Tempels equated African force with Western being and misconstrued its meaning

Evidence

My reason for finding this claim less than convincing is that Tempels identified a fundamental category of Western philosophy, “being”, as worthy of comparison to what he thought was its African counterpart, “force”. If Tempels could invoke such a fundamental and enduring category as “being”, then it follows that he thought “force” its equal, including its enduring character in African thought. However, the major problem for Tempels is that this category of “force” has been identified as mystified. At the very least, it appears as if he misconstrued the true significance of “force” or, at the most, tended to attribute to it characteristics that the Bantu did not associate with it. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 429

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general critique of ethnophilosophy articulated by Hountondji and, later in the book, to comparative readings of tempels’s ‘force’ category.