Amo left Halle in 1729 as soon as he finished his thesis but before he could be awarded his degree, when a wave of clericalism took over the University of Halle. He joined the University of Wittenberg in September of the following year. Here, Amo was finally granted the degree of Master of Philosophy and the Liberal Arts (which in a few years would be known as Doctor of Philosphy) based on his examinations at Halle.

To understand why the divide between clericalists and anti-clericalists (the free-thinkers) was so important to drive students and professors to and away from study centres in an Europe where essentially everyone was a believer, the following passage provides a good picture.

[…] the medical men have ranged themselves in two sects these days, if we can speak in such world. First there are the Mechanists, and second the Stahlians. Of them the former endeavour to maintain that the vital actions in the human body originate and for the most part act in health as in sickness mechanically, and by use of the body’s physiology. They say even that the medicaments applied act in a mechanical way in the body; and hence that the soul contributes little or nothing to all this. To this, the Stahlians state the opposite view: namely that the human soul is the prime mover in the body, and that the body through its physiological structure is only a mobile instrument; also that the medicaments applied are only stimulants which prompt the soul to motion. Nikolaus Hironymus Gundling, Vollstandinge Historie der Gelehrh (Frankfurt/Leipzig 1734)

In Wittenberg Amo learnt medicine, physiology and psychology. His teacher, and examiner of his second known thesis in April 1734, was martin Gotthelf Loesher, a friend of Ludewig, who had examined him in Halle.

Amo gave lectures, examined students and earned two more master degrees. We do not have many details of the one for medicine, but copies of the dissertation that earned him the degree of Master of Science are available today in the libraries of various universities in Germany and Ghana. It is entitled “De humanae mentis Apatheia seu sensionis ac facultatis sentiendi in mente humana absentia et ear um in corpore nostro organico ас vivo praesentia” (“Of the apatheia of the human mind, namely the absence of sensation and the faculty of sense in the human mind, and their presence in our organic and living body”). In the thesis, which confirmed him as a Mechanist, Amo critised the Descartian mind-body dualism (the French philosopher had died just 50 years before the Guinean reached Europe). He accepted that it was possible to talk about mind and body, but argues that it is the body that feels, while the mind is apathetic.

Whatever feels, lives; whatever lives, depends on nourishment; whatever lives and depends on nourishment grows; whatever is of this nature is in the end resolved into its basic principles; whatever comes to be resolved into its basic principles is a complex; every complex has its constituent parts; whatever this is true of is a divisible body. If therefore the human mind feels, it follows that it is a divisible body. Anton Wilhelm Amo, On the Apatheia of the Human Mind (Halle 1729)

Loesher attached the following note to Amo’s thesis (a second note was attached by the University Rector).

We proclaim Africa and its region of Guinea planted apart at a very great distance from us, formerly the golden coast, so called by Europeans on account of its abundant and copious yield of gold, but known by us as your fatherland, in which you first saw the light of day, the mother not only of many good things and treasures of nature but also of the most auspicious minds, we proclaim her quite deservedly. Among these auspicious minds, your genius stands out particularly, most noble and most distinguished Sir, seeing that you have excellently proved that felicity and superiority of your genius, the solidity and refinement of your learning and teaching, in countless examples up to now and even in this our University with great honour in all worthy things and now also in your present dissertation. I return to you still complete and absolutely unchanged in any respect that which you have worked out with proper contentiousness in an elegant manner supported with erudition, in order that the power of your intellect may shine forth all the more strongly henceforth. It now only remains for me to congratulate you wholeheartedly on this singular example of your refined scholarship, and, with a more abundant feeling of heart than words can convey. I solicit for you all good fortune, and to the Divine Grace and also to the Highest and Most Noble Prince Ludwig Rudolph, for whose health and safety I shall never tire of worshipping the Divine Majesty, I commend you. I write this at Wittemberg in Saxony, in the month of April, A.O.R., 173 Gotthelf Loesher

This note is in stark contrast, for example, with a footnote which the Scottish Hume appended to one of his essays and which now features prominently in the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront:

I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are NEGROE slaves dispersed all over EUROPE, of which none ever discovered any symptom of ingenuity; tho’ low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but ’tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly. David Hume, Of National Characters (1753 edition)

The Jamaican scholar Hume is referring to might have been Francis Williams, born in Kingston, who is said to have attended Cambridge somewhere between 1710 and 1720, supported by the Duke of Montagu. There are no records of Williams at Cambridge but he was certainly a well educated man and a renown poet.