The majority opinion in philosophy seems to be that works lacking dialectic are not philosophy, but that a primarily literary work might have parts that are philosophy because it discusses philosophical issues in a systematic, analytical way, e.g., the Bhagavad-Gita section of the Mahabharata , or the Grand Inquisitor section of The Brothers Karamazov . People uneducated in academic philosophy often have trouble distinguishing philosophy from anthropology, mythology, or folklore, which all have as a primary objective to report, catalog, and compare what people believe. Anthropology, mythology, and folklore are like weather reporting. But academic philosophers are much more like meteorologists than weather reporters. Philosophy never takes beliefs at face value.
Many people believe patently false and irrational things.
Philosophy's task, rather, is to put beliefs to the test of critical analysis, to determine which beliefs are well-supported by reason and which are not. But philosophers would disagree. Psychological or sociological analysis of this kind does not address whether or not X is well-supported by reason, regardless of what race or sex or class or ethnic group its advocates belong to. Folklorists are anthropologists or sociologists who study the traditional customs, tales, and sayings preserved among a people, usually transmitted by oral tradition. I am bringing up the question of distinguishing philosophy from anthropology, folklore, and other social sciences because much of the information we have about the beliefs of some non-European cultures, particularly African and native American cultures, has been gathered by anthropologists and folklorists.