How are We to Think About the Knowledge that We Should Know?

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.13185/BU2013.17102

As a precondition of philosophical dialogue among different cultures, this essayforwards a series of questions regarding the epistemological presuppositions ofthe current dominant knowledge culture, which is characterized by acapitalistic, technological, and colonial ethos. By stating its presuppositions,situating these in the historical context of its development, and drawing theirconsequences, the essay opens up the possibility of overcoming this dominantethos of knowledge through the recuperation of epistemological plurality byway of exchanges among a multiplicity of knowledge cultures. The essayproposes that it is philosophy’s task today to resist the dehumanization ofknowledge by asking what we should know, how, with whom, and for whatpurpose we want to know what we should know.