[a_humean]

Two things. Firstly, well I suppose I should strip the pretense. There is the added difficulty that we lack enough willing partners, or "practitioners" , on the other side to bridge the gap. There aren't many working philosophers, as opposed to scholars, to talk to. My old department had relationships with departments in Iran and China that included staff transfers, but what they encountered in these departments were practising philosophers working on Western philosophical projects segregated from the larger faculty, which acted as cultural custodians rather than engaged practitioners. Secondly, most philosophers want to do philosophy, not get bogged down in anthropological reconstruction of what an obscure historical figure might have said - which like most things, is probably either false or not new. The few that do actually go to the effort find it very hard to get anyone to pay attention unless you can draw a direct connection to an active problem without the any baggage in terms of conceptual or ontological commitments.

I'm not going to pretend that there isn't some real problem with engagement with other cultures as you only need to look at the ongoing divide between the Analytic and continental traditions. That divide is partly artificial driven by politics and events in early 20th century Europe. At the same time, its is a misunderstanding of what philosophy is if you think its just about cultural preservation. Philosophy in the West is an active and living discipline that is not standing still. A philosophy wants to know what is true, not necessarily what Kant thought was true.