Philosophical Silences: Race, Gender, Disability, and Philosophical Practice

Abstract Who is recognised as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy influence both the content of a philosophical education and academic philosophy’s continuing demographic skew. The ‘philosophical who’ and the ‘philosophical what’ themselves are a partial function of matters that have been passed over in collective silence, even if that now feels to some like a silence belonging to the distant past. This paper discusses some philosophical silences regarding race, gender, and disability in the context of reflection on philosophical education and on philosophical practice in the public sphere. It focuses on Charles Mills’ writings on race, Susan Babbitt’s on race and gender, and on more collaboratively-generated work on eugenics and disability.