African Philosophy, Second Edition: Myth and Reality

5 An African philosopher in Germany in the eighteenth century: Anton-Wilhelm Amo

5 An African philosopher in Germany in the eighteenth century: Anton-Wilhelm Amo* Axim is an old African town situated on the 'Gulf of Guinea', in present-day south-west Ghana, not far from the Ivorian frontier. It was there, in the first years of the eighteenth century, that the black philosopher was born who signed himself in Latin Amo-GuineaAfer or Amo Guinea-Africanus (Amo the Guinean), as though he was afraid that his long European adventure might make him or his circle forget his African origins and ties. Amo's philosophical career took place principally in Germany, where he received a training that he in turn was destined to dispense as a teacher in the universities of Halle, Wittenberg and Jena between the years 1730 and 1740, before returning to his home country where he died. His work is almost entirely written in Latin. These are the main titles: Dissertatio inauguralis de jure Maurorum in Europa (The Rights of Africans in Europe), 1729 (this text is lost); Dissertatio de humanae mentis apatheia (On the Impassivity of the Human Mind), 1734; Tractatus de arte sobrie et accurate philosophandi (On the Art of Philosophizing with Sobriety and Accuracy), 1738 (this is Amo's most important text and runs to 208 pages). An English translation of these works was published in 1968 by the English Department of the Martin Luther University of Halle, under the title Antonius Gulielmus Amo Afer ofAxim in Ghana, Translation ofhis Works. For the sake of completeness one should add Disputatio philosophica continens ideam distinctam eorum quae competunt vel menti vel corpori nostro vivo et organico (A Philosophical Discussion Distinguishing between what Belongs to the Mind and to the Living and Organic Body). This brief dissertation of sixteen pages is a memoir presented under Amo's supervision and defended before Amo on 29 May 1734 by a student named John Theodosius Meiner. * This article appeared in Les Etudes philosophiques, no. 1 (Paris: PDF, 1970). It is based on a paper given at the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques, Paris, on 16 January 1969, during a seminar directed by M. Georges Canguilhem. 112 Analyses It is in fact a development of the main ideas of De humanae mentis apatheia. The work of the 'Ghanaian'· philosopher has not yet been systematically studied. To my knowledge, the only attention it has so far attracted is biographical and contains no analysis of his philosophical works. Nkrumah, it is true, refers quite pertinently to De humanae mentis apatheia in the long polemic against idealism which opens his philosophical essay Consciencism.2 But this is only an allusion and cannot be regarded as a historical and theoretical analysis of the work. The time has probably not yet come for such an analysis. It would be necessary not only to read (in the immediate sense of the word) Amo's works, which would not be very difficult, but also to locate them accurately in the theoretical context of their time in order to define their co-ordinates or, in other words, what they are really about. Such historical research, which is an indispensable precondition of a critical reading, would require more time and effort than I, and possibly more than anyone, could devote to it. But I think it should be attempted one day. It is the dissertation De humanae mentis apatheia that I have decided to present here, laying emphasis on Amo's method and doctrine as well as on the present significance of his career. In doing so, I am not in any way prejudging the theoretical importance of the work. Perhaps we should even accept from the outset that within the framework of European philosophy, and given that he was conscious of belonging to another civilization, Amo could not but be an author of the second rank - that is to say not an original thinker but an honest teacher and professor of philosophy whose sole merit may have been at most that, like a mirror, he reflected the thought of his time in terms of his theoretical choices within it. One day it will probably be necessary to state clearly and to elaborate systematically the question underlying all 'history' of philosophy. Answers to this question determine the choices and exclusions which constitute this history, though the historians may not be aware of them: how does one measure the importance of a philosopher, and what are the criteria that determine the choice of particular names and works for the...