In Search of Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob: A Study of the Philosophy and Intellectual History of the Ḥatäta Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob and the Debate Concerning its Authorship

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract

This thesis examines two philosophical texts from Ethiopia, the philosophical system they contain and the controversy over their authorship. The Ḥatäta Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob and Ḥatäta Wäldä Həywät are philosophical autobiographies that have served to demonstrate, in the words of Claude Sumner, that “modern philosophy, in the sense of a personal rationalistic critical investigation, began in Ethiopia with Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob at the same time as in England and in France”. But they have also been objects of puzzlement and suspicion. Over the last one hundred years, many scholars have concluded that these texts are in fact nineteenth century forgeries, composed by a Capuchin missionary two centuries after their supposed composition. Chapter One presents an original interpretation of the philosophical system of the Ḥatäta, paying particular attention to the original Gǝʿǝz. I argue that the resolution of religious disagreement was the primary motivation of Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob’s thought, in particular the problem of perspective-relative justifications for religious claims, a problem he solves with his notion of a harmony between ləbbuna, śərʿatä fəträt and fäṭari.
I then outline his critique of society and institutional religion and provide an account of his ethics. The second chapter provides an exhaustive overview of the reception history of the Ḥatäta Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob, and the controversy over its authorship as it has developed over the last century and a half. I then subject these arguments to critical scrutiny, providing an account of the intellectual history of the authorship debate that focuses on the intellectual and cultural-political underpinnings of these arguments through ‘colonial’, ‘decolonial’ and ‘present’ moments. I argue that Conti Rossini’s argument for a non-Ethiopian authorship involves a claim for the impossibility of philosophy in Ethiopia, and I connect his philological to his political writings by means of the Hegelian connection between the capacity for philosophising and the capacity for political self- determination. Much of the rest of the chapter traces the reactions to, and sublimations of, this ‘Hegelian conception’ through the rest of the authorship controversy, both the reaction against it in the ‘African Philosophy’ debates of the sixties and seventies and its tacit endorsement in both Ethiopian nationalism and contemporary ‘diversification’ discourse in Anglo-American universities. I take up this ‘Hegelian conception’ in Chapter Four, arguing that it has had a pervasive and often pernicious influence on the writing of the history of philosophy, on account of the disciplinary or cultural identity of philosophy (as conceptually ‘pure’), its historical development (as teleological) and its geographical scope (Eurocentric). The purpose of this chapter is to offer an alternative. I begin by asking Justin Smith-Ruiu’s question ‘is philosophy more like dance or ballet?’, and argue that for the purposes of a global history of philosophy that does not reproduce the aforementioned Hegelian exclusions, we should treat philosophy as more like dance, that is, as potentially instantiable in a wide variety of social configurations. This raises the further question: if philosophy might occur in quite different societal forms, how are we to understand the relationship between thinkers from various traditions? I examine three possibilities. The first is the familiar notion of ‘comparative philosophy’, which I argue can be philosophically fruitful, but is unable to offer a way of integrating the comparanda into a single coherent narrative required for a history of philosophy. The second, a ‘method of parallels’ based on parallels in the material conditions of quite different contexts of philosophical production offers stronger (material) grounds for such a history. The third, and my favoured option that of a ‘connected’ history of philosophy, which traces the material and linguistic connections between philosophical texts, thinkers and contexts of production. The fifth chapter puts this methodology into action, providing a connected microhistorical study of philosophy in early seventeenth century Aksum. I do so by building up a picture of the discursive context of discussions of philosophy, cultural difference, societal critique and neutral adjudication of religious disputes from contemporary Gǝʿǝz theological, historical and ethnographic works, translations of foreign philosophy and oral disputations. The aim here is to finally intervene in the authorship debate by providing a ‘proof of possibility’ of a seventeenth century Ethiopian authorship of the text, thereby debunking Conti Rossini’s argument that the work was unthinkable in early modern Ethiopia. It is also intended to demonstrate the potential of the ‘connected’ history of philosophy for the study of seventeenth century philosophy in a global context, and more generally the philosophical richness of seventeenth century Ethiopian thought. The final chapter ties up some of the most important themes of the thesis, beginning with an account of the method of parallels and connected history as a framework for a globally interconnected history of seventeenth century philosophy. Second, I provide some reflections on the significance of authorship and authenticity in the study of the Ḥatäta, and ask whether, and why we should care who wrote the Ḥatäta. Finally, in the coda I provide an interpretation of the significance of the Ḥatäta to a modern audience.
Date of Award1 Oct 2024
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • King's College London
SupervisorSara Marzagora (Supervisor) & Toby Green (Supervisor)

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