Tempels paired Western being with African force, a pairing critics call mystified.

Evidence

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

• DEFINE: Defines Tempels’s central move: aligning being/force as comparable fundamental categories.
• XREF: Connects to the broader critique of ethnophilosophy (Hountondji) and later chapters engaging force as a category.