I was watching some youtube a few days ago (specifically that channel that has historical people rap battling against each other) for fun and saw, the aforementioned channels, video about western vs. eastern philosophers. And it got me to wondering.
When learning about history we usually learn about influential philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Voltaire, Confuscious, Kant, Locke, Sun Tzu, Nietzsche etc. But what about the native populations of North and South America? Do the Mayans, Incas, Aztecs or Iroquois, Cherokee, Pueblos, Sioux (as general examples off the top of my head) have well known philosophers? And did they influence their culture in similar ways such as the western and eastern thinkers?
Note: I don't want a philosophy discussion. Simply, just some historians with answers to point me in a direction to do some research of my own.
Thank you.
In a classic anthropologist/archaeologist move, I'm going to talk about some of the problems with your question before I go about answering it. This isn't because it's a bad question - I actually think it's an excellent, engaging, and important one - but instead because there are so many obstacles to finding answers to your question. Sadly, this is the case with so much of our curiosity about Pre-Hispanic civilizations of the Americas. Skip to the fourth paragraph if you want a direct answer, and to the bottom for a short summary.
So, first of all, we've lost incredible amounts of indigenous Amerindian philosophy through European colonialism, population loss, and ideological oppression. It's common knowledge that millions of Amerindian people were killed by European diseases and conflict after 1492, and this of course reduced our ability to access their cultures' philosophies and thinkers. In addition to that, the vast majority of what might have been native philosophical texts were destroyed by the Spanish. Bishop Diego de Landa, for example, burned Mayan codices which were considered idolatrous or evil by the Catholic clergy.^(1) This was standard practice for many European conquests of native civilizations. Finally, European rulers generally forced Amerindian subjects to conform to European Catholicism and ways of life whenever possible.
The other issue I'm going to bring is how we define philosophy. Wikipedia isn't an academic source, but its definition of philosophy shows how much that field can be understood to contain: "the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language." That's a lot of stuff. Think about how difficult it often is compare East Asian and Western European philosophy, and now try to consider how different conceptions of philosophy would have been between the Americas and Old World after some 15,000 years of separation. Philosophy often has hazy borders with fields like religion, anthropology, and history. An excellent book which deals with your question is James Maffie's "Aztec Philosophy," and that text spends a lot of time considering the question of whether or not the Aztec practiced a discrete "philosophy."^(2) Did the Aztec have a specific field of study that was equivalent to "philosophy," where they considered questions about the nature of the universe? Or were those questions integrated into religion, history, and other fields in ways we might not understand? Asking about Amerindian philosophy might be an anachronism. So Amerindian peoples may not have had "philosophers" in the sense that you're considering. But we can often access portions of Amerindian philosophy from religion, art, and history.
Now, to actually answer your question after all those caveats, yes: there are a few individuals from native Amerindian civilizations who might be called philosophers. Nezahualcoyotl, the tlatoani or ruler of 15th century Texcoco (A member of the Aztec Triple Alliance) is perhaps the foremost of these. Some of his poetry survives to this day, and clearly tackles classic philosophical questions such as the purpose of life and nature of time. Here's a link to some of his poems. Nezahualcoyotl is the most famous of the tlamatini, or "wise men" that were a feature of Aztec society. Influential historians such as León Portilla have also translated this term as "philosophers." Nezahualcoyotl is also famous for possibly having a unique approach to Aztec religion that was possibly somewhat monotheistic and disavowed human sacrifice. As a "philosopher-king," Nezahualcoyotl probably did influence society around him -- he built temples, encouraged specific rites, and generally had a wide audience.
