Anton Wilhelm Amo
Anton Wilhelm Amo or Anthony William Amo was an African philosopher originally from what is now Ghana. He was born in Axim in the Western region of present-day Ghana, but at the age of about four he was taken to Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company. He gained his doctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg in 1734.
About Anton Wilhelm Amo in brief
Anton Wilhelm Amo or Anthony William Amo was an African philosopher originally from what is now Ghana. Amo was the first African-born person known to have attended a European university. He was born in Axim in the Western region of present-day Ghana, but at the age of about four he was taken to Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company. He gained his doctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg in 1734; his thesis argued against Cartesian dualism in favour of a broadly materialist account of the person. 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. That coincided with social changes in Germany, which was becoming intellectually and morally narrower and less liberal. He finally decided to return to the land of his birth about 1747; his life from then on becomes more obscure. He died in about 1759 at the fort in Shama in Ghana.
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