I am a teacher of philosophy at York University, who teaches: broad introductions to philosophy, critical reasoning, ethics, political philosophy, Asian philosophy, the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of language —at all levels. Wherever possible I include materials from differing philosophical traditions in my introductory courses. I take this to be pedagogically advantageous. When students are exposed only to the philosophy from their home culture, they are learning about the ideas that inform their pre-theoretical commitments and it can seem like philosophy is a pointless, relativistic exercise in reciting what everyone already believes. Students who learn philosophy from different traditions have a vivid demonstration of how the discipline of philosophy comes apart from cultural traditions and languages—and moreover that there are disciplinary standards that we can employ to compare competing philosophical proposals. The more we understand cross-cultural philosophical disagreements as examples of philosophical disagreements, the more we are inclined to look to the disciplinary considerations that make the disagreement intelligible to resolve controversies.
