PHIL215

In this course we will study selected philosophical traditions existing in the present-day Americas, from Chickaloon, Alaska, to Tierra del F uego, Argentina) From from Anishinaabe to All Our Relations, Indigenous to Meslizo, to Noxtin Nomecayolzin. The course will examine the philosophical history
available through the earliest written records introduced by the indigenous Olmec peoples around 1200 BCE, and similar peoples of the north and south, to the role played by syncretism of European and indigenous philosophy which occurred after the initial shock of European contact, through current movements consisting ofa fluid understanding of identity, values and philosophical traditions in the mestizo as well as within the on-going assimilation of migrating persons in the north. As a history of philosophical ideas, this course will include three genres of historiography of philosophy: historical reconstruction of philosophy extant at the time as documented, rational reconstruction informed by later ideas, and the Geistesgeschichte - those intellectual ideas of philosophy that form an undercurrent within
the history of these peoples, and its legacy in contemporary times.