Philiminality

This paper will assess the nature of the Ethiopian written intellectual tradition (mainly history of ideas), and its relation to the controversy on the authenticity of the texts, and their philosophical significance for Ethiopian and/or African philosophy studies in particular and history of ideas in human civilization in general. An examination of external sources related to religious, historical documents and the literature from scholarly research, and in-depth content analysis of the original Hatatas (the Ge’ez, Amharic and English versions) reveal both the exceptionality and situated-ness of the Hatatas in the Ethiopian intellectual tradition from which they originated. Informed by the careful analysis of scholars like Claude Sumner, I argue that the Hatatas are authentic and attributable to the Ethiopian Authors of the 17th  century by examining new findings from the documents on Ethiopian history of the time, a rather untouched issue so far. While the social and historical context, the cultural bases and educational background of their authors bear the signature of Ethiopian philosophy, as outcomes of freethinker individual’s rational reflection, they entertain elements of exceptionality. Regardless of the exceptionality and some possibility of European elements in the texts, one cannot deprive them of the Ethiopian soil in which they are grounded. But by no means are the Hatatas the sole examples of philosophical treatises, nor do they showcase a peak in the history of ideas in Ethiopia; nevertheless they can be examples that give us a flashlight in search of philosophical wisdom. Apart from their contemporary contribution to ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and social-political philosophy they are pathways to the studies of the hidden voices of the non-Western world.