Tempels first raised whether an African ontology exists

Evidence

It is probably true that the story of African philosophy would not have been what it is today were it not for the amount of provocation that the little book by Tempels triggered. There are books and essays that are canonical in African philosophy today due largely to and because of what Tempels wrote and where both he and his ideas stood in relation to the colonial history of the continent. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 346 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Tempels aimed to systematize Bantu ontology using Western philosophical categories.; Tempels helped initiate the debate over whether African philosophy exists — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 208; Bantu ontology is grounded in vital force rather than Being — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 526 (+2 more)

Related

• Tempels helped initiate the debate over whether African philosophy exists (similarity 0.95)
• Tempels aimed to systematize Bantu ontology using Western philosophical categories. (similarity 0.94)
• Tempels’s question about African ontology counters Western denial of African philosophy (similarity 0.93)
• Tempels wrote Bantu Philosophy for practitioners, not professional philosophers (similarity 0.92)
• Tempels’s colonial-era book provoked African philosophy into existence (similarity 0.91)
• Canonical African philosophy emerged largely in response to Tempels’s provocation (similarity 0.91)
• Tempels’ force ontology made African philosophy a Bantustan philosophy (similarity 0.91)
• Tempels’s book targeted colonial practitioners despite his anticolonial aims (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged Western philosophy’s universal claims in 1946 (similarity 0.90)
• Scholars dispute whether Bantu Philosophy or Ubuntu is the root of African philosophy (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels claims Western philosophy is needed to articulate Bantu thought (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels framed Bantu Philosophy as a hypothesis, not a settled doctrine. (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels argued Bantu culture merits philosophical recognition partly through resemblance to Christian Europe (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial assumptions that Africans could not think logically. (similarity 0.88)
• Tempels confined African philosophy to a segregated conceptual ghetto (similarity 0.88)

Broader Connections

• Canonical African philosophy emerged largely in response to Tempels’s provocation #expands (0.60) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 346
• Tempels’s text shaped African philosophy’s identity despite its errors #corroborates (0.55)