If our objective is to find things in common and only that, we will fail to see the differences. The universalist claim of Western philosophy has oft… - Josef Estermann

Since the stories of the Hebrew Bible, that were passed on by the Greeks and the Romans and reaching the conquerors and cultural imperialists of all times, the misleading but always convincing syllogism has been the same: “We have civilization and reason; the others are totally different (totaliter aliter) from us; ergo: the others do not have culture and reason.”

Already in the verdict cited by Ginés de Sepúlveda are mentioned a lot of these criteria which the Western philosophical academy nowadays uses against the supposed “indigenous philosophies”: “culture”, “letters” (graficity), “history”, “written laws”. We are dealing with a violent and excluding act of “definition” that excludes a priori the other. When one defines “philosophy” as a product elaborated by individuals (philosophical persons) and expressed in written texts (essays, articles, books), using a binary logic and a discursive rationality, thus one excludes per definitionem all philosophical expressions that don’t have an individual author, that aren’t put down in writing, that don’t obey the logical principle of the formal non-contradiction and that apply a non-discursive rationality. Ergo: non philosophia est.

The Good News (eu-angelión) ... have in reality been Bad News (dys-angelión) for many inhabitants of Abya Yala.