Decolonizing Philosophy
Mohit Mookim

17 October 2017

It's clear that many of the prevailing intellectual traditions throughout the world are disproportionately influenced by Western (European, Christian, white) ideas. For example, the philosophy done throughout America clearly takes much more after European thought than anything that could characterized as African or Asian thought. We might even say that philosophy has been colonized by Europe and the West. A recent article by Ryan Nefdt on Africa is a Country makes the case for decolonizing philosophy. How can we even take up this project of developing a genuinely African philosophy?

Find the article here:

http://africasacountry.com/2017/06/decolonizing-philosophy/

Comments (1)

penco@unige.it's picture

penco@unige.it

Saturday, November 4, 2017 -- 12:38 PM

The problem does not sound

The problem does not sound very clear. Shall we de-colonize Physics or Mathematics? Or shall we de-colonize Chemistry? Why should we de-colonize philosophy? Philosophy as a discipline is what has been developed on the track of Greek thought, like psychology, mathematics, physics or biology. Philosophy is not to be identified with "wisdom"; there are many traditions of wisdom in all countries,
But philosophy is almost an almost technical enterprise with its problems and it is open to all viewpoints insofar there is will to clarify matters with sound arguments. See for instance the anthology by Robert E. Allison, "The Chinese mind", where there is a good exchange of Chinese and Western authors on various philosophical problems. De-colonize means that there has been a colony; philosophy does not intend to make any colonies, like physics or biology. Like other intellectual enterprises waits for people to participating in the conversation and in giving new directions to the enterprise itself,

 
 

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