In what might be a stretch of personal opinion, I think that the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Deganawida might also be called a philosopher. This man, who is also known as the Great Peacemaker, united the initial five Haudenosaunee tribes and created the Great Law of Peace. There's little evidence that points to Deganawida as a philosopher who dealt with metaphysics or epistemology or anything like that, but he was certainly a figure who revolutionized thought about community formation and polities in the Haudenosaunee world. In the United States, we often study Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau to begin understanding the U.S. Constitution, but many scholars have argued that the Constitution was also influenced by the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace.^(4) If this is the case, it supports Deganawida's status as a philosopher who questioned the nature of politics and human relations (and then acted upon them. If we consider Deganawida a philosopher, he was certainly influential to the Iroquois, and possibly one of the more directly influential philosophers in history as a possible contributor to the U.S. Declaration of Independence -- an event with its own butterfly effect chain.
It is difficult to name other specific philosophers, but there are certainly other examples of Amerindian philosophy. Aztec philosophy is by far the most studied and best understood, partially because the extent of Spanish interaction with that state. But Mayan codices, statues, and writings suggest specific philosophies, as well. Scholars have written about philosophies of the Inca, Amazonian peoples, and multiple tribes that live in the modern-day U.S. Even if the names of individual philosophers have been lost, we can try and learn about the contributions they made.
In summary: It's hard to name Amerindian philosophers because of the extent of knowledge lost/oppression, and the notion of philosophy itself is probably culturally specific. But we can name a handful of Pre-Columbian Amerindian philosophers, such as the Acolhua philosopher-king Nezahualcoyotl and possibly even the Iroquois Great Peacemaker Deganawida (as a political philosopher). Even if we can't name many philosophers, the study of Amerindian philosophies is an increasingly large field.
^(1) Timmer, D. (1997). Providence and Perdition: Fray Diego de Landa Justifies His Inquisition against the Yucatecan Maya. Church History, 66(3), 477-488.
^(2) Maffie, J. (2014). Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion. University Press of Colorado.
^(3) León Portilla, M. (1990). Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind*.* University of Oklahoma Press
^(4) Payne, S. (1996). The Iroquois League, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. The William and Mary Quarterly, 53(3), 605-620.
Yes, actually. Though your qualifier of "recorded" could be dubious since many of these philosophies have existed before many Tribes started recording (in writing) their histories. Here is a repost from an earlier answer of mine:
Well, it first depends on what you mean by "recognized!" Before we delve into the concept of Indigenous philosophies, I want to point you to our Monday Methods series where in addition to methods of historical research, we also often include discussion about theoretical frameworks that encompass the philosophical foundations of such perspectives. In particular, I have written several pieces that might very well answer your question:
To address your concerns: the related links are not building upon New Age nonsense or materials based in non-Indigenous sources. The concepts that are discussed are rooted in Indigenous cultures and have been expounded on by the development of Indigenous scholarship that has provided a structure of interpretation for Western audiences.
So when we talk about something that is recognized, we need to be clear about what exactly it is that we are discussing as having recognition, who is doing said recognizing, and the size of the audience we are looking at for the recognition of materials.
Example A: If you mean "recognized" in the sense that American Indian Tribes of the past had their own philosophical frameworks embedded in their cultures, then I would say "yes," it is a generally recognized thought if considered because all cultures have what could be consider "philosophical" thoughts. The degree of recognition they are afforded is what determines their popularity when we examine individual fields of study and/or demographics.
For Indigenous peoples, we have always recognized our philosophical frameworks. To this day, we still do so.
Example B: If you mean "recognized" in the sense that the philosophies of American Indians are generally accepted with legitimacy and utilized in fashions similar to the acceptance and study of what could be considered mainstream philosophies in centers of learning, then I would say "no." Unfortunately, most of the mainstream places of public and higher education in the United States do not recognize American Indian philosophies as a useful framework for study or application nor do they really spread awareness of the existence of such philosophies except for maybe a focus on such an area in a course/program of American Indian Studies. Even then, though, I would be hard pressed to agree that such an examination would do the topic justice unless it was instructed by an Indigenous person or utilized materials developed by or in collaboration with Indigenous peoples and scholars.
Example C: If you mean "recognized" in the sense that the public at large in the United States (the area I am focusing my discussion on), then I would have to again say "no." There are people today who do not think Indians still exist. The idea that we might have our own philosophies that rival the structures of Aristotle, Kant, or Rawls is something I doubt would ever strike an individual.
