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This book provides the original Latin texts with new explanatory annotated translations of two philosophical works by Anton Wilhelm Amo (c.1703-after 1752), the first African philosopher in early modern Europe. It also includes an extensive introduction intended to help readers contextualize and engage with his philosophical ideas and their historical and intellectual background and significance.
List of contents
- Contents
- I. Introduction
- 1. The Life of Anton Wilhelm Amo
- 2. The History of Amo Reception
- 3. The Political and Intellectual Context at Halle and Wittenberg
- 4. On Dissertations and Disputations, and Amo's Two Dissertations
- 5. Ancient and Modern Debates on Action and Passion and on Sensation
- 6. The Argument of the Impassivity and the Distinct Idea
- II. Note on the Text and Translation of Amo's Dissertations
- III. Inaugural Dissertation on the Impassivity of the Human Mind (1734) (Latin and English)
- IV. Philosophical Disputation Containing a Distinct Idea of those Things that Pertain either to the Mind or to Our Living and Organic Body (1734) (Latin and English)
- V. Bibliography
About the author
Stephen Menn is James McGill Professor of Philosophy at McGill University in Montreal and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He works mainly on ancient Greek and medieval Arabic and Latin philosophy and science, and on the history and philosophy of mathematics.
Justin E. H. Smith is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Paris. He works mainly on Leibniz, Rationalism, and the history of metaphysics and natural philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Summary
This book provides the original Latin texts with new explanatory annotated translations of two philosophical works by Anton Wilhelm Amo (c.1703-after 1752), the first African philosopher in early modern Europe. It also includes an extensive introduction intended to help readers contextualize and engage with his philosophical ideas and their historical and intellectual background and significance.
Additional text
Amo, an 18th century philosopher from Africa who was trained in Europe and taught in Wittenberg, is little known among contemporary scholars. Yet his philosophy, as well as his biography, is fascinating. It's terrific to have a high quality modern edition of his work. The editors' well-developed introduction addresses matters of biography, reception, political and intellectual context, generic conventions, philosophical background, and provides a summary of Amo's arguments. This book will be used widely. Many of us are seeking to do a better job of conveying to students the global networks that have constituted philosophy across the centuries. Many will surely avail themselves of the opportunity to include Amo on a syllabus.
