Walda Heywat and the second Hatata

Walda Heywat was an Ethiopian philosopher and follower of Zera Yacob whose Hatata (meditation) extended Yacob's rationalist ethics into the 18th century, arguing that reason and justice are universal principles knowable without authority or tradition. Her work demonstrates that philosophical rigor and ethical clarity emerged from African thought in periods when European intellectual centers claimed monopoly on both, a fact worth knowing for anyone still sorting inherited assumptions about where serious thinking happens.