Tempels aimed to systematize Bantu ontology using Western philosophical categories.

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: Crahay faulted Tempels for conflating lived with reflective philosophy.; Tempels sought to adopt the Bantu soul before re-presenting Christianity in adapted form.; Tempels constructed Bantu philosophy through linguistic analysis of Bantu languages (+5 more)

Related

• Tempels first raised whether an African ontology exists (similarity 0.94)
• Tempels helped initiate the debate over whether African philosophy exists (similarity 0.94)
• Tempels wrote Bantu Philosophy for practitioners, not professional philosophers (similarity 0.92)
• Tempels’s question about African ontology counters Western denial of African philosophy (similarity 0.91)
• Tempels framed Bantu Philosophy as a hypothesis, not a settled doctrine. (similarity 0.91)
• Tempels’s book targeted colonial practitioners despite his anticolonial aims (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels claims Western philosophy is needed to articulate Bantu thought (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels systematized existing African thought using Western philosophical categories. (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial assumptions that Africans could not think logically. (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels argued Bantu culture merits philosophical recognition partly through resemblance to Christian Europe (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels’ force ontology made African philosophy a Bantustan philosophy (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy aimed at more effective Christianization of the Bantu. (similarity 0.88)
• Tempels systematized Bantu thought through Western categorical frameworks. (similarity 0.88)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged Western philosophy’s universal claims in 1946 (similarity 0.88)
• Tempels’s evangelization aim made him a philosopher of religion. (similarity 0.88)

Broader Connections

• Tempels constructed Bantu philosophy through linguistic analysis of Bantu languages #expands (0.70)
• Tempels first raised whether an African ontology exists #expands (0.60)
• Tempels helped initiate the debate over whether African philosophy exists #expands (0.60) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 208
• Canonical African philosophy emerged largely in response to Tempels’s provocation #complicates (0.50) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 346
• Tempels’s text shaped African philosophy’s identity despite its errors #expands (0.50)
• Tempels wrote Bantu Philosophy for practitioners, not professional philosophers #qualifies (0.50)