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I don't mean to antagonize, I'm just offering another perspective. There are no doubt many different kinds of rich intellectual traditions around the world. Sho
by qntty 9y ago
I don't mean to antagonize, I'm just offering another perspective. There are no doubt many different kinds of rich intellectual traditions around the world. Should we call them philosophy? Philosophy is a category of intellectual discourse invented in the west. The history of the term is bound to the history of the west. Why should we apply a western category to try to understand non-western thought? Isn't this imposing our own way of thinking about intellectual disciplines onto a culture that doesn't understand itself in the same way? It would be better to categorize these disciplines in the way they people from other countries understand them. Islamic thinkers don't draw a line between what we call "philosophical issues" and what we call "theological issues". Why should we draw that line when we read them?
- szemet 9y agoSo your position is that pilosophy is "western culture" and not science: In the second case I would expect it to be unifiable across cultural boundries even a posteriori - like for example mathematics, just to show a different disclipine with western/greek name. And in the first case if philosophy IS culture - then it is not unifiable of course...
- tathougies 9y agoPhilosophy is a word used to describe things. The word has meaning in and of itself. It is not a proper noun. You are attempting to make a word that means something already, mean something specific, and it's not working. Would you not classify al-jabr as mathematics simply because 'mathematics' describes western manipulations and not Arabic ones? Of course not. Mathematics means a certain thing in the English language, and al-jabr (which we call algebra) falls under that category. I'm sure other cultures have a word that denotes things like Western philosophy, and they apply that word to people like Aristotle. However, HN is a mainly english website, and so philosophy refers to any field that concerns itself with knowledge.
- qntty 9y agoA word with just one meaning would be a boring word ;)