ABSTRACT
In “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy”, Dewey noted that the philosophical ideas of absolutes that dominated philosophy for millennia rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final; they rested upon treating change and origin as signs of defect and unreality. While within the European and American academies the range of philosophy’s intellectual domain narrowed, globally its discourse and practices spread along the paths of late nineteenth-century empire. Though instances of philosophical inquiry, professional philosophers, and texts demarcated as “philosophy” abound, let us zero in on one particular figure with impeccable philosophical credentials, who should thus serve as an obvious expression of the phenomenon we are looking for. The problems about what counts as “philosophy” mount. Even if we drop “wisdom” and Alain Locke, we are bereft of clear selection criteria that can yield anything like a global consensus about the nature and value of philosophy.
