Published in Sep 2017

African Origins of Greek and European Philosophy

However, a vast majority of people do not know that such wisdom was not the original work of Socrates but rather a black African man named Imhotep – “the world’s first recorded multi-genius” (Diop 1991).

Not only did Socrates appropriate work from Imhotep, he also admitted that he plagiarised the work of the Ethiopian philosopher, Aesop (560BC). It is now a known fact that Socrates spent 15 years studying in Kemet before coming back to Greece and rising to fame as a result of his new-found teachings (Moore 2008). In fact, between 700 and 300 BC, thousands of Europeans flocked to Africa to study because there was not much of anything to study in Europe (Van Sertima 1975). Greeks like Aristotle, Plato and Herodotus, have all attested to their African education as the source of their intellectual aptitude (Emin 2006, Diop 1991) and in effect, plagiarism. And what came out of this was a whole range of ideas which were reinvented as original European schools of thought. Some of the notables ones are “Pythagoras theorem”, the “Hippocratic Oath”, “Thales Axiom” as well as the aforementioned “Socratic Method”. However, these were all a part of the operative sciences, rhetoric and philosophy of the Ancient Kemetic educational and philosophical systems (Diop 1974).

Indeed, many African deities were re-appropriated and given European names (Nantambu, 2017). For instance, the Greek god Zeus is actually a whitewashed version of the African god, Amun, also known as Jupiter by the Romans. Also, the African goddess Aset, who was mentioned above, was renamed Isis by the Greeks (Nantambu, 2017).

A large part of the blame must lie with Africans and the trust and dependence we have placed in Europeans to educate us. This mis-education seems to have begun under the forceful hand of colonialism and transatlantic slavery. Of course, we must acknowledge that education in itself is not negative, but we perhaps need to question the underlying goals of European educators in relation to Africans – it seems to be the maintenance of white supremacy systems (Quist-Adade, Royal 2016).

It is the same white supremacy that has perniciously nurtured a lack of awareness amongst Africans of Africa’s rich ancestry, knowledge and culture. It is therefore not by chance that one of the greatest falsifications in world history (the idea of Africans as mere slave labourers) continues to have an adverse effect on the psyche of black people across the globe (Van Sertima 1975).

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By Timeyin Oritsesan