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Amo’s Hermeneutics and Hegel’s Historical Prejudices Against Africa



Author(s)

Jacob Emmanuel Mabe

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2020.06.001

Chairman of the Anton Wilhelm-Amo Society, Berlin, Germany

During the lifetime of Anton Wilhelm Amos (ca. 1700 - ca. 1755), the hermeneutics served not only interpreting and understanding of philosophical contexts, but also to overcome the prejudices and the underlying spirit of partiality with them. As one of the first modern theorist and systematician of hermeneutics, Amo dealt intensively with the prejudice problem. According to him, any prejudice is a mistake of the mind. Generalizing, Amo claims that prejudices are not a consequence of a false knowledge, but they arise by the lack of knowledge par excellence and are therefore in contradiction with reason. Amo sees the task of hermeneutics to counteract the prejudices inherent contradictions. With regard to the historical hermeneutics, he recommends to look at the past, not by selective or specific moments, but in its generality, in order to avoid contradictory and even false interpretations. But he acknowledges that only generalists as polyvalent historians of philosophy with an interdisciplinary mindset and multilingualism knowledge have this ability to general thinking. It will be examined more closely in this presentation whether Hegel can meet the hermeneutic claim within the meaning of Amo because of his pessimistic-ridiculous and contradictory prejudices about Africa. Finally, the question will be whether Hegel perhaps confounded his mental projections with the real history of Africa why he did not succeed to identify the real causes of the problems of this continent, and to describe their immediate consequences objectively.

enlightentment, hermeneutic, historiograpy, human rights, internationl understanding, multilingual knowledge, polyhistory, prejudice, racial discrimination, slavery, universal humanity

Mabe, J. E. (2020). Amo’s Hermeneutics and Hegel’s historical prejudices against Africa. Philosophy Study, 10(6), 329-336.