Making exclusion visible: A (subversive?) case for teaching the canon

This paper advocates for canonical pluralism by defending a particular way of teaching the canonical history of philosophy. More specifically, I argue that there is educational value in retaining the so-called ‘standard narratives’ in the classroom, namely, that they may increase our self-knowledge. Following the analytic tradition (e.g., Coliva, Citation2016), by ‘self-knowledge’ I mean knowledge of one’s beliefs or attitudes. Teaching the canonical history of philosophy can enhance such knowledge if it offers transparency about the exclusionary mechanisms and forces often hidden from view—whether these concern the views of the authors themselves or those who constructed the canon around certain authors. Put differently, teaching the canonical history of philosophy should be retained because of its potential to reduce epistemic ignorance by exposing the discriminatory beliefs and attitudes of canonical thinkers and of the thinkers who canonized them.