Teaching World Philosophies: An essay

To step up the activity level of academic philosophizing, “Teaching
World Philosophies” will propose that one first engage in a thorough
housecleaning before teaching world-philosophical traditions today. In the
path that will be sketched as an example in this regard, I will critically engage
“the West,” a concept that looms over an adequate academic engagement with
world philosophies today. Bringing into the conversation Humayun Kabir’s
(1906–1969) analysis of philosophy as a space that can generate and foster
critical independent thinking within a society, I will argue that a change in
ingrained patterns of conducting a social activity like academic philosophy can
be changed. This change might, in fact, be urgent especially in those locales
in Europe in which academic philosophy as it is practiced today was crafted.