According to the historical de"nition of philosophy among Western philosophers from Hegel to his anti-historical critics Levinas, Derrida, and Rorty, non-Western peoples have many intellectual practices but in a crucial sense they lack “philosophy.” !is absence meant for Hegel the want of a non-pictorial and abstract, cognitive, conceptual thinking; for later thinkers such as Levinas, Derrida, ...

Epistemic relativism rejects the idea that claims can be assessed from a universally applicable, objective standpoint. It is greatly disdained because it suggests that the real ‘basis’ for our views is something fleeting, such as ‘‘the techniques of mass persuasion’’ (Thomas Kuhn 1970) or the determination of intellectuals to achieve ‘‘solidarity’’ (Rorty 1984) or ‘‘keep the conversation going’...