Description
The Dance of Person and Place: One Interpretation of American Indian Philosophy written by Shawnee philosopher Thomas M. Norton-Smith develops a rational reconstruction of Native American philosophy as a dance of person and place. He views Native American philosophy through the lens of a culturally sophisticated constructivism grounded in the work of contemporary American analytic philosopher Nelson Goodman, in which descriptions of the world (or “world versions”) satisfying certain criteria construct actual worlds—words make worlds. Ultimately, Norton-Smith argues that the Indigenous ways of organizing experiences with spoken words and other performances construct real worlds as robustly as their Western counterparts, and, in so doing, he helps to bridge the chasm between Western and Native American philosophical traditions. Using the writings of early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists, early narratives told or written by Native Americans, and scholarly work by contemporary Native writers and philosophers such as Vine Deloria, Viola Cordova, Charles Eastman, Black Elk, Anne Waters and others, the author proposes one method of inquiry in this initial volume in the SUNY series of Living Indigenous Philosophies. Thomas M. Norton-Smith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kent State University.