Descartes' Critics: Anton Wilhelm Amo

Who was Anton Wilhelm Amo?

- Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703-53) was born in Ghana, brought to Europe as a child, arriving in Amsterdam. Was sent to Germany where was a servant in the court of the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel.

- He enrolled at the University of Halle in 1727, submitted a law dissertation in 1729, about the rights of African slaves. In 1730 he went to the University of Wittenberg, to study philosophy, and in 1734 defended his inaugural dissertation. He was first African to complete a PhD at a European university.

- He went on to become a Professor of Philosophy, teaching at the Universities of Halle and Jena in Germany.

His Dissertation

- Amo's dissertation, defended in 1734, is entitled On the Impassivity of the Human Mind. In the title he uses the Greek word apatheia which means sth. like unaffected or unfeeling. So he's arguing that the mind or sould is unaffected or without sensation.

- It's quite short and has (to us) and odd structure, based on traditional forms of academic disputation.

- There's some discussion about what he is trying to argue for in the dissertation. We'll come back to this question after we've looked at some extracts.

1. Responding to Descartes

- Human beings sense material things not with respect to the mind but with respect to the living and organic body. These things are stated and defended against Descartes and his opinion in Part 1 of the Letters in Letter 29, where, thus, he says, "For since there are two things in the human soul on which all the knowledge we can have about its nature depends: one of which is that it thinks, the other that when united to the body it can act and suffer with the body."

- Thus, in reply to these words, we caution and disagree; we concede that the mind acts by the means of a mutual union with the body mediating it; but we deny that [the mind] suffers with the body.

2. The first Proof

- First Proof of the Thesis. Whatever senses, this linves; whatever lives is nourished. Whatever lives and is nourished [then] grows; whatever is of this sort in the end is resolved into its own first principles. Whatever is resolved into its own first principles is from principles. Everything from principles has its constitutive parts; whatever is of this sort is a divisible body. If therefore, the human mind senses, it follows that it is a divisible body.

3. The Soul

- Note I. To live and to sense are two inseparable predicates, the reason is this transposition: everthing that exist necessarily senses and everything [that] senses necessarily lives, so that the presence of the one necessarily implies the presence of the other.

- Note II. To live and to exist are not synonyms. Everything that lives exists, but not everything [that] exist lives. For a spirit and rock exist, but they are less correctly said to live. For a spirit exists and operates with understanding. Matter exists and receives the action of an agent. Nevertheless, a human being and an animal exist, act, live and sense.

What is Amo saying?

- Like Elisabeth, Amo is concerned about the problem of causal interaction between two substances that are diffferent in kind.

- The mind can act on the body, but the body cannot act on the mind.

- Sensation is connected to being alive; anything alive grows and expands; therefore it is extended; therefore it is a body (i.e. extended substance).

- The mind, therefore, is without sensation.

- The mind/spirit/soul exists (as a thinking substance) but it is not alive. (although that might sound absurd, if it is not alive, then it cannot die, so it is immortal.)

Why is he saying it?

- Some commentators have tried to construct a theory of the soul out of Amo's remarks.

- He appears to be committed to dualism, which he does not question. He then thinks the soul can interact with the body (in an unspecified way), while challenging the claim that the body can affect the soul.

- His aim might be to show contradictions within Descartes' position. He adopts dualism for the safe of the argument, without necessarily being committed to it himself. Like Elisabeth, he is challenging Descartes' on the issue of mind-body interaction. He may not have a considered view of his own at all. This is a common move in philosophy ('immanent critique').

Questions

- Considering all of the objections we've seen raised by Elisabeth and Amo, which do you think work against Descartes?

- Can Descartes defend himself against any of these objections? If so, how?

- Now that we've reached the end of the first part of the module, what's your assessment of Descartes' project in the Meditations as a whole?

- What do you think are stronger and weaker arguments that he has made?

- Has Descartes achieved what he set out to do?