Anton Wilhelm Amo or Anthony William Amo (c. 1703 – c. 1759) was an African from what is now Ghana, who became a respected philosopher and teacher at the universities of Halle and Jena in Germany after studying there. Brought to Germany as a child, where he was treated as a member of the family of Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, he was the first African known to have attended a European university.
Amo was a Nzema (an Akan people). He was born in Awukena in the Axim region of present-day Ghana, but at the age of about four he was taken to Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company. Some accounts say that he was taken as a slave, others that he was sent to Amsterdam by a preacher working in Ghana. Whatever the truth of the matter, he was given as a "present" to Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, to whose palace in Wolfenbüttel he was taken. Amo was baptised (and later confirmed) in the palace's chapel. He was treated as a member of the Duke's family, and was educated at the Wolfenbüttel Ritter-Akademie (1717–1721) and at the University of Helmstedt (1721–1727). It is believed that he would have met Gottfried Leibniz, who was a frequent visitor to the palace. He went on to the University of Halle, whose Law School he entered in 1727. He finished his preliminary studies within two years, his dissertation being: “The Rights of Moors in Europe”. For his further studies Amo moved to the University of Wittenberg, studying logic, 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 his doctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg in 1734; his thesis (published as On the Absence of Sensation in the Human Mind and its Presence in our Organic and Living Body) argued against Cartesian dualism in favour of a broadly materialist account of the person. He accepted that it is correct to talk of a mind or soul, but argued that it is the body rather than the mind which perceives and feels.
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.
(On the Απαθεια of the Human Mind 2.1)
Philosophical career and later life Amo returned to the University of Halle to lecture in philosophy under his preferred name of Antonius Guilelmus Amo Afer. In 1736 he was made a professor. From his lectures, he produced his second major work in 1738, Treatise on the Art of Philosophising Soberly and Accurately, in which he developed an empiricist epistemology very close to but distinct from that of philosophers such as John Locke and David 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 the University of Jena, but while there he experienced a number of changes for the worse. The Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel had died in 1735, leaving him without his long-standing patron and protector. 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 (such as Christian Wolff) who campaigned for greater academic and social freedom. Amo was subjected to an unpleasant campaign by some of his enemies, including a public lampoon staged at a theatre in Halle. He finally decided to return to the land of his birth. He set sail on a Dutch West India Company ship to Ghana via Guinea, 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, in the 1750s, possibly to prevent him sowing dissent among his people. The exact date, place, and manner of his death are unknown, though he probably died in about 1759 at Fort Chama in Ghana. Later, during the time of German idealism and romanticism, Amo's philosophical work was ignored by other Jena-based German intellectuals such as Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Brentano, or the Schlegel brothers
Posts: 42920 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
According to Real History WW this is the painting of the black General Hannibal of Russia. Either the white European elite are liar transforming the old black European elite into descendant of African slaves or servants or the Afrocentric researchers are wrong by believing in a black European royalty and nobility.
posted
This is why people on Egyptsearch are afraid to admit errors and they will go for years promoting the same wrong information.
It's because of pride, people won't admit to errors
because petty people will try to embarass them about it
So they keep making the error hoping that repetition of it will change it to truth
This occurs even more with people who have websites or write published articles. Correcting their errors becomes a complicated hassle so they just never do it
Posts: 42920 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
I don't know the primary source or date of this picture that is supposed to be Anton Wilhelm Amo but the above two websites have it posted
Book cover:
Jacob Emmanuel Mabe Anton Wilhelm Amo - The intercultural background of his philosophy
This book has been translated from German by J. Obi Oguejiofor Wilhelm Anton Amo is probably the only African personality that took part with his own writings in the intellectual discourses of the 18th Century in Europe. There is no contradiction between his personal thought and the general spirit of the Enlightenment. Amo debated on all the important questions of philosophy at the time – from metaphysics through logic and epistemology to political philosophy and philosophy of language. But his intellectual works remain till today unknown. The present increasing interest in his person no doubt arises from the growing importance of intercultural philosophy. This book is an introduction to his philosophical system. Amo understands philosophy as a manner of thinking that aims at perfection. Perfection is rooted in the self preservation and security of the individual as well as the preservation and moral perfection of the whole of humanity. In addition, the book dwells on materialism at the centre of which stands dualism of body and soul. The human soul is an immaterial essence without the faculty of sensation. The book also discusses Hermeneutics under which Amo examines the problem of prejudice and objective understanding. He warns in this regard against doctrinaire interpretation which observes only the rules of logic and grammar and which ignores personal opinions that luck behind texts. The book ends with the question of the meaning of Amo for world philosophy.
The Author:
Born in 1959 in Cameroon, Jacob Emmanuel Mabe is Dr. in philosophy and Dr. in Political Science, Professor of Intercultural Philosophy at the France-Centre of the Free University of Berlin. He is the editor and co-author of the first African encyclopedia in the German Language. His research interest is in the areas of cultural philosophy, African and European intellectual history, French philosophy, political philosophy, intercultural and international ethics.
posted
The most likely candidate I have come across for the man incorrectly identified as Abraham Gannibal is John Leopold Donat, better known as Emperor Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire.
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
I have also seen the same picture (ie the one described as Abraham Gannibal) as being that of a Russian General.
Posts: 890 | From: London | Registered: Apr 2014
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic