HomePhilosophia: International Journal of Philosophyvol. 41 no. 1 (2012)

Philosophy in Culture: Embedded and Disembedded

Rolando M. Gripaldo

Discipline: Philosophy

 

Abstract:

Philosophy is here viewed broadly as a label or name that transcends the quarrels of diverse philosophical schools which attempt to exclude one another from this label. It is argued that philosophy emerges from one’s culture as it does not exist in a vacuum; it emerges from the people’s experiences of joy and pain, doubt and certainty, and so on. It is manifested in a person’s reflections of the time, locally or globally, or in the people’s language(s), songs, myths, riddles, and the like. Though embedded in one’s culture, it can be disembedded from that culture by an ethnophilosopher or by a historian/scholar of philosophy. Once disembedded, philosophy may turn around and try to critique that culture in order to refine it.