Raud, Rein. "Philosophies versus Philosophy: In Defense of a Flexible Definition." Philosophy East & West 56, no. 4 (October 2006): 618-625

Abstract

The writer responds to Carine Defoort's argument about intercultural tensions in interpreting what philosophy is (2001;51:393-413). He argues that the problem of whether non-Western thought is philosophy or something else is reducible to the problem of whether the definition of philosophy is rigid or flexible; that an essentialist definition of philosophy would seriously limit the scope of the discipline to the point of depriving it of the potential to evolve; and that there are possible ways of defining philosophy to cover all of the Western tradition, as well as Chinese and other non-Western thought traditions, while ruling out other practices.