Philosopher Zera Yacob
Bahir Dar, June 29, 2023 (AMECO) – Philosopher Zera Yacob (1599 – 1692) was an Ethiopian philosopher in the 17th century. His 1667 treatise, developed around 1630 and known in the original Ge’ez language as the Hatata (Inquiry), has been compared to René Descartes’ Discours de la méthode (1637).
At the same time that Zera Yacob was meditating in his cave, another more familiar seventeenth century philosopher, René Descartes, conducted his own set of solitary meditations on the Creator, reason and the basis of knowledge.
The contemporary emergence of these set of reflections in France and Ethiopia have struck many commentators; in the words of one historian serves to demonstrate that “modern philosophy, in the sense of a personal rationalistic critical investigation, began in Ethiopia with Zara Yacob at the same time as in England and in France”. Why then, have so few of us heard the name of Zera Yacob?
Source: university of oxford (9 April 2022 Jonathan Egid) and word press.com
