Bantu Philosophy helped shape negritude’s claim that African thought is emotional

Evidence

It may not be known to many, but according to Chachage (1994), the book played a very significant role in the formation and articulation of negritude, a movement rooted in the Harlem Renaissance in the United States, which was popularized in Africa by Léopold Senghor (1906–2001), the first president of Senegal (1960–1980). Senghor’s quest was similar to that of Tempels. He wanted to find out if Africans have a philosophy and world view that is distinct from their Western counterparts. The conclusion he reached was that the African world view and philosophy is indeed different from the European world view. For Senghor, the factor that accounts for the difference is “emotion”, not “reason”. That is because “reason”, as Senghor understood it, is Hellenistic and not African. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 112

Categorization

• XREF: Ties into wider scholarship on negritude and its Harlem Renaissance roots; a specific causal chain from Tempels to Senghor.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Senghor’s emotion/reason dichotomy relate to later African philosophy’s rejection of that very dichotomy?