Amo's Philosophy of Mind and Cartesian Epistemology

Abstract

This essay is an introductory exegesis of the problems arising in classical mechanistic dualism, focusing on the enigmatic notions of idea and possibility that philosophers grappled with in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly Descartes and Leibniz, and later Kant and Frege. The author approached these canonical concerns of the western analytic tradition unconventionally, studying in detail the perspective of Anton Wilhelm Amo, introducing and extending the epistemological and metaphysical contributions of the first African philosopher on record with an international academic reputation.