Ethiopian Philosophy:
Historiography, Modernity, and Global Dialogue
Interview with Jonathan Egid and Fasil Merawi
Language of the Interview: English
Conducted by Anke Graness
Posted on
In this interview, Dr. Jonathan Egid and Prof. Fasil Merawi discuss their intellectual trajectories, the current state of philosophy in Ethiopia, and the broader challenges of African philosophy in a global context.
Both reflect on contingent beginnings that developed into sustained philosophical commitments. Prof. Merawi describes how, after initially aspiring to study archaeology, he encountered medieval philosophy at Addis Ababa University and came to see philosophy as a discipline capable of critical and constructive intervention.
Dr. Egid recounts how an early fascination with idealism, sparked by discovering Berkeley’s arguments, led him into philosophy, and later to Ethiopian thought through the debate surrounding the seventeenth-century thinker Zera Yacob and the Hatata. This encounter opened up a largely unfamiliar intellectual world and initiated long-term scholarly collaboration with Ethiopian philosophers.
Their joint research (with Lea Cantor) on Zera Yacob exemplifies both shared commitments and methodological differences. While they approach questions of authorship, historiography, and philosophical significance from distinct perspectives, they agree on the importance of the texts themselves, their reception history, and their relevance for rethinking narratives of modernity, rationality, and global intellectual exchange.
Prof. Merawi identifies key challenges for philosophy in Ethiopia and Africa more broadly: overcoming forms of exceptionalism while contributing meaningfully to global debates; countering public perceptions of philosophy as impractical or anti-religious; and demonstrating its social relevance without reducing it to instrumental “development” logic. Dr. Egid notes that in European academia the initial struggle to legitimize African philosophy as “real” philosophy is gradually giving way to more substantive engagement. Yet this shift requires careful work on defining corpora, expanding translation efforts, and training scholars capable of sustained historical and philological research.
Both conclude by envisioning the future of philosophizing in Africa as an ongoing intercultural exchange that integrates universal and particular dimensions and participates in a genuinely global dialogue.