/lit/ - Literature

i can't comment on its quality because i haven't read it, but on my to-read list i have:
The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian by Joseph Epes Brown

>>17623855
I imagine you mean Natives form North America specifically, because of the Iroquois flag and all, so I'd recommend this
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~morourke/524-phil/Readings/burkhart.pdf
I don't think it's complete but I can't find the article anywhere else. And this is an entry from the Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy on Native American Philosophy that has some good texts in the Bibliography section
https://www.academia.edu/11512377/Native_American_Philosophy_From_Oxford_Handbook_of_World_Philosophy_

>>17623890
If however, you're interested in the philosophy of Mesoamericans, this MEGA folder would be your sort of thing
https://mega.nz/folder/jlEwhYyJ#iK4mVC4y5iwk_cr3eIpX4g/folder/zhtUUYxK

>>17623855
>What books could I read to understand the native's way of thinking? (Any North American region.)
While not native, James Lafond's plantation america series explains quite well just how awful it was back then.

>>17623855
Schuon has written essays on Native American metaphysics, I thought it was very interesting. From the top of my head one is in his book Light on the Ancient Worlds.

empire of the summer moon?
review here https://www.gwern.net/docs/history/2012-11-13-yvain-bookreviewempireofthesummermoon.html

>>17623873
Looks good based on the reviws, thanks!

>>17623890
>North America
Yeah, thanks for the article, I'll read it on my way to work
.>>17623894
I don't care for proto-Mexicans

>>17623899
>>17623901
>>17623934
Thanks anons, I'll check these out too.

>>17623890
That article was really interesting. It's almost as if native American society intuitively understood the wu-wei principle of Daoism.

bump for interest

>>17623855
this is what happens when people forget that the noble savage myth was in fact a myth

>>17624010
>I don't care for proto-Mexicans
You're really missing out, Mesoamerican and Amerindian society and culture is really interesting.
>>17624198
I see where you're coming from but in some ways the whole "We don't talk about those things" bit reminds me of Buddhism

>>17623855
Learn about descriptive arguments, that, in my opinion, is their tradition. Turtle Island is a good place to start.

>>17625509
Turtle Island by Gary Snyder?

>>17625438
Euros were no less savage. Kidnapping children (white) for slavery, kidnapping Africans for the same, inquisitions and heretic burnings, public whippings for rule infractions, scalping combatants just like natives for monetary reward.

>>17625542
Looks like it's by Eldon Yellowhorn

>>17625438
The only savages were the colonialists desu.

>>17623855
John Trudell if you like poetry. His interviews and talks are what actually interested me though. He applies a NA philosophy in contrast to the modern world, and modern thinking specifically.

>>17623855
https://iep.utm.edu/aztec/

>At the heart of Nahua philosophy stands the thesis that there exists a single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, energy or force: what the Nahuas called teotl (see Boone 1994; Burkhart 1989; Klor de Alva 1979; Monaghan 2000; H.B. Nicholson 1971; Read 1998; Townsend 1972). Elizabeth Boone (1994:105) writes, “The real meaning of [teotl] is spirit — a concentration of power as a sacred and impersonal force”. According to Jorge Klor de Alva (1979:7), “Teotl …implies something more than the idea of the divine manifested in the form of a god or gods; instead it signifies the sacred in more general terms”. The multiplicity of gods in official, state sanctioned Aztec religion does not gainsay this claim, for this multiplicity was merely the sacred, merely teotl, “separated, as it were by the prism of human sight, into its many attributes” (I. Nicholson 1959:63f).

>Teotl continually generates and regenerates as well as permeates, encompasses, and shapes the cosmos as part of its endless process of self-generation-and–regeneration. That which humans commonly understand as nature — e.g. heavens, earth, rain, humans, trees, rocks, animals, etc. — is generated by teotl, from teotl as one aspect, facet, or moment of its endless process of self-generation-and-regeneration. Yet teotl is more than the unified totality of things; teotl is identical with everything and everything is identical with teotl. Since identical with teotl, they cosmos and its contents ultimately transcend such dichotomies as personal vs. impersonal, animate vs. inanimate, etc. As the single, all-encompassing life force of the universe, teotl vivifies the cosmos and its contents. Lastly, teotl is both metaphysically immanent and transcendent. It is immanent in that it penetrates deeply into every detail of the universe and exists within the myriad of created things; it is transcendent in that it is not exhausted by any single, existing thing.

>Nahua metaphysics is processive. Process, movement, becoming and transmutation are essential attributes of teotl. Teotl is properly understood as ever-flowing and ever-changing energy-in-motion — not as a discrete, static entity. Because doing so better reflects teotl’s dynamic and processual nature, I suggest (following Cooper’s [1997] proposal that we treat “God” of the mystical teachings of the Jewish Kabbalah as a verb) that we treat the word “teotl” as a verb denoting process and movement rather than as a noun denoting a discrete static entity. So construed, “teotl” refers to the eternal, universal process of teotlizing.

>>17626642
What would the Aztecs have become if the Spanish didn't exterminate them?

>>17623855
There is no philosophy outside of and without the touch of the Greeks, everything else is spiritualism and religion, but not philosophy, because philosophy isn't just "hurr durr we think" (which would make philosophy a bunch of things that she isn't).

>>17627157
If the Spanish didn't destroy them, someone else would. The depopulation from disease was inevitable the moment there was sustained contact from the Old World to the New.

>>17627173
u dumb

>>17627157
nothing, it was a self-destructing death cult.

>>17627221
Read more

>>17627232
>>17627195
>has nothing to actually say something