The criteria defining philosophy today are biased toward Western construals.

Evidence

For it certainly is the case that academic philosophers were for long predisposed to turn up their noses at the suggestion that an anonymous corpus of writings that included myths, legends, poetry, song, and proverbs was truly worthy of the title “philosophy.” … One thing upon which Africana scholars [referring to Africa and the Diaspora] and intellectuals largely agree is that the criteria used to define what is and what is not philosophy in the world today are unfairly biased by and for “philosophy” as presently construed by Western culture. There may have to be some common ground if the word “philosophy” is to continue to have cross-cultural significance. But Africa, in particular, has not received just consideration in that regard. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 380

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the core contested concept: what counts as ‘philosophy’ as presently construed by Western culture, versus the anonymous oral corpus labelled merely ‘literature’.
• XREF: Connects to the wider postcolonial critique of knowledge production, echoing Kwame Anthony Appiah and the broader decolonizing-philosophy discourse in the reader’s library.