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*Western.

There's a whole wide world out there.

Much of the thinking that we call philosophy was created to make sense of the apparent conflict between particular western institution, like (western) science and religion. There are thinkers in other parts of the world who are interested in similar issues, but it might not be right to categorize it as philosophy because they don't have the same sort of clash in their culture to make sense of. That is, western philosophy was consciously created to oppose religious dogma and scientific reductionism, but the same can't be said about (say) Buddhist philosophy, even though they ask similar questions. In other words, part of what makes philosophy "philosophy" is that it insists that it's something different than religious or scientific theory.

What utter rubbish. Every culture has their own philosophical issues that they grapple with. This does not mean these thoughts cannot be labeled "philosophy". "Philosophy", means love of knowledge... the seeking of knowledge is not limited to the West, and there have been philosophers from all around the world.

> That is, western philosophy was consciously created to oppose religious dogma and scientific reductionism,

Where are you pulling this stuff from? Western philosophy traces its roots to mainly Catholic (and some Islamic) philosophers, many of whom were very religious. These philosophers often drew upon earlier philosophers (the Catholic Church is probably the reason why Aristotelian philosophy survives to the present day). These earlier philosophers were also religious.

The separation between philosophy and religion (And between philosophy and science for that matter) is something that has only arisen in the present day, and -- in my opinion at least -- is unlikely to last very long, if history is any indication.

> In other words, part of what makes philosophy "philosophy" is that it insists that it's something different than religious or scientific theory.

These are your own thoughts and opinions on the subject. You are unnecessarily antagonizing science, philosophy, and religion, and I think this perhaps stems from the very western desire to segregate and classify everything.

I don't mean to antagonize, I'm just offering another perspective. There are no doubt many different kinds of rich intellectual traditions around the world. Should we call them philosophy? Philosophy is a category of intellectual discourse invented in the west. The history of the term is bound to the history of the west. Why should we apply a western category to try to understand non-western thought? Isn't this imposing our own way of thinking about intellectual disciplines onto a culture that doesn't understand itself in the same way? It would be better to categorize these disciplines in the way they people from other countries understand them. Islamic thinkers don't draw a line between what we call "philosophical issues" and what we call "theological issues". Why should we draw that line when we read them?

So your position is that pilosophy is "western culture" and not science:

In the second case I would expect it to be unifiable across cultural boundries even a posteriori - like for example mathematics, just to show a different disclipine with western/greek name. And in the first case if philosophy IS culture - then it is not unifiable of course...

Philosophy is a word used to describe things. The word has meaning in and of itself. It is not a proper noun. You are attempting to make a word that means something already, mean something specific, and it's not working.

Would you not classify al-jabr as mathematics simply because 'mathematics' describes western manipulations and not Arabic ones? Of course not. Mathematics means a certain thing in the English language, and al-jabr (which we call algebra) falls under that category.

I'm sure other cultures have a word that denotes things like Western philosophy, and they apply that word to people like Aristotle.

However, HN is a mainly english website, and so philosophy refers to any field that concerns itself with knowledge.

A word with just one meaning would be a boring word ;)

Can I suggest Angus C. Graham's translations and work around Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters and Companion to Angus C. Graham's Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, collected by Harold Roth)? In particular, the essay, "Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of 'Is' and 'Ought'" (IIRC) is ... really nice.

I agree. If you are thinking explicitly about the broadest, most important issues, then you are doing philosophy. That said, I do think Western philosophy is best.

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