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

Abstract

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

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Keywords

epistemological plurality, epistemological violence, knowledge cultures, knowledge, consent