Understanding Ethnocentrism and its Impact in Philosophy

The problems of ethnocentrism tend to manifest themselves in the philosophy of history, when philosophers attempt to interpret empirical history in teleological terms. Ethnocentrism arises whenever the researcher attempts to universalize the Western subject-position. In sociological terms that have been widely popularized since Sumner, ethnocentrism involves one first identifying with an in-group, with whom one shares certain observable characteristics (culture, language, physical features, or customs, for example).[1] The belief in shared characteristics leads to an assertion of identity, and this belief in turn influences attitudes. Our attitude toward the in-group is one of favouritism, whereas our attitude toward the out-group is one of

To conceive – or to think in terms of concepts – is to make an epistemic claim, which may not be the same as attributing of something that it possibly exists in reality. The philosophy of the mind remains indebted to Kripke’s distinction between epistemic possibility (how things could conceivably be) and metaphysical possibility (how things could really be).[4] What could conceivably be the case might be metaphysically impossible (i.e.: impossible to instantiate in a possible world), and this is to be known a posteriori rather than a priori. What do the problem of ethnocentrism, the problem of obstacle-concepts, and the problem of conceivability have in common? Firstly, they invoke a belief in a set of concepts which they purport to be the best available description of the world.[5] Secondly, they involve a certain bias that awaits critical reflection. In ethnocentrism, it is the cultural bias of the Western or Westernized researcher; in the philosophy of science, it is the sociological bias of the prevalent scientific community; in the philosophy of the mind, it is the bias of the individual mind questing after a mind-independent reality. Finally, these biases are smuggled into the

The Western philosophy of history has as its primary concept the concept of development, and many scholars have thus distinguished between the Western linear view of history and the non-Western cyclical one. What appears to be the case is that the dominant philosophy of history – otherwise more chillingly referred to as the ‘master-narrative’ – conceives of the history of the world as beginning with Judaism and progressing through classical antiquity and Christianity to the Enlightenment and modern liberalism.[6] What such a master-narrative leaves out, of course, is the period of the European Middle Ages (from the fifth to the fifteenth-century A.D.), a historical fact that renders more plausible – because more representative – a cyclical view of history as alternating between the Dark and the Golden Ages. Master-narratives leave no room for competing narratives, a case in point being Trevor-Roper’s statement that black Africa had no history prior to contact with the West. Trevor-Roper’s statement draws on a Hegelian relation between the concept of history and the Western concept of development. It was this Hegelian relation that allowed Hegel to essentially declare the end of history in 1806, when the Battle of Jena led to Napoleon defeating the Prussian monarchy and what Hegel presumed to be the victory of liberal democracy.[7] By the same Hegelian logic, Fukuyama was able to out-Hegel Hegel and