Mary asked:

Could you give me a brief definition of "ethnophilosophy"?

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If you looked at this page earlier, I apologize for having originally rephrased your question —
something I don't usually do — as, 'What is "ethnophilosophy"?' I thought it would be too easy just to
give a brief definition. I couldn't have been more wrong!

Ethnophilosophy studies the philosophical beliefs and world view of 'the Maori', 'the Azande', 'the
Hopi'. I have deliberately chosen peoples from three different Continents, because although the
original idea of ethnophilosophy arose within an African context, it would clearly be wrong to define it
in such a way that it was impossible to do ethnophilosophy outside of Africa.

The first thing to note is that we are not talking about any individualMaoris, or members of the
Azande tribe, or Hopi Indians. The ethnophilosophy of a people does not have a history,in the way
that one might speak of the history of Eastern or Western philosophy, or of the Continental or Analytic
traditions. Whatever developments may take within an ethnophilosophy are not the result of
successive contributions to an on-going debate, but rather follow the vicissitudes in the history of the
society which has given rise to it.

Some academic philosophers would argue that what that shows is that ethnophilosophy cannot be
'philosophy' in any recognizable sense. The very idea involves a contradiction. - But then those
philosophers first owe us a non-question begging definition of 'philosophy'.

The issue over ethnophilosophy carries strange echoes of an old academic controversy surrounding
the beginnings of Greek philosophy, the logosover mythosdebate. In one account of the history of
Greek thought, the achievements of the Presocratic philosophers represented the 'triumph of logos
over mythos'. In the place of uncritically accepted creation myths, there arose the idea of rational
inquiry as the source of theories about the universe. According to the rival account, reason did not
suddenly appear on the scene, as if from nowhere. There was a gradual development, with mythical
elements continuing to play a significant role in the theories of the first 'philosophers'.

My view? Philosophy is about reasoning and argumentation. Philosophy is also about the different
ways in which the world can make sense for us. It can be one, withoutbeing the other. So I have no
difficulty with the thought that ethnophilosophy is philosophy properly so-called.

Geoffrey Klempner