Zera Yacob: The 17th-Century Ethiopian Philosopher Who Pioneered the Enlightenment

When we think of the Age of Reason, names like René Descartes, John Locke, and Voltaire immediately spring to mind. These European thinkers are credited with championing logic, reason, and individualism, laying the groundwork for the modern world. But what if the story we've been told is incomplete? What if a powerful voice of rationalism was articulating these very ideas, decades earlier, from a cave in Ethiopia?

Meet Zera Yacob, a 17th-century philosopher whose life and work challenge our traditional, Eurocentric view of intellectual history.

A Philosopher in a Cave

Born in 1599 near Aksum, the ancient capital of Ethiopia, Zera Yacob received a traditional education, mastering rhetoric, poetry, and critical theology. However, his era was one of intense religious turmoil. The Ethiopian Emperor Susenyos had converted to Roman Catholicism under the influence of Jesuit missionaries, leading to a violent persecution of those who held to their traditional Ethiopian Orthodox faith. Yacob, known for his sharp intellect and refusal to blindly accept dogma from either side, found himself a target. Fearing for his life, he fled, taking only a Book of Psalms, and found refuge in a cave where he would spend the next two years in total solitude.

It was in this isolation, far from the conflicting doctrines of men, that Yacob developed his radical philosophy. He decided to strip away all inherited beliefs and rely on one tool alone: his own reason, or what he called "the light of reason." He would investigate everything, from the existence of God to the nature of morality, accepting only what his intellect could prove.

The Hatata: An Inquiry into Truth

The result of his meditations was the Hatata, which translates to "The Inquiry." This short but profound treatise is Yacob's philosophical autobiography. Unlike Descartes, whose famous inquiry "I think, therefore I am" was a search for epistemological certainty, Yacob's inquiry was deeply practical and ethical. He sought to discover the truth about how to live a good and meaningful life. He began by questioning the established religions he knew: Judaism, Islam, and the warring factions of Christianity.

My faith is that of God who created me and my reason is that which he gave me. I do not say: ‘my faith is the true one because I was born to it’; but I investigate it through reason, which is the light of the heart sent from God. He who investigates with the pure intelligence which the creator has given him will discover the truth.

With this method, Yacob concluded that the dogmas and rituals of different religions were often contradictory and man-made, rather than divinely inspired. He pointed out that if God wanted to reveal a specific law, he would have made it accessible to all people through the universal faculty of reason, not just to one small group in one part of the world.

Reason, Equality, and Conscience

While Yacob rejected the specific laws of organized religions, he did not become an atheist. Through an argument from design, observing the magnificent order of the universe, he concluded that a rational, intelligent creator must exist. From this belief, he derived a universal morality based on what reason teaches us about the nature of God and humanity. His conclusions were revolutionary for their time:

• On Equality: He argued that all human beings are created equal. In a direct critique of laws like those in Leviticus, he rejected the idea that any group was chosen over another.
• On Marriage: He rejected polygamy and advocated for the marriage of one man and one woman, seeing it as a deep partnership based on intellectual and emotional equality.
• On Slavery: He condemned slavery, stating that all are equal before God and that no human has the right to own another.

All men are equal in the presence of God; and all are intelligent, since they are his creatures; he did not assign one people for life, another for death, one for mercy, another for judgment. Our reason teaches us that this sort of discrimination cannot exist.

A Legacy Rediscovered

For centuries, Zera Yacob's work was unknown outside of Ethiopia. It was only in the 19th century that a copy of the Hatata was discovered by a European missionary, and not until the 20th century that it was translated and studied widely. For a time, some European scholars questioned its authenticity, unable to believe that an African philosopher could have produced such a work in the 1600s. However, extensive analysis by scholars like the Canadian Claude Sumner has overwhelmingly affirmed that the Hatata is the genuine work of the 17th-century Ethiopian Zera Yacob.

Zera Yacob's story is more than just a historical curiosity. It is a powerful reminder that the quest for knowledge and the embrace of reason are not the property of any one culture or continent. It enriches the history of philosophy and forces us to reconsider the origins of the Enlightenment, suggesting that its core ideas were not born in a single moment in Europe, but are part of a shared human heritage of inquiry.

Sources

• Zera Yacob, the Enemy of all Dogmas
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Zera Yacob
• Zera Yacob, an Ethiopian rationalist