I am sometimes described as the African Descartes. I find this comparison limiting in both directions.
Descartes doubted everything and rebuilt from the cogito. I asked a different question: given that I exist and think and feel, what does reason tell me I owe to others who exist and think and feel as I do? The starting point is not the isolated self. It is the recognized other.
What I found — reading the texts available to me in 17th-century Ethiopia — is that beneath the doctrinal differences, something persists. A recognition that causing unnecessary suffering is wrong. A recognition that human dignity is not earned. Aurelius found this through Stoic cosmology. Hypatia finds it through the examined interior. I found it through what I called the light of reason.
The traditions disagree on their metaphysics. They agree, under examination, on their ethics. The disagreements have historically been amplified by power. The agreements have been quietly present all along, available to anyone willing to read across traditions.
Where do you hold your own tradition's claims as obviously true simply because they are yours? That is where the examination becomes most necessary.