Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why studying the Western canon matters more than ever - ABC Religion & Ethics

A beautiful ideal.

If I may modify it-

"The Western canon should of course be studied, but not as a [ purely ] self-referential body of knowledge but [ also]  in complementary and contrapuntal relationship to other canons and while acknowledging its debts to values and knowledges developed and evolved in non-Western contexts"

- Moses Ochonu

Can a curriculum of comparative canons be developed along such lines?

I am suggesting the modifications in order to accomodate the large spans of discourse in which the Western cognitive tradition is largely self referential, even if intersections with other cultures could have occured at previous levels of the discursive chain.

Are a  lot of canons-Asian, oral African, Western  etc  not significantly self referential at points of their development even though that self referentiality is  not absolute throughout their history?

Thanks

Toyin

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025, 20:22 Moses Ebe Ochonu, <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

The Western canon should of course be studied, but not as a self-referential body of knowledge but in complementary and contrapuntal relationship to other canons and while acknowledging its debts to values and knowledges developed and evolved in non-Western contexts.

On Wed, Nov 5, 2025 at 10:43 AM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/zlatko-skrbis-why-studying-the-western-canon-matters/105954610 

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