross-cultural philosophy and geographies, and all the large and small vicissitudes is philosophy that weaves together strands from diferent and choices that lead one to one’s present? philosophical traditions,” so too multiracial identity is identity that weaves together “strands from diferent racial, Falguni A. Sheth begins her essay with one challenge of ethnic, and cultural traditions.” Practicing the kind of fusion understanding “Asian” identity, namely, that it is one or cross-cultural (and interdisciplinary) philosophy that constructed largely by Orientalist administrative categories Chung does, therefore, helps inform her thinking on her imposed from above and insensitive to the complexities own multiracial identity and on multiculturalism and related of lived experience (of “having [one’s] comportment and topics in general.8 questions met with perplexity or suspicion,” for instance). Consequently, for Sheth, “‘Asian’ . remained a term of As for Masato Ishida, attaching ‘of Asian descent’ to art designating (and often denigrating) a long-standing ‘philosopher’ feels “a little bit like adding ~P after ‘Other’ against a dominant whiteness and a Black Other.” saying P.” Readers may hear in this an echo of Ludwig How, through what agency, can one reshape and make Wittgenstein’s aphorism that “the philosopher is not sense of one’s social identity if that is the form that it takes? a citizen of any community of ideas; that is what makes him into a philosopher” (Zettel, 455). Ishida argues that This question, essentially one of identity and agency and associating an individual’s philosophical contributions the relationship between the two, must be read both in the with their racial-ethnic-cultural background “seems general and in the particular.