Introduction -- Acknowledgements -- Classical Ethiopian philosophy and the modernity of Zara Yacob -- Ethiopia in the seventeenth century -- Zara Yacob: Philosopher of the heart -- Walda Heywat's transformation of Zara Yacob's philosophy -- Zara Yacob and the problematic of African philosophy -- Zara Yacob's place in the history of philosophy -- Conclusion: the rationality of the heart -- Appendix: The debates about the authenticity of Zara [Yacob's] treatise -- End notes.

For too long, the human heart has been treated as no more than a physical organ that pumps blood. Recently, scientific evidence has emerged to show the heart is so much more. Zara Yacob’s Inauguration of Modernity and Cardiocentrism adds to the groundbreaking argument that the heart is also a thinking organ, a function that is always attributed to the human brain. The argument is marshalled with evidence and spiritual compartment. Following an insight from seventeenth-century Ethiopian philosopher Zara Yacob, and in conversation with both Kemetian (ancientEgyptian) thought on the philosophical status of the human heart and contemporary discussions on the hard problem of consciousness, Teodros Kiros argues that the heart is both a physical organ that pumps blood and a spiritual organ that originates thoughts, which it shares with the brain. Together they empower us to be compassionate, empathetic, generous, and sincere.

Presents the basic texts of Ethiopian philosophy, each preceded by a specific introduction. Also includes a general introduction which emphasizes the place held by philosophy in Ethiopia from the fifth to eighteenth century. This introduction also determines the philosophical contribution of Ethiopia in relation to the thought of traditional wisdom throughout the African continent.

This volume of newly commissioned essays provides comprehensive coverage of African philosophy, ranging across disciplines and throughout the ages. Offers a distinctive historical treatment of African philosophy. Covers all the main branches of philosophy as addressed in the African tradition. Includes accounts of pre-colonial African philosophy and contemporary political thought.

This rich collection brings together many of the leading authorities on African political philosophy to present a variety of perspectives on this rapidly growing field. They seek to show that African philosophy can serve African people as a moral activity guided by the principles of practical reason in addressing problems of the basic structures of social, political, and economic institutions.

Self Definition argues that sex, gender, and race are constructions by the ineffable self as it seeks to define its possibilities free of domination. The self’s embodiments are themselves performances of self definition. Teodros Kiros supports his argument by a careful reading of the literature from both the Global South and Global North that spans figures, works, and eras from antiquity to our late modern present. These readings demonstrate that race, gender, and sex are performed in the Global South radically differently from in the Global North. These three notions as markers of identity are fluid, open, and expansive, and Kiros brilliantly shows this through inquiry into thought rooted in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and China. By the time that the Global North forges possibilities of the self in the modern period, race, gender, and sex become fixed. Biology and anatomy become understood as destinies, and the possibilities of the self are deeply constrained. This book approaches case studies of key figures and movements chronologically and thematically, and in doing so Kiros highlights the tensions between the openness of the Global South and the rigidity of the Global North through which human possibilities as exercises of self-definition become clear under conditions of freedom. Our views of self definition will forever be transformed after reading this important text.

Human rights have a deep and tumultuous history that culminates in the age of rights we live in today, but where does Africa's story fit in with this global history? Here, Bonny Ibhawoh maps this story and offers a comprehensive and interpretative history of human rights in Africa. Rather than a tidy narrative of ruthless violators and benevolent protectors, this book reveals a complex account of indigenous African rights traditions embodied in the wisdom of elders and sages; of humanitarians and abolitionists who marshalled arguments about natural rights and human dignity in the cause of anti-slavery; of the conflictual encounters between natives and colonists in the age of Empire and the 'civilizing mission'; of nationalists and anti-colonialists who deployed an emergent lexicon of universal human rights to legitimize longstanding struggles for self-determination, and of dictators and dissidents locked in struggles over power in the era of independence and constitutional rights.