Ethiopian Rationalism (Hatata)
from 1667
A man hiding in a cave decided to test every religion he knew against reason alone, and wrote down what survived.
- Active
- from 1667
- Where
- Ethiopia
- Also
- ሐተታ ḥatäta
- Status
- extinct as a movement
- Tradition
- African
The claim
God gave every person reason, and gave it to all equally. A doctrine that reason cannot support has no claim on anyone, whichever faith teaches it and however old it is.
What it held
Zera Yacob fled Portuguese Jesuit persecution in the 1630s and spent two years living in a cave beside a river. What he wrote there is a first-person account of testing his inherited beliefs one at a time.
The method is comparative and it is the interesting part. Christians say one thing, Muslims another, Jews a third, and each is confident. Since they cannot all be right and each has the same kind of authority behind it, authority cannot be what settles the matter. What everyone does have in common is reason — so reason is the only available test.
His conclusions are startling for the date and the place. Polygamy fails the test because women and men are equally human. So does the Christian preference for celibacy, on the grounds that it contradicts the nature we were made with. So does slavery. Fasting rules, dietary laws and monastic vows all fail as human additions.
On God he is a theist arguing from design and from the order of things, and his God is one who wants people to use what they were given rather than to submit.
The authenticity was disputed for a century — an Italian scholar claimed the manuscripts were forged by the missionary who found them — and the dispute is not fully closed, though the case for authenticity is now the stronger.
How it argued
First-person inquiry, comparing the competing religious claims available and testing each against what reason and human nature support.
What it was arguing against
Jesuit missionary claims, Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, and every doctrine resting on authority rather than argument.
Where it disagreed with itself
The authenticity question, raised by Conti Rossini in 1920 and revisited repeatedly. Whether the second text, by his student Walda Heywat, is by the same hand.
Common misconceptions
That it is an African echo of European rationalism. Zera Yacob wrote in Geez in the 1660s in circumstances that gave him no access to Descartes, and his method is comparative-religious rather than epistemological in the European manner.
How it began
Persecution. Zera Yacob was denounced for teaching, fled the court, and spent two years in a cave with time to think and nothing else to do.
What became of it
No school followed. His student Walda Heywat wrote a second treatise and the tradition stopped there.
Lasting influence
Almost none at the time. Substantial now in the argument about what counts as philosophy and who is allowed to have produced it.
Why it still matters
It is a fully worked-out argument for religious toleration and human equality, from 1667, made outside Europe and independently of it.
Put another way
A man in a cave weighing four religions on the same scale and finding none of them heavier for being his.
Where to start
The Hatata itself in Sumner's translation. It is short and it is a person talking.
The surprising bit
He argued that women and men are equal, that slavery is wrong, and that no religion may be imposed — in 1667, in Geez, with no interlocutors at all.
In their own words
All men are equal in the presence of God, and all are intelligent, since they are his creatures.
He did not assign one law to one people and another to another.
Connections
- Opposed by
- Patristics
The verdict
One book by one man, written in hiding, and it makes several arguments Europe took another century to reach.