Zar'a Yaqob

Zär'a Yaqob (* 1599 in Aksum , Ethiopia , † 1693 in Enferaz) was an Ethiopian philosopher who dealt with questions about God and religion as well as human beings and morals. First, Zär'a Yaqob taught the interpretation of the Bible in Aksum until a priest betrayed him. He had to flee into the interior of Ethiopia, where he found the opportunity for extensive meditations. Zär'a Yaqob was very methodical in philosophizing. However, his influence was limited to his only student, Waldä Heywat.

biography

Zär'a Yaqob was born in Aksum in 1599 as the son of a farmer. His father sent him to school where he was taught the Psalms of David. At the end of his training he received a recommendation from his teacher and began taking church music lessons, but since he showed no talent for singing, he broke it off after three months. After the unsuccessful training, he switched to poetry and grammar for four years. After graduating from this school, he switched again to study the interpretation of the Scriptures for the next ten years . This happened both with the local scholars as well as with the Catholic missionaries , the Frang ("foreigners", Portuguese, cf. Farang ). He then returned to Aksum for four years to teach the interpretation of the scriptures . During this time the then King Susenyos changed to the Catholic denomination and had all people of other faiths persecuted.

In 1626 Waldä Yohannis, a priest from Aksum and friend of the king, betrayed him by telling the king that Zär'a Yaqob was preaching to the people that they should drive out the Frang and kill the king. Zar'a Yaqob fled Aksum out of fear, taking only the Psalms of David and a few grams of gold with him. Zär'a Yaqob lived for two years in a cave near Shewa , where he prayed the psalms and for the first time thought deeply about theodicy . He wondered how the will of God could be seen in man and whether the scriptures were true.

In 1632 the old king Susenyos died and his son Fasilides succeeded him to the throne. He was more friendly towards the Copts than his father and accordingly had a higher tolerance towards people of different faiths. Zär'a Yaqob took this as an opportunity to come out of his cave and move from place to place without the intention of returning to Aksum.

After a while he came to Enferaz and met a rich man named Habtu. He found out that Zär'a could write Yaqob and wanted him to write the Psalms of David for him for a fee. From this encounter there was an income opportunity for Zar'a Yaqob, and shortly afterwards he was writing for a whole crowd of people. In addition, Habtu asked him to teach his sons Waldä Gabriel and Waldä Heywat to read. The latter would later become his pupil in philosophy. In 1634 Zär'a married Yaqob Habtus' maid Hirut and they built a small house in Enferaz. Four years later the two had a son. In 1642 a two-year famine broke out in Ethiopia, which Zär'a Yaqob and his family were able to survive using their savings. Zär'a Yaqob wrote his treatise at the urging of his pupil Waldä Heywat. He finished work on it in 1667. He died 25 years later, in 1693.

authenticity

The authenticity of Zär'a Yaqob's treatise is still in doubt today. The French Ethiopia researcher Antoine d'Abbadie (1810–1897) compiled this treatise, among other things. D'Abbadie, however, never owned the original; his copy is in the French National Library . The original was in the possession of Giusto d'Urbinos (1814-1856), an Italian missionary. Because of the unusually progressive and religiously critical thoughts in the treatise, d'Urbino is also often accepted as the author. The Canadian Ethiopia researcher Claude Sumner comes to the conclusion in a very detailed treatise that Zär'a Yaqob and not d'Urbino is the author of the treatise.

philosophy

Zär'a Yaqob's philosophy is strongly shaped by Christian faith and God. As an occasion and to clarify his arguments, he often uses the Psalms of David as an aid, but other parts of the Bible such as the books of Moses are also used. His idea of ​​God forms the central starting point of his philosophy, even if he does not try to recognize it primarily on the basis of scriptures, but with the help of his mind .

Since Yaqob himself only left a treatise and did not belong to any philosophical school either, he of course did not assign his philosophy to different directions. However, tendencies can be identified that can be broken down into.

theology

For Yaqob, God represents the beginning and the end, he is the creator who is actually needed for creation. The Creator God is not simply presented as a given. The starting point for Yaqob is the question of his own origin, which he can still answer quite naturally, because he naturally comes from his parents who gave birth to him. But where do they and their parents come from? So it takes a creator who was not created himself, and to this Yaqob attributes omnipotence.

Yaqob made the experience early on that not only the religions, but even the denominations are very divided, and that their opinions about the true religion diverge very widely. This is the second proof of God from the treatise, even if opinions about God differ, at least all people agree that there must be a God at all, and ultimately it cannot be that all people are wrong. Following on from this critical debate on religion, the question of God's justification ( theodicy ) also arises . How can a kind God allow suffering in the world? First of all, it culminates in the question of the possibility of recognizing the only true God, because he has never been doubted, even if the religions are divided. ( Yaqob never considered a polytheistic worldview.)

