William Emmanuel Abraham

William Emmanuel Abraham, also known as Willie E. Abraham, or his day name, Kojo Abraham (born on Monday, 28 May 1934), is a Nigerian-born Ghanaian retired philosopher.

Biography Abraham was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to Ghanaian parents, and was raised within the Akan (Fante) cultural milieu before receiving his schooling in Ghana and Great Britain.

Abraham was educated at the Government Boys' School and Adisadel Secondary School in Cape Coast, Ghana. He obtained a BA from the University of Ghana, graduating with first-class honours in philosophy in 1957. Travelling to England to study at Oxford University, he received a B.Phil. and was the first African to be elected a Fellow of All Souls College. In 1960, he was nominated to be a Governor of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University.

While at All Souls, Abraham recalled facing overt racism from some senior fellows, including one who told him at a formal dinner that he "did not like black people", and a warden who accepted his election only grudgingly. Abraham later reflected that strict rules and procedures within the college could sometimes protect students from the arbitrary effects of such prejudice. Abraham has likened this advisory role to that of Leibniz tutoring the House of Brunswick, noting that Nkrumah would sometimes call him in the middle of the night for advice and consult him "whenever he was in a corner", even though the two men were not personal friends. The view that Abraham may have been the book's principal author remains debated in the secondary literature. He also held an academic position as Professor of Philosophy at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has had a life-long scholarly interest in the life and work of the eighteenth-century Ghanaian philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo and in the metaphysics and logic of the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

Works

Books and monographs He Dwells Among Us: Son of God and Son of Man. Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2021. What Did Jesus Do? Some Theological Reflections. Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2017. The Mind of Africa. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2015. The Mind of Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Book chapters "African Philosophers" (with Olúfémi Táíwò, D. A. Masolo, F. Abiola Irele and Claude Sumner). In Robert L. Arrington (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophers. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008, pp. 1–38. "Anton Wilhelm Amo". In Kwasi Wiredu (ed.), A Companion to African Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 191–199. "The Life and Times of Anton Wilhelm Amo, the First African (Black) Philosopher in Europe". In Molefi Kete Asante and Abu Shardow Abarry (eds.), African Intellectual Heritage: A Book of Sources. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996, pp. 424–440. "Theory of Human Society". In Molefi Kete Asante and Abu Shardow Abarry (eds.), African Intellectual Heritage: A Book of Sources. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996, pp. 452–461. "Crisis in African Cultures". In Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu (eds.), Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, I. Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change, Series II: Africa, vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1992, pp. 13–38. "Sources of African Identity". In Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu (eds.), Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, I. Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change, Series II: Africa, vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1992. "Predication". Studia Leibnitiana, vol. 7, no. 1 (1975), pp. 1–20. "Complete Concepts and Leibniz's Distinction between Necessary and Contingent Propositions". Studia Leibnitiana, vol. 1, no. 4 (1969), pp. 263–279. "The Life and Times of Anton Wilhelm Amo, the First African (Black) Philosopher in Europe". Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, vol. 7 (1964), pp. 60–81.

Other academic writings Review of Hide Ishiguro, Leibniz' Philosophy of Logic and Language. Man and World, vol. 8, no. 3 (1975), p. 347.

Public and civic writings "Kwame Relies on the Masses". The Nkrumaist, vol. 4, no. 1 (January 1966), pp. 11–14. Speech at the launching of Kwame Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism. The Spark, no. 161 (19 November 1965). "The Role of the Press in the Transition to Socialism". In W. M. Sulemann-Sibidow, The African Journalist. Winneba: Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, 1965, pp. 43–51. "Political Education is Essential". The Ghanaian Times, 24 October 1964. "Ideologies in Contemporary Africa". The Ghanaian Times, 7, 11, 21, 24 December 1963.