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Anton Wilhelm Amo | |
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.jpg) Drawing of Anton Wilhelm Amo | |
| Born | c. 1703 |
| Died | c. 1759(1759-00-00) (aged 55–56) |
| Other names | Antonius Guilielmus Amo Afer Anthony William Amo |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Helmstedt University of Halle University of Wittenberg |
| Thesis | Disputatio Philosophica continens Ideam Distinctam Eorum quae competunt vel menti vel corpori nostro vivo et organico (1734) |
| Academic advisors | Samuel Christian Hollmann Martin Gotthelf Löscher |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| School or tradition | Western philosophy,rationalism |
| Institutions | University of Halle University of Jena |
| Doctoral students | Johannes Theodosius Meiner |
| Main interests | Philosophy of mind |
| Notable ideas | Critique ofDescartes'philosophy of mind[1] |
_-_Dissertatio_inauguralis_philosophica_de_humanae_mentis_apatheia%2c_Wittenberg%2c_1734%2c_title_page.jpg)
Anton Wilhelm Amo orAnthony William Amo (c. 1703 – c. 1759) was aNzema philosopher fromAxim,Dutch Gold Coast (nowGhana). Amo was a professor at the universities ofHalle andJena inGermany after studying there. He was brought to Germany by theDutch West India Company in 1707 and was presented as a gift to DukesAugustus William andLudwig Rudolf ofBrunswick-Wolfenbüttel,[2] being treated as a member of the family by their fatherAnthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. In 2020,Oxford University Press published a translation (into English) of his Latin works from the early 1730s.[3]
Amo was aNzema (anAkan people). He was born inAxim in the Western region of present-day Ghana, but at the age of about four he was moved to Amsterdam by theDutch West India Company. Some accounts say that he was enslaved, others that he was sent to Amsterdam by a preacher working in Ghana. Ultimately, it is unknown.
On 29 July 1708, Amo wasbaptised (and in 1721confirmed) in the palace's chapel of Salzdahlum near Wolfenbüttel. In 1721 and 1725 he is mentioned as a servant to the Duke's family.
He went on to theUniversity of Halle, whose Law School he entered in 1727. He finished his preliminary studies within two years, titling his thesisDissertatio Inauguralis de Jure Maurorum in Europa (1729).[4] This manuscript onThe Rights of Moors in Europe is lost, but a summary was published in his university'sAnnals (1730). For his further studies Amo moved to theUniversity of Wittenberg, studyinglogic,metaphysics,physiology,astronomy, history, law, theology, politics, and medicine, and mastered six languages (English, French, Dutch, Latin, Greek, and German). His medical education in particular was to play a central role in much of his later philosophical thought.
He gained hisdoctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg in 1734; his thesis (published asOn the Absence of Sensation in the Human Mind and its Presence in our Organic and Living Body) argued in favour of a broadlydualist account of the person. Specifically, he argues that it is correct to talk of amind and abody, but that it is thebody rather than the mind that perceives and feels.[5] One example of an argument that Amo uses to show that it is the body, and not the mind, which senses goes as follows:
Whatever feels, lives; whatever lives, depends on nourishment; whatever lives and depends on nourishment grows; whatever is of this nature is in the end resolved into its basic principles; whatever comes to be resolved into its basic principles is a complex; every complex has its constituent parts; whatever this is true of is a divisible body. If therefore the human mind feels, it follows that it is a divisible body.
Because (on Amo's account) the human mind is by definition immaterial and not a divisible body (On the Ἀπάθεια (Apatheia) of the Human Mind 1.3), it therefore cannot be the case that the mind itself senses.
Amo returned to theUniversity of Halle to lecture in philosophy under his preferred name ofAntonius Guilielmus Amo Afer. In 1736 he was made a professor.[4] From his lectures, he produced his second major work in 1738,Treatise on the Art of Philosophising Soberly and Accurately,[4] in which he developed anempiricist epistemology very close to but distinct from that of philosophers such asJohn Locke andDavid Hume. In it he also examined and criticised faults such as intellectual dishonesty, dogmatism, and prejudice.
In 1740, Amo took up a post in philosophy at theUniversity of Jena, but while there he experienced a number of changes for the worse. TheDuke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel had died in 1735, leaving him without his long-standing patron and protector.[4] That coincided with social changes in Germany, which was becoming intellectually and morally narrower and less liberal. Those who argued against the secularisation of education (and against the rights of Africans in Europe) were regaining their ascendancy over those who campaigned for greater academic and social freedom, such asChristian Wolff.
Amo was subjected to an unpleasant campaign by some of his enemies, including a publiclampoon staged at a theatre in Halle. He finally decided to return to the land of his birth. He set sail on aDutch West India Company ship to Ghana viaGuinea, arriving in about 1747; his father and a sister were still living there. His life from then on becomes more obscure. According to at least one report, he was taken to a Dutch fortress,Fort San Sebastian inShama, in the 1750s, possibly to prevent him sowing dissent amongst the people. The exact date, place, and manner of his death are unknown, though he probably died in about 1759 at the fort in Shama in Ghana.
On 10 October 2020,Google celebrated him with aGoogle Doodle.[6]
InStuttgart, an Anton Wilhelm Amo Square in front of theStuttgart Labour Court was decided in 2022.[7]At the end of January 2023, the square formerly known as "Lerchenplätzle" in front of theStuttgart Labour Court in Johannesstraße was renamed "Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Platz".[7]In August 2020, in a context of "decolonization" of place names perceived to have racist origins, officials in the German capitalBerlin proposed renamingMohrenstraße to "Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Straße" in his honor.[8]
In 2024, two museum exhibitions will be held in Germany that focus exclusively on Anton Wilhelm Amo: "Focus on Amo. Pictures for a Scholar" in theLöwengebäude of the University in Halle/Saale[9]and the exhibition "Anton Wilhelm Amo - Between the Worlds" at theMuseum of Municipal Collections in the Zeughaus in Lutherstadt Wittenberg.[10]The curator of this exhibition was the ethnologistNils Seethaler.[11]
{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)What if the Enlightenment can be found in places and thinkers that we often overlook? Such questions have haunted me since I stumbled upon the work of the 17th-century Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob (1599-1692), also spelled Zära Yaqob.
In 1734, Anton Wilhelm Amo, a West African student and former chamber slave of Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, defended a philosophy dissertation at the University of Halle in Saxony, written in Latin and entitled "On the Impassivity of the Human Mind."
Some Early Sources on Amo. Johann Peter von Ludewig (1729): In this very place a baptized Moor by the name of Mister Anton Wilhelm Amo, in the service of His Highness the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, spent some years for the purpose of studying.An extensive archive of materials by and about Amo.
