Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body

Abstract

Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1703–after 1752) is the first modern African philosopher to study and teach in a European university and write in the European philosophical tradition. This book provides an extensive historical and philosophical introduction to Amo’s life and work, and provides Latin texts, with facing translations and explanatory notes, of Amo’s two philosophical dissertations, On the Impassivity of the Human Mind and the Philosophical Disputation containing a Distinct Idea of those Things that Pertain either to the Mind or to our Living and Organic Body, both published in 1734. The Impassivity is an extended argument that the mind cannot be acted on, that sensation is a being-acted-on by the sensed object, and therefore that sensation does not belong to the mind, and must belong instead to the body. The Distinct Idea works out the implications for the mind’s actions, and tries to show how the mind understands, wills, and effects things through the body by ‘intentions’ which direct motions in our body intentionally toward external things. Both dissertations try to show how far each type of human act belongs to the mind, how far to the body, and expose and resolve earlier philosophers’ self-contradictions on these questions.

Mind‐Body Commerce: Occasional Causation and Mental Representation in Anton Wilhelm Amo

“…Amo wrote four texts during his lifetime (that are known of). The first, On the Rights of Moors in Europe (written in 1729), was either lost or only ever existed in spoken form (Menn & Smith, 2020, p. 2). This leaves three remaining texts: the Inaugural Dissertation on the Impassivity of the Human Mind, the Philosophical Disputation Containing a Distinct Idea of those Things that Pertain either to the Mind or to Our Living and Organic Body (both written in 1734), and a Treatise on the Art of Philosophising Soberly and Accurately.…”

“…Finally, contact is where the surfaces of two (or more) objects “mutually touch” (ID, p. 163) like when two billiard balls knock into one another. In a manner reminiscent of both Princess Elisabeth's response to Descartes (Walsh, 2019, p. 1) and Leibniz's arguments against physical influx theory (Menn & Smith, 2020, p. 106), Amo argues that only substances with material properties can act or be acted upon by one another in any of these ways. Thus, since minds do not have material properties – but are in fact “contrary opposites” of bodies (ID, p. 163) – Amo concludes that bodies cannot possibly act upon minds.…”

“…To support this reading, Menn and Smith cite Amo's remarks about the role the body plays as an instrument or medium of the mind in achieving its theoretical ends (ID, p. 169). Their reasoning is that if the body is an instrument or medium then it must be something else that, ultimately, the mind intends to know about (see Menn & Smith, 2020, p. 130) 22…”

“…1 1 For more thorough biographical discussions of Amo, and the context of the Dissertations and Treatise, see Nwala, 1978, Emma‐Adamah 2015 (ch.1), Smith, 2015 (ch.8), and Menn & Smith, 2020 (‘Introduction’). …”

“…3 3 All references to the Inaugural Dissertation on the Impassivity of the Human Mind and Philosophical Disputation Containing a Distinct Idea of those Things that Pertain either to the Mind or to Our Living and Organic Body are to Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body, edited and translated by Menn and Smith (2020). References to Treatise on the Art of Philosophising Soberly and Accurately are to Nwala (1978).…”