Tempels’s method compared Bantu languages, behaviors, institutions, and customs.
Evidence
Regarding the methodology, he had to take into consideration a comparative study of the different languages he could understand as well as the behavioural patterns, institutions and customs of the Bantu people, from which one can draw certain elements of the African philosophical thought in his study. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 226
Categorization
Category: Craft and Method
Related
- Tempels’s thought is best understood through his whole corpus, not just Bantu Philosophy (similarity 0.88)
- Tempels argued Bantu culture merits philosophical recognition partly through resemblance to Christian Europe (similarity 0.87)
- Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial paternalism toward African intellectual capabilities. (similarity 0.87)
- Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy aimed at more effective Christianization of the Bantu. (similarity 0.87)
- Questioning African intellect forced rethinking of colonial administration and mission methods. (similarity 0.86)
- Tempels systematized Bantu thought through Western categorical frameworks. (similarity 0.85)
- Tempels systematized existing African thought using Western philosophical categories. (similarity 0.85)
- Tempels had no university training beyond seminary before writing Bantu Philosophy (similarity 0.85)
- Tempels’ book changed European and African self-conceptions despite professional criticism (similarity 0.85)
- Tempels imposed Western interpretive categories despite advocating local grounding (similarity 0.85)
- Tempels neither invented nor discovered Bantu philosophy. (similarity 0.84)
- Tempels methodologically birthed ethnophilosophy, later named by Nkrumah and Hountondji. (similarity 0.84)
- Tempels’ force ontology made African philosophy a Bantustan philosophy (similarity 0.84)
- Tempels addressed Bantu Philosophy to colonizers seeking to Christianize Africans (similarity 0.84)
- Tempels’s project contained a self-contradictory affirmation and civilizing commitment (similarity 0.84)