Dilemma of Western Philosophy

Michael A. Peters is Professor of Education at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. He is the Executive Editor of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory. His interests are in education, philosophy and social policy, and he is the author of numerous books, including The Global Financial Crisis and the Restructuring of Education (with Besley, 2015), Paulo Freire: The Global Legacy (with Tina Besley, 2015) and Education Philosophy and Politics: Selected Works (2011).Carl Mika is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at University of Waikato, New Zealand. He is of Maori descent. He has a background in law practice, indigenous studies and aspects of Western philosophy. His current areas of research focus on indigenous colonial and counter-colonial theory, as well as philosophical research methods.

• Introduction: Blind, or Keenly Self-regarding? The dilemma of Western philosophy 1. The Humanist Bias in Western Philosophy and Education 2. Counter-Colonial and Philosophical Claims: An indigenous observation of Western philosophy 3. Through the Crucible of Pain and Suffering: African-American philosophy as a gift and the countering of the western philosophical metanarrative 4. How Can We Overcome the Dichotomy that Western Culture has Created Between the Concepts of Independence and Dependence? 5. Rethinking the ‘Western Tradition’ 6. How the West Was One: The Western as individualist, the African as communitarian 7. Human Freedom and the Philosophical Attitude 8. Doubt, Despair and Hope in Western Thought: Unamuno and the promise of education 9. The Offerings of Fringe Figures and Migrants 10. Actual Minds of Two Halves: Measurement, Metaphor and the Message 11. On the (Im)potentiality of an African Philosophy of Education to Disrupt Inhumanity