Anton Wilhelm Amo: Google celebrates African-German philosopher with Doodle

Google Doodle celebrates an African-German philosopher initially based on present Ghana Anton Wilhelm Amo or Antonius Guilelmus Amo Afer on October 10, 2020.

Who was Anton Wilhelm Amo?

Anton Wilhelm Amo or Anthony William Amo was born around 1703 close to the town of Axim in the Western region on Africa’s Gold Coast (now Ghana). Amo was a Nzema (an Akan people). Amo was the first African-born individual known to have gone to a European university. Amo was a teacher at the universities of Halle and Jena in Germany in the wake of studying there.

Brought to Germany by the Dutch West India Company in 1707 as a child, and given as a gift to Dukes August Wilhelm and Ludwig Rudolf von Wolfenbüttel, he was treated as a member of the family by their father Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

The conditions of Anton Wilhelm Amo’s migration are unclear. At the age of around four, he was taken to Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company. A few records state that he was taken as a slave, others that he was shipped off Amsterdam by a minister working in Ghana. The reality of the situation is that he was given as a “present” to Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, to whose palace in Wolfenbüttel he was taken.

Anton Wilhelm Amo was baptized (and later affirmed) in the palace’s chapel. He was treated as a member of the Duke’s family and was taught at the Wolfenbüttel Ritter-Akademie (1717–21) and the University of Helmstedt (1721–27). He went on to the University of Halle, whose Law School he entered in 1727. He completed his preliminary studies within two years.

For his further studies, Anton Wilhelm Amo moved to the University of Wittenberg, studying logic, metaphysics, physiology, astronomy, history, law, theology, politics, and medicine, and learned six languages (English, French, Dutch, Latin, Greek, and German). His medical education specifically was to play a focal function in quite a bit of his later philosophical idea.

Anton Wilhelm Amo picked up his doctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg in 1734. He acknowledged that it is right to discuss a mind or soul, however, contended that it is the body instead of the mind which sees and feels.

Anton Wilhelm Amo got back to the University of Halle to lecture in philosophy under his favored name of Antonius Guilelmus Amo Afer. In 1736 he was made a professor. From his lectures, he discovered his second significant work in 1738, where he built up an empiricist epistemology near however distinct from that of philosophers, for example, John Locke and David Hume.

In 1740, Anton Wilhelm Amo took up a post in philosophy at the University of Jena, yet while there he encountered various changes for the more awful. Amo was subjected to an undesirable campaign by some of his foes, including a public lampoon arranged at a theatre in Halle. He at last decided to re-visitation of the place where there is his birth. He set sail on a Dutch West India Company boat to Ghana through Guinea, showing up in around 1747; his dad and a sister were all the while living there.

Afterward, during the time of German optimism and romanticism, Anton Wilhelm Amo’s philosophical work was ignored by other Jena-based German intelligent people, for example, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Brentano, and the Schlegel brothers.

Out of appreciation for Anton Wilhelm Amo’s heritage, the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg raised a statue in his resemblance in 1965. In August 2020, Berlin declared plans to name a road after him in the city’s Mitte district.

On 10 October 2020, Google celebrated him with a Google Doodle to recognize the day in 1730, Anton Wilhelm Amo got the equivalent of a doctorate in philosophy from Germany’s University of Wittenberg. Google Doodle was represented by Berlin-based visitor artist Diana Ejaita.