Tempels’ generalization from Baluba to all Africans was unjustified and worthless

Evidence

For a start, Tempels must be seen as someone who was limited by the colonial and missionary expedition. When he tried to (somewhat) use one for the benefit of the other, there was no guarantee that he would succeed. Yet, his attempt led to Bantu Philosophy. In approaching the text, one must keep in mind that, despite Tempels’s claim that he was able to generalize what he knew about the Baluba to all Africans and primitives, the generalization did not add anything of value to his theory. It did not make it any more truthful or more appealing. His theory was just a generalization that he had hoped would prove that all primitives were the same and were deserving of the same treatment in colonist missions as well as prove that his theory or understanding of natives was accurate. This, of course, was not true. Africans were not the same and could not have been the same. As history has shown, the tactics used by colonial administrators differed widely and equally have had widely different consequences. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 466

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the critical reading of Tempels’ force-ontology generalization already established earlier in the book.