Ethnophilosophy erred by comparing traditional African thought with modern Western philosophy across mismatched epochs

Evidence

What Tempels missed is an insight that is found in Kwasi Wiredu’s caution regarding how unproductive it is to compare modern Western philosophy with traditional African thought. Wiredu (1980: 37–50) advises that if one wants to come to a productive comparison between African philosophy and Western philosophy, it is fair that such a comparison must be carried out between epochs that correlate. Thus, in Wiredu’s view, a comparison of traditional African philosophy with traditional Western philosophy will reveal that both these societies and their philosophies are not radically different. Tempels, however, proceeded to compare what clearly was traditional African folk-philosophy to a well-developed and technical Western philosophy. Hence, Tempels mistakenly thought that it was justifiable for traditional philosophy to be compared with modern philosophy. The results of this comparison led Tempels to commit to the idea that he had found a version of African philosophy that was comparable to modern Western philosophy built on Cartesian foundations. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 440

Categorization

• DEFINE: Wiredu’s methodological rule — comparing philosophies only between correlating historical epochs — is spelled out here as the criterion distinguishing legitimate comparative philosophy from ethnophilosophy’s error.