Can Non-Europeans Think?

This book is a collection of journalists notes and loose comments on everything. In particular, the pieces on Said are out of place. He loved said, good, you don't need to add to yur book several pages praising him and telling the reader how much you miss him. DON't BUY THIS BOOK, read the stuff online, i'ts all there. This book is a scam.

A diatribe of the most boring variety. The ideas within are fine, though certainly not original to the author by any stretch of the imagination. However, the presentation is awful and repetitive ad nauseam. Maybe it would be better to read some of the original works cited in the book without having to purchase it, or to punish oneself by reading this one.

A collection of essays lamenting the disrespect of europeans for middle eastern thought products, that is a complaint about that we just disagree about pretty much everything. I wrote something longer on my blog, but I've cut it down to the core issues that the author is unable to grasp. I'm criticizing the premise of the original essay, the from which the book takes its title. The rest of the book rests upon the same presumptions of equality that does not exist, and western criticism that is predicated on very different concerns, and I won't cover it here.WHAT EVERYONE'S MISSINGWestern ethics (reciprocity) are scientific. And always have been. For 5000 years. That is why we invented reason and science. We applied our law to everything. Small things in large numbers over long periods produce vast consequences. Once you understand western ethics of reciprocity are scientific, and that we invented reason and science by applying our law to everything you will pretty much understand western civilization.EPISTEMOLOGICAL CLAIMSBecause the origin of our reasoning is law, not myth or dogma, western epistemology consists of constructing methods of testimony: logic, empiricism, operationalism, rational choice (incentives), reciprocity, and markets - all of which create evidence we can testify to. Our Wisdom literature is not conflated with testimony. In fact, we don't conflate much of anything in the anglo world. We leave that to the Germans.Western testimony, at least in serious thought, is ‘deflationary’ as in the math, logic and the sciences, whereas french, german, jewish, christian and muslim is thought is inflationary (loaded and framed), or conflationary(conflating history and myth, truth and wisdom, real, supernormal) or fictionalized (idealism, magic, supernaturalism). But most evidently conflating the norms, traditions, values, and myths, with facts.LANGUAGEAll language consists of sounds or their symbolic references, in a continuous recursive stream of disambiguation, each consisting of measurements, constructed from analogies to experience, and constructing a system of measurement the speaker and the audience understand. Westerners seek to produce testifiable measurements in argument, and limit our unjustifiable arguments to arts, music, poetry and literature. What you call dialectic is just Pilpul. Nothing more. If you cannot produce a system of measurement that is testifiable you’re just making up whatever deception you can get away with.ORIENTALISMThere is no ‘reading’ of the law of sovereignty, reciprocity, nor ‘reading’ of the sciences. No reading of mathematics. A thing that is interpretable is not a thing that is uninterpretable (factual). One cannot testify to the meaning of wisdom literature. Yet it is ‘reading of text’ that has created Rabbinical Pilpul, Critique, False promise baiting into harm, numerology, legal ‘interpretation’. It is this very technique of pilpul that is advanced by the french jewish sophists you mention (the postmodernists). In the west we call this by it’s true name: Lying. Yet jewish, christian, and muslim theologians practice this art of lying as if it is a skill. It not only is not a skill, it is the cause of the Dark Ages of Superstition and Ignorance.If you want to say that we only know we do not speak falsely by a competition between logic and evidence, and that we only know our logic and evidence is not false by competition in argument that might be true. But that is argument not dialectic. The difference in argument is pursuit if the testifiable, and dialectic is merely pilpul – pursuit of either deceit, persuasion, or compromise.STRAW MAN COMPARISONS OF WESTERN INTELLECTUALSThe ‘philosophers’ the author mentions are socially, politically, economically and institutionally unimportant, and mostly jewish rather than western - authors of sophisms constructed from pilpul (excuses and deceits) and critique (criticism, undermining, straw manning) without proposing an operational solution to replace the current. In other words, they seek to undermine western civilization, but do not propose an alternative open to equal analysis and criticism.So the author is rebelling against the remains of christianity and judaism and not against anything currently western.

Excellent book. This is a much needed study for critical reflection on the problematic nature of Euro-Centric approach in American academia. In order for one to fully understand Dr. Dabashi's core argument in this book, one definitely needs to be exposed to his previous pedagogical/critical thread of research. This is a very refreshing approach to a fundamental problem we (the Non-European scholars, artists, activists, thinkers) face on daily basis while working within the American higher education structure.

Not an easy or fun read.The low ratings of some reviewers may be due to his Anti war stance. He conmsiders USA to be a terror state.good luck, if you read it.

The author cannot survive almost one paragraph without clinging to life on a device made of power-knowledge, manufacturing knowledge, regimes of knowledge and power constructing subjects.Can non-europeans think? well, yes they can. But ironically, this author believes they can only think if they use postmodern jargon derived mainly from one man Foucault, along with a fellow fFrench "interlocutor" Althusser lol.The irony is so rich I should have gave the book five stars he belittles his thesis that non-europeans should not have to give into the myths of Europe and the west and should be understood on their own terms in this own historical moment that is unprecedented and then other can read and glimpse something too. Then he proceeds to write like the typical American postmodern MLA cult member. this is so funny!! The book actually should be placed under the genre of Satire. Thank you Hamid for giving me great laughs. I get your points and I even want to read some of your secondary sources; however, you are on a polemical rant, but you can't overcome your own small worldview (postmodern academic) to even make a readable, accessible, and therefore powerful, point. If you want the average reading to get something from this (not just philosophers) then learn to speak like the common man you supposedly care fr.Just another blind philosopher.This time they are in the Middle East rather than America, but they really are fellow citizens in their imaginary realm of the scholasticism of our time, Postmodern Philosophy

Great book. Dabashi and Mingolo present the arguments splendidly.

Thought provoking. Don't let the title mislead you. Good read.

For one of my sons married to a Japanese girl!

Prompt delivery but the book itself is dissapointng