thumb|Title page of Amo's doctoral dissertation On the impassivity of the human mind (in Latin), Wittenberg, 1734

Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1703 – c. 1759) was a Nzema philosopher from Axim, Dutch Gold Coast then within what was broadly considered the region of Guinea (the area is now in Ghana).

Amo was a professor at the universities of Halle and Jena in Germany after studying at Halle. He was brought to Germany by the Dutch West India Company in 1707 and was presented as a gift to Dukes Augustus William and Ludwig Rudolf of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, being treated as a member of the family by their father Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

In 2020, Oxford University Press published an English translation of his philosophical works written in Latin from the early 1730s.

Early life and education

thumb|Memorial plaque for Anton Wilhelm Amo at Jenergasse 9, Jena. Photo 2018.

Amo was a Nzema (an Akan people). He was born in Axim in the Western region of present-day Ghana, but at the age of about four he was moved to Amsterdam by the Dutch 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 was baptised (and in 1721 confirmed) 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 the University of Halle, whose Law School he entered in 1727. He finished his preliminary studies within two years, titling his thesis Dissertatio Inauguralis de Jure Maurorum in Europa (1729), translated to English as On the Rights of Moors in Europe. The thesis manuscript is lost, but a summary was published in the university's Annals (1730). To continue his 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.

Amo gained his doctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg in 1734; his thesis (published as Dissertatio Inauguralis Philosophica de Humanae Mentis Apatheia, or On the Absence of Sensation in the Human Mind and its Presence in our Organic and Living Body) argued in favour of a broadly Cartesian dualist account of the person. Specifically, he argues that it is correct to talk of a mind and a body, but that it is the body rather than the mind that receives passions (a state in which things are being affected by things external to it), not the mind. One example of an argument that Amo uses to show that it is the body, and not the mind, which senses goes as follows:

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

::::(On the Ἀπάθεια (Apatheia) of the Human Mind 2.1)

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.

Philosophical career and later life

Amo returned to the University of Halle to lecture in philosophy under his preferred name of Antonius Guilielmus Amo Afer. In 1736, he moved to the University of Jena in a conditional role, pending nostrification tied to student attendance, rather than being made a professor outright.

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.

At the end of January 2023, the square formerly known as "Lerchenplätzle" in front of the Stuttgart Labour Court in Johannesstraße was renamed "Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Platz".

In 2024, two museum exhibitions were held in Germany that focused exclusively on Anton Wilhelm Amo: "Focus on Amo. Pictures for a Scholar" in the Löwengebäude of the University in Halle/Saale

and the exhibition "Anton Wilhelm Amo - Between the Worlds" at the Museum of Municipal Collections in the Zeughaus in Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

Works

  • Dissertatio inauguralis de iure maurorum in Europa, 1729 (lost). Translated title: Inaugural dissertation on the laws of the Moors in Europe.
  • Dissertatio inauguralis philosophica de humanae mentis apatheia, Wittenberg, 1734. Inaugural dissertation on the impassivity of the human mind.
  • Disputatio philosophica continens ideam distinctam eorum quae competunt vel menti vel corpori nostro vivo et organico, Wittenberg, 1734 (Ph.D. thesis).