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Articles

Indigenous Philosophies

Miguel van der Velden invites us to consider the philosophical ideas of the world’s many Indigenous communities.

One of the main goals of philosophy is to ask why we have this life and how we’re meant to live it. As such, it has been the backbone of many cultures throughout the world and history, has influenced entire nations, and has shaped the present. One could argue that in everything we do there is a philosophy underlying the action. This raises a great concern: if this is true, and philosophy plays such a fundamental role in society, then what great flaw in the philosophy of the modern world is causing us to destroy the environment, turn a blind eye to oppression, and subject ourselves to a political-economic system that for many of us simply doesn’t fit?

Recent times have seen the rising popularity in the West of Eastern philosophies and texts such as the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dao De Ching, and other greats. A dichotomy has bubbled up between Western and Eastern philosophy, and many continue to argue about how these two relate to each other.

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