Tempels argued Bantu people possess a coherent ontology and systematic philosophy

Evidence

Unfortunately, the bearers of civilization did not take the initiative to understand the people they were civilizing. They arrived on the continent with the preconceived idea that Black people had no reason or, more accurately, no philosophy. It is, therefore, not surprising that this is the initial attitude and belief that Tempels (1959, p.10) reacts against in the first chapter of Bantu Philosophy, where he writes: “Anyone who claims that primitive peoples possess no system of thought, excludes them thereby from the category of men”. In a passage that seems to respond to the claims of European philosophers, and which indicates the origin of the book, Tempels (1959, p.11) complains to his colleagues that it is not realistic to arrive at conclusions without first making efforts to understand the Bantu: “[T]o declare on a priori grounds that the primitive people have no ideas on the nature of being, that they have no ontology, and that they are completely lacking in logic, is simply to turn one’s back on reality”. The reality, according to Tempels, is that Bantu people have philosophy. They have a certain way of thinking which is determined by their ontology. As Tempels (1959, p.10) explains, primitive people have a “logically coherent ontology … upon which their intellectual conception of the universe rests [and upon which] certain basic principles and even a system of philosophy-thought is derived”. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 142

Unfortunately, the bearers of civilization did not take the initiative to understand the people they were civilizing. They arrived on the continent with the preconceived idea that Black people had no reason or, more accurately, no philosophy. It is, therefore, not surprising that this is the initial attitude and belief that Tempels (1959, p.10) reacts against in the first chapter of Bantu Philosophy, where he writes: “Anyone who claims that primitive peoples possess no system of thought, excludes them thereby from the category of men”. In a passage that seems to respond to the claims of European philosophers, and which indicates the origin of the book, Tempels (1959, p.11) complains to his colleagues that it is not realistic to arrive at conclusions without first making efforts to understand the Bantu: “[T]o declare on a priori grounds that the primitive people have no ideas on the nature of being, that they have no ontology, and that they are completely lacking in logic, is simply to turn one’s back on reality”. The reality, according to Tempels, is that Bantu people have philosophy. They have a certain way of thinking which is determined by their ontology. As Tempels (1959, p.10) explains, primitive people have a “logically coherent ontology … upon which their intellectual conception of the universe rests [and upon which] certain basic principles and even a system of philosophy-thought is derived”. But since Bantu Philosophy was not studied and developed, and since no African could, according to Tempels (1959, p.10), provide a “systematic exposition of his ontological system”, it was up to each scholar to “seek out and define the fundamental thought underlying Bantu ontology,” the only key concept that “allows native thought to be penetrated”. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 142

Categorization

• DEFINE: Quotes Tempels’ foundational claim that Bantu have a logically coherent ontology — the core definitional content anchoring the entire book.
• XREF: The a priori denial that colonized people possess philosophy echoes debates elsewhere about who counts as having philosophy (e.g., arguments over ‘ethnophilosophy’ versus universal philosophy).
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 142