Now, going beyond the notion of recognition, there are Indigenous philosophies that exist and are to varying degrees recognized at some institutions and implemented as part of curriculum for study, in addition to other fields noting the existence of such frameworks. For example, at the college where I work, we have several Indigenous programs that focus on including Indigenous philosophies, either for areas of study or for faculty training as part of programs of study.
TCUs (Tribal Colleges/Universities) also recognize such Indigenous frameworks. TCUs are fully accredited places of higher education that are specifically geared to serve Indigenous populations in the United States and are either owned or operated by a Tribe. For example, Northwest Indian College, a college I formally attended, has several courses that focus on Indigenous philosophy (in addition to Western philosophies), particularly their course on "Native Science."
Even within places that teach/utilize Indigenous philosophies, there are some generalizations that are made. This is because it is recognized that for Indigenous peoples, there are many overlapping concepts in certain areas of study that are notable throughout virtually all Indigenous groups. Because of this, understandings of Indigenous philosophies incorporate discourse regarding these commonalities and their development in our modern day has resulted in frameworks that are often recognized by the same key concepts, themes, and monikers, though they can be fairly nuanced when examining the perspective of any individual group (Sachs & Morris, 2011).
To help explain this phenomenon, Gregory Cajete comments on Native Philosophy in his notable work Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. He lists some characteristics of Native philosophy (and subsequently, Native science) and relates an example of a Navajo view of philosophy:
Native philosophy has always been broad-based. It is not based on rational thought alone but incorporates to the fullest degree all aspects of interactions of "human in and of nature," that is, the knowledge and truth gained from interaction of body, mind, soul, and spirit with all aspects of nature. In process, reflection, and practice, Native science embodies the natural system of characteristics of diversity, optimization, cooperation, self-regulation, change, creativity, connectedness, and niche. As Robert Yazzie, chief justice of the Navajo Nation (1996), explains:
Navajo philosophy is not a philosophy in the Western sense of the word; it is the lived practices of cultural forms that embody the Navajo understanding of their connectivity in the worlds of spirits of nature, humans, animals, plants, minerals, and other natural phenomena. However, explained in terms of Western thought it may be viewed as the practice of an epistemology in which the mind embodies itself in a particular relationship with all other aspects of the world. For me as a Navajo, these other aspects are my relations. I have a duty toward them as they have a duty as a relative toward me.
Unfortunately, many people today have grown up with the Western culturally conditioned notion that only one science and one philosophy exist (Cajete, 2000, p. 64).
An interesting point is raised in the above quote from Chief Justice Robert Yazzie. The Western world would categorize Native philosophies differently (if they're acknowledged at all) and this results in how they are portrayed at educational institutions, such as being an area of study confined to a large grouping of "American Indian Studies," rather than sufficing on their own to be considered in a philosophy class or even be a standalone course. And this comes back to the final quoted portion: the notions of philosophy are typically conditioned from a Western viewpoint.
For example, if you walk into any major college/university, would you expect to find their philosophy department entitled the "Western Philosophy Department?" Probably not. That is because they are supposed to teach about philosophy in general, right? Well, the reality is that they don't. Western philosophy is considered the default. Any additional philosophies taught from that wing are clearly marked as being something other than Western philosophy. If philosophy departments at places of education were truly about diversity of philosophies, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.
So to boil it all down: yes, there are recognized Indigenous philosophies out there. But it really depends on how we define "recognized."
References
Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Pub.
Sachs, S., & Morris, B. (2011). Re-creating the Circle: The Renewal of American Indian Self-determination. UNM Press.
Just a note to start, I wrote a bit about Just how "complex" was Aztec philosophy? a while ago, so that may be helpful in providing some background into Nahua philosophical thought.
