#KnowMore: Tigray’s important contributions to African Philosophy - Philosopher Zera Yacob
Posted: 31 Dec 2021, 11:19
Zera Yacob was seventeenth-century philosopher whose 1667 treatise, known in the original Ge'ez language as the Hatata, has often been compared to the work of French philosopher René Descartes' Discours de la méthode (1637).
He was born into a farmer's family near Axum, Tigray. His writing came at a period when African philosophical literature was significantly oral in character. Zara Yacob believed in following one's natural reasoning instead of believing what one is told by others.

Philosophical work
Yacob is most noted for this ethical philosophy surrounding the principle of harmony. He proposed that an action's morality is decided by whether it advances or degrades overall harmony in the world. While he did believe in a deity, whom he referred to as God, he rejected any set of particular religious beliefs. Rather than deriving beliefs from any organized religion, Yacob sought the truth in observing the natural world. In Hatata, Yacob applied the idea of a first cause to produce a proof for the existence of God, thus proposing a cosmological argument in chapter 3 of Hatata: "If I say that my father and my mother created me, then I must search for the creator of my parents and of the parents of my parents until they arrive at the first who were not created as we [are] but who came into this world in some other way without being generated." However, the knowability of God does not depend on human intellect, but "Our soul has the power of having the concept of God and of seeing him mentally. God did not give this power purposelessly; as he gave the power, so did he give the reality."[2] He argued too against discrimination, predating John Locke by decades,[1] in chapter 6 of Hatata, starting the chapter with: "All men are equal in the presence of God; and all are intelligent since they are his creatures; he did not assign one people for life, another for death, one for mercy, another for judgment. Our reason teaches us that this sort of discrimination cannot exist."
In chapter 5 of Hatata, he criticizes the religious argument for slavery saying, "what the Gospel says on this subject cannot come from God. Likewise, the Mohammedans said that it is right to go and buy a man as if he were an animal. But with our intelligence, we understand that this Mohammedan law cannot come from the creator of man who made us equal, like brothers, so that we call our creator our father."

https://www.facebook.com/SeifesilassieG ... 0617846088

He was born into a farmer's family near Axum, Tigray. His writing came at a period when African philosophical literature was significantly oral in character. Zara Yacob believed in following one's natural reasoning instead of believing what one is told by others.

Philosophical work
Yacob is most noted for this ethical philosophy surrounding the principle of harmony. He proposed that an action's morality is decided by whether it advances or degrades overall harmony in the world. While he did believe in a deity, whom he referred to as God, he rejected any set of particular religious beliefs. Rather than deriving beliefs from any organized religion, Yacob sought the truth in observing the natural world. In Hatata, Yacob applied the idea of a first cause to produce a proof for the existence of God, thus proposing a cosmological argument in chapter 3 of Hatata: "If I say that my father and my mother created me, then I must search for the creator of my parents and of the parents of my parents until they arrive at the first who were not created as we [are] but who came into this world in some other way without being generated." However, the knowability of God does not depend on human intellect, but "Our soul has the power of having the concept of God and of seeing him mentally. God did not give this power purposelessly; as he gave the power, so did he give the reality."[2] He argued too against discrimination, predating John Locke by decades,[1] in chapter 6 of Hatata, starting the chapter with: "All men are equal in the presence of God; and all are intelligent since they are his creatures; he did not assign one people for life, another for death, one for mercy, another for judgment. Our reason teaches us that this sort of discrimination cannot exist."
In chapter 5 of Hatata, he criticizes the religious argument for slavery saying, "what the Gospel says on this subject cannot come from God. Likewise, the Mohammedans said that it is right to go and buy a man as if he were an animal. But with our intelligence, we understand that this Mohammedan law cannot come from the creator of man who made us equal, like brothers, so that we call our creator our father."

https://www.facebook.com/SeifesilassieG ... 0617846088
