African philosophy debates still define themselves in relation to Tempels

Evidence

Moreover, as Hountondji remarked, while crediting the Bantu with a philosophy Tempels’s own philosophical credentials were minimal, and he used the word philosophy loosely to mean little more than a coherent, rich, and complex way of thinking instead of critical, reflective, and logical inquiry. Finally, Mudimbe argues that even though we have gone beyond the far-reaching and drastic change initiated by Tempels, we still find traces of Tempels in the emerging trends in African philosophy today. The most stimulating debates or orientations in the field of African philosophy still delineate themselves, directly or indirectly, with respect to Tempels (1959, p. 24). The Cameroonian philosopher Pierre Meinrad Hebga (1928–2008) corroborates this view when he challenged those scholars who opposed Tempels and underrated the work of his supporters (by referring to the work debasingly as “ethnophilosophy”) as just being unappreciative of someone who made it possible for them to philosophize (Hebga, 1982). — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 508

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how ‘philosophy’ shifted meaning from Tempels’s loose sense (a coherent worldview) to strict critical inquiry — a key conceptual distinction in the field.