Three lenses through which Māori philosophy can be considered are: (1) as a special type or branch of philosophy, implying the existence of its own canon; (2) as a provocation or critique of (White) philosophy; or (3) as a frame or approach for investigating questions involving Māori knowledge. These three lenses are useful to help unpack and explain the derivation and significance of Māori philosophy, which until recently was bundled with language and culture in Māori Studies, the local postmodern offshoot of Anthropology.
This paper will argue that the current popularity of Māori philosophy (and other forms of Indigenous philosophy) is related to, if not caused by, the dilemma of Western philosophy, also expressed as the ‘truth wars’ and accompanied by the emergence of the ‘posts,’ in particular post-truth. The racist ideologies (of European exceptionalism, etc) that underwrite the Western canon of modernity constitute a form of managed ignorance, formalised as Agnotology under the rubric that ‘ignorance is to Agnotology as knowledge is to Epistemology’ (Proctor, 2008). The unmasking of such ignorance leads Māori scholars to Māori philosophy. Māori philosophy is one of many ways in which non-elitist scholars might attempt to avoid the problems of Western knowledge, but caution is needed to avoid reinstating the same weaknesses with a different cultural face.
Reference: Proctor, R. (2008). Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (and Its Study). In R. Proctor & L. L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance (pp. 1–33). Stanford University Press.
