Tempels’s book targeted colonial practitioners despite his anticolonial aims

Evidence

In this period of time, individuals had to fall within the category of thinkers to be counted among the philosophers or intellectuals of their time. It is in this framework that we can read and appreciate without prejudice the Bantu philosophical work of Placide Tempels. Bearing this premise in mind, we can count Tempels among the scholars who contributed to the general birth of African Philosophy as well as the starting point of the debate regarding whether or not there is any African philosophy at all. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 208 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Tempels broke with colonial paternalism to defend African rational capacity; Tempels wrote Bantu Philosophy for practitioners, not professional philosophers; Ideological critiques trace Tempels’ work to colonial paternalism (+1 more)

Related

• Tempels wrote Bantu Philosophy for practitioners, not professional philosophers (similarity 0.97)
• Tempels broke with colonial paternalism to defend African rational capacity (similarity 0.94)
• Tempels wrote for colonial practitioners, not academic philosophers (similarity 0.93)
• Tempels helped initiate the debate over whether African philosophy exists (similarity 0.92)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial paternalism toward African intellectual capabilities. (similarity 0.92)
• Tempels’s colonial-era book provoked African philosophy into existence (similarity 0.91)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial assumptions that Africans could not think logically. (similarity 0.91)
• Tempels aimed to systematize Bantu ontology using Western philosophical categories. (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy remains seminal to African philosophy despite its missionary origins (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels first raised whether an African ontology exists (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels’ book changed European and African self-conceptions despite professional criticism (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged Western philosophy’s universal claims in 1946 (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels’s evangelization aim made him a philosopher of religion. (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels’s well-meaning text nonetheless failed to represent African interests (similarity 0.89)
• Canonical African philosophy emerged largely in response to Tempels’s provocation (similarity 0.89)

Broader Connections

• Tempels wrote Bantu Philosophy for practitioners, not professional philosophers #expands (0.80)
• Tempels helped initiate the debate over whether African philosophy exists #expands (0.75) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 208