This god himself needs something like a mind , because how else could he have created a being with a mind, like humans. And just as God gave man ears to hear, he also gave him the understanding to understand. And in the ability to understand, in the mind, Yaqob sees the only way to recognize and understand the laws of God. The mind is the connection point between God and man.

Through this approach, Yaqob comes to the conviction that God created the soul of man to be immortal. The reason for this is linked to the previous theodicy: How can it be that good people suffer and bad people are well? The only possible answer is that there will be retribution or redemption in the hereafter . After death, the human soul will pass into the hereafter and there will either be judged or be able to spend eternity satisfied (whether a concrete heaven / hell idea existed at Yaqob cannot be said). At the end of his writing, Zar'a Yaqob remarks that even if people think he is a Christian , he believes in nothing but God.

Philosophy of religion

In addition to his view that God can only be known through the intellect , Zär'a Yaqob subjected the religions to at least partial examination. The main tool here too was the mind. Polygamy was allowed in Islam and it would create inequality in distribution. With ten women per man, many men would go away empty-handed because there aren't enough women. For this reason he denies Islam 's absolute claim to truth. Against Judaism , Zar'a Yaqob argues that Moses thought sex was bad. But since otherwise no children can be born and humans would die out, that cannot be true either.

According to the gospel , God wants him to be loved more than parents and children. But since this does not correspond to the nature of man, it cannot be the truth either, and so Yaqob ultimately also denies Christianity the absolute truth. Even so, he does not condemn religions per se, even if he does not consider them to be true. Wrong belief can also do good.

anthropology

Zär'a Yaqob not only focuses on the question of the true God and his recognizability, humans also play a central role in his philosophy. First of all, man is a rational being who can know by means of the intellect. But it is also designed to be sensual. So Yaqob sees the reason why not everyone strives to seek the truth critically is that laziness is in the nature of man. However, this is also the most pessimistic analysis he makes of the essence of humans. Yaqob primarily sees people as free beings. Although he is punished by God for bad deeds and rewarded for good deeds, the decision-making power remains with him. In addition to freedom, he also grants equality before God to every person.

ethics

Zär'a Yaqob also has a moral philosophy . This is expressed as the highest principle, in a form of the Golden Rule : Do not treat others as you do not want to be treated yourself, but act on others as you would like to be treated by others. He also considers the ten commandments to be correct except for the Sabbath . Specifically, this is expressed in the form of a ban on killing, stealing, lying and adultery. Suicide is also forbidden, because since life comes from God, the destruction of life, even if it is one's own, cannot be his will. The pursuit of perfection is also a duty, for God created man imperfect, and the only reason for this must be that man should achieve perfection himself. Finally, Zär'a Yaqob also cites equality between men and women, at least in marriage.

Trivia

His treatise is important for historical research not only because of the progressive thoughts of Zär'a Yaqob, which can be ascribed to his personal insight and no direct influence of a school or trend. Especially in Hegel's philosophy of history , which ascribed no philosophical ambitions to sub-Saharan Africa , Zär'a Yaqob offers a perfect counterexample, since he lived about 200 years before Hegel. Other racial theories also find a counterexample in it.

In addition, he also has methodological parallels with his contemporary René Descartes . Above all, their rational approach, with which Descartes is commonly regarded as the founder of the modern age, connects the two. Of course, in contrast to Descartes, Zär'a Yaqob cannot be conceded to have begun a new era, after all, until the 19th century, he was only received in writing by his pupil Waldä Heywat.

literature

• Bartuschat, Wolfgang; Horn, Christoph (Ed.): Archive for the history of philosophy. Berlin / New York (2003): Walter de Gruyter
• Gutema, Bekele: Zarayaqob: An Ethiopian Philosopher. In polylog. Journal for intercultural philosophizing. Volume 7. Vienna (2001): Vienna Society for Intercultural Philosophy
• Uhlig, Siegbert (Ed.): AETHIOPICA. International Journal of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies. Volume 11. Wiesbaden (2008): Harrassowitz Verlag
• Sumner, Claude: Ethiopian Philosophy. Vol. II The Treatise of Zär'a Ya'ǝqob and of Wäldä Hǝywåt. Text and Authorship. Addis Ababa (1976): Commercial Printing Press
• Sumner, Claude: Ethiopian Philosophy. Vol. III The Treatise of Zär'a Ya'ǝqob and of Wäldä Hǝywåt. Analysis. Addis Ababa (1978): Commercial Printing Press

Individual evidence

1. ^ Treatise of Zera Yacob Chapter II