Abstract
The present study, a result of exploratory qualitative field research roughly made between 2018 and 2022 is concerned with critical remembering (revisiting or revising) of the past in the indigenous philosophical traditions of Ethics of the Oromo, Amhara, and Gurage peoples of Ethiopia. Consequently, using a critical hermeneutics interpretation of the notion of ‘remembering’ found to be depicted in two Ethiopian aphorisms: kan darbe yaadatani, issa gara fuula dura itti yaaddu (in remembering the past, the future is remembered) and/or yȅhuwǝlaw kǝlele yȁlam yȁfitu (the future cannot exist without the past), as a normative analytical guide, the present study sought to achieve two major and highly interrelated objectives. The first objective is to make a critical rediscovery, and/or remembering of the moral and humanistic foundations and features of Ethiopian indigenous ethics by taking anecdotes from the ethical thinking and moral languages of the Oromo, Amhara, and the Gurage people. The second objective seeks to determine whether these living Ethiopian indigenous philosophical traditions, if examined in terms of the “remembered future,” could reveal some emancipatory ‘surplus meanings and/or principles’ and might in turn provide answers to some of the essential questions of inter-cultural dialogue, peacebuilding and democracy in Ethiopia. The study found out that, the indigenous moral values in the study areas are complex and largely connected to humanness (the strong quality of human beings), cooperation, a healthy sense of community, generosity, and respect for others, which are highly meaningful in the above regards, i.e., intercultural dialogue for peacebuilding in the country.
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Notes
By Oromo, Amhara, and Gurage, I do not mean to discount the crucial civilizational contributions of other linguistic and/or cultural population groups and religions in Ethiopia. Constraints of space and the topic of the article oblige me to limit my discussion on this issue. However, the logic of the discussion permits the reader to expand on the topic and engage in a similar interpretation that embraces other population groups of Ethiopia. Rather than situating one culture as the ultimate source of philosophy, the study seeks to demonstrate the existence of analogous structural patterns across cultural boundaries.
Indeed, it must be noted that the concept of mourning is used here not as referring to a form of repentance but, almost like the concept of anamnestic solidarity, as a conceptualization of past suffering that may contribute to the healing of individual and collective identities (see also Duvenage 1999).
On the “backward-looking” concept of development or progress, see Amy Allen (2016), The End of Progress.
We know that the Italian fascist government established what it called Governo of Eritrea, Governo of Amhara, Governo of [Oromo]-Sidamo, Governo of Harrar, Governo of Somalia, which is more or less based on the divisive ethnic criteria (see Sbacchi 1985, emphasis mine).
Menelik’s territorial expansion in the nineteenth century is subject to contradictory interpretations. For instance, Merera (2003) identified three perspectives, i.e., nation-building, colonial, and national oppression theses. Proponents of the nation-building thesis claim this territorial expansion was motivated by Menelik’s desire to establish a nation-state based on common citizenship. Colonial thesis depicted that the expansion was nothing more than colonial subjugation of non-Abyssinians by the Amhara rulers. The National- oppression thesis accuses the territorial expansion because it imposes new culture upon the pre-existing kingdoms and principalities of the different peoples.
This view is one of the theoretical underpinnings of the present Ethiopian ethnic federalism and many ethnolinguistic nationalist movements. One of the ways that it impacts identities, as the Ethiopian scholar Maimire Mennasemay (2005, 270) puts it, “. . ontologizes ethnic identity and falsely represents Ethiopia as a collection of discrete, ethnic communities, brought together by “Amhara colonialism.” The scholar Mamdani (2012) builds on this view by arguing that transforming identities (politicizing nativity) was essential in governing colonial empires. In other words, the colonial government invented settlers and natives in their territories and treated them accordingly.
Note that historically, Ethiopians have understood themselves in terms of the region they come from and rarely in terms of ethnic belonging or in terms of the Western conception of “nation” that assumes homogeneity.
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The author is grateful to all the study participants for they were very consensual to give me, without hesitation, the information I required on the topic of interest.
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Gichamo, B.W. Traditional Ethics for Intercultural Dialogues in Ethiopia: Anecdotes from the Oromo, Amhara, and Gurage Peoples’ Moral Languages. Philosophia 51, 1249–1270 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00624-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00624-1