Philosophy in an Amazon tribal society

• Autor: Helberg Chávez, Heinrich
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2017
• Institución: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos
• Repositorio: Revistas - Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:ojs.csi.unmsm:article/22372
• Enlace del recurso: https://revistasinvestigacion.unmsm.edu.pe/index.php/lenguaysociedad/article/view/22372
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Desana; amazonia colombiana; pensamiento filosófico; cosmovisión; religión; Colombian Amazon; philosophical thought; worldview; religion

«Philosophy in an Amazon tribal society» shows how the anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff evidences a philosophical thought, both at the level of philosophical concerns shared by ordinary people, as of a more elaborate reflection of the healers among the desana of the Colombian Amazon. This testimony about a tribal society clearly shows that the healers with their philosophy expressed in abstract concepts, are the ones who establish the worldview and religion as instruments of social management and self-government, and not the other way round as it is often assumed that religion precedes philosophy. We are talking, however, about a top secret knowledge that reflects the interests and power of the healers and gives a completely different view of their culture, not accessible to most of its members. And this gives us the opportunity to establish the relations between philosophy and political power in different types of societies. What begins as a question about whether Amazonian peoples have an own philosophy ends by discussing the nature of philosophical reflection itself.