If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

"Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to single out philosophy: We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics or Physics. This is nothing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not addressed in the American and European tradition, or emphasize and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are marginalized in Anglo-European philosophy. There are no comparable differences in how mathematics or physics are practiced in other contemporary cultures."

"This is not to disparage the value of the works in the contemporary philosophical canon: Clearly, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with philosophy written by males of European descent; but philosophy has always become richer as it becomes increasingly diverse and pluralistic. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) recognized this when he followed his Muslim colleagues in reading the work of the pagan philosopher Aristotle, thereby broadening the philosophical curriculum of universities in his own era. We hope that American philosophy departments will someday teach Confucius as routinely as they now teach Kant, that philosophy students will eventually have as many opportunities to study the “Bhagavad Gita” as they do the “Republic,” that the Flying Man thought experiment of the Persian philosopher Avicenna (980-1037) will be as well-known as the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment of the American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-2016), that the ancient Indian scholar Candrakirti’s critical examination of the concept of the self will be as well-studied as David Hume’s, that Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Kwazi Wiredu (1931- ), Lame Deer (1903-1976) and Maria Lugones will be as familiar to our students as their equally profound colleagues in the contemporary philosophical canon."

The point the article is making is that ancient Asian/MiddleEastern philosophy contains numerous theories and teachings that are just as profound as those found in ancient Greek philosophy. Hence why their diminished representation is a problem worth fixing. Do you feel otherwise? Do you think that philosophical theories such as Confucianism and the Bhagavad Gita are not worthy of being taught alongside ancient Greek philosophy?

It's ironic that the Rectification of Names is central to the philosophy of Confucius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names

What you say about philosophy being more like mathematics is true, and as far as I can see, going forward philosophy is just philosophy, and it would be silly to label it with nations and cultures.

But looking backwards, the path that brought different cultures to the table, that got them thinking about the nature of things, is quite different. Labeling those different paths according to the cultures that developed them makes sense, and might be a very interesting study. But that's not philosophy as such, it's a discussion about philosophy.