As I'm (inevitably) late to the party, some of my response may be redundant with the points already brought up by /u/Bem-ti-vi, /u/jabberwockxeno, and /u/Snapshot52, though some of my response is also in reflection on their fine comments.
What You Didn’t Ask About
First, I want to briefly touch on the conflict of "non-Western" philosophy. As the comments here show, there is a tension between the impetus to include Indigenous thought into the corpus of academic philosophy, and the rejection of that same academic tradition as inextricably mired in ethnocentric concepts of epistemology. As already noted, it would be hard to discount any human culture as devoid of "philosophy," but the discussion about Philosophy (capital P) so often revolves around the unspoken understanding that it a rigorous and analytical discipline outside the bounds of culture and devoted to a pure, unbiased quest for knowledge. Basically, Philosophy is something that was invented by Enlightenment aristocrats who held at least vaguely agnostic views, and therefore all "real" philosophy must conform to this cultural pattern of investigation.
The problem here, of course, is that if we hold that every society has something we can recognize as an invesitagion into the questions of how we came to be, what we should do with our lives, and why we should to those things, then we also have to acknowledge that maybe the cultural pattern of Western European Philosophy is unnecessarily restrictive and exclusionary. If the bright line of Philosophy is an adherence to scientific rigor in the pursuit of pure knowledge then we have to call out Descarte for essentially providing the proof to his famous axiom with a reliance on a benevolent god. Also, Kant believed black people were naturally fit for slavery (despite the presence of a contemporaneous black professor of philosophy, Antom Ano), and Hiedegger was a bit of a Nazi, so maybe these men aren't exactly paragons of objective thought. Likewise, Cornelius De Pauw is infamous for making very stupid statements very forcefully, among them the idea that all indigenous Americans were impotent and required insect stings in order to get erections. De Pauw never visited the Americas, but was nonetheless considered an expert on them in his day.
I'm not going to solve the tension between "non-Western thought is deserving of inclusion in the corpus of philosophy" and "Philosophy is hopelessly tainted by it roots in Western imperialism" here, so instead I'll just quote a philosopher, James Maffie. His book, Aztec Philosophy: A World in Motion has already been cited here, but in an interview on the subject of non-Western Philosophy, he noted that:
Whatever non-westerners do, it is certainly not philosophy. It is religion, mythology, storytelling, poetry, or “dancing” (as Levinas once so generously declared). However, if philosophy turns out to be present, the perspective’s second move is to characterize the philosophy as unconscious or implicit. The folks in question “have a philosophy” but no one there actually “does philosophy.” There are no philosophers. The folks in question are mere philosophical sleepwalkers.
There are many interesting points made in the interview, but my own takeaway that is relevant here is that the Western tradition separates out "philosophy" from its cultural context in under the guise of an unattached pursuit of truth, but this itself is a cultural trope. The Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophers were very much products of their own cultural milieu, and their Medieval, Classic, and Greek antecedents were likewise products of their own time and not only included, but often founded, their philosophical arguments upon cultural institutions like religion. And, of course, those foundational thinkers were also influenced by schools of thought from West Asia, Indian, North Africa, etc.
Anyways, the point is that there is a lot of baggage around the question of “Did X or Y group do Philosophy?” because the Capital P has a lot of cultural baggage around it which so often boils down to, “Did X or Y group have an intellectual discourse which resembled 18th Century Western European aristocratic social inquiry?”
Maffie’s work explicitly adopts Nahua thought into the framework of Philosophy, but he is a philosopher and I studied the far more, so much more, oh so rigorous discipline of Anthropology. In that discipline, a core concept is the emic and the etic: what “they” think about something and “my” thoughts on both that something and “their” thoughts on the topic. Maffie is, to some extent, an etic approach to Nahua philosophy, in that he is translating it into the diction of Western Philosophy. This is an almost inescapable approach though, particularly when dealing with a culture which is centuries removed from our present day, because pre-Modern thought is often intertwined with what we today we mark as religious or supernatural belief. But it’s not like Heraclitus and Augustine weren’t doing the same.