Is philosophy too Western for its own good?

Term &quot;Eastern Philosophy&quot; is almost exclusively used for history of Asian philosophy. It looks backwards and interprets the old. Many western philosophers read it, but it&#x27;s in the past. Old Greek philosophers are the same. They are referenced and studied, but western philosophy does not live in the past.<p>For some reason contemporary philosophy that develops it&#x27;s own ideas in Asia is not considered &quot;Eastern philosophy&quot;.

This self-flagellation is charming but pointless. My concern is that the East has so completely adopted Western culture and ideas to the exclusion of that originating within itself that local customs, traditions, languages etc will probably be dead in another century.<p>When I left school, I knew that there were three philosophers in the world: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Exposure to Indian thought was completely absent in an Indian school because the system is run by bureaucrats who ape the West. The white man left India, but he left in place millions of brown men who think exactly like he did to this day. Diversity of skin color won over diversity of culture and thought.<p>Fixing this is far more urgent than whatever the intellectual onanism prevalent in Western academia and media concludes needs fixing.

Of course it is too western. Today, I think a lot of that is language and culture though, rather than discrimination. If you aren’t of some particular background it can be very hard to understand them accurately. The language is only one part of it but not enough to truly understand things from another culture, which the article touches on - you have to live in that culture. Since English language and American culture is dominant, other philosophies are marginalized.<p>The part I’m not sure of is “for its own good”. What does that mean? I think the modern field of philosophy is limited and maybe even sometimes childishly simplistic because of this issue, but it’s not as risk of dying probably.

I disagree the reason is as simple as racism, as Van Norden said. I think the issue is that, at least to my knowledge, there is scant separation of religious, cultural and social influence in other philosophical traditions or works. As soon as something becomes mystical or spiritual, I disagree that it’s philosophy.<p>I could be wrong because I am basing my judgement on what I’ve been exposed to in non-Western philosophical tradition, so feel free to let me know otherwise. The best thing to come out of Western philosophy are frameworks for objective analysis, the goal of which is to understand reality and seek truth. The rest is a game.