Tempels practiced phenomenological reduction rather than ethnocentric anthropology among the Baluba

Evidence

From this quotation, we notice that Tempels distances himself from the dominant anthropological model at the time. Tempels went against the grain and adopted a radically different attitude from the ethnocentric emphasis of the classical anthropology of his time; his attitude was one of sympathy with real encounters, visibly absent in anthropology. As an etic outsider trying to bring out the emic philosophy of the Bantu-speaking, he remained open to them. His encounter with the Baluba was independent of the assumptions and presuppositions of what he had learned. He lived among the Baluba in an unimposing way in a bid to catch a glimpse of their life as it showed itself. This encounter also transformed his own life. He involved himself in what Husserl calls “phenomenological reduction”: examining the meaning produced by pure impersonal consciousness and describing the human “life-world” in terms of those essences found within conscious experience. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 519

Categorization

• XREF: The Husserlian reduction framing links Tempels to the wider phenomenological tradition — connects to Continental philosophy of encounter and intersubjectivity.
• DEFINE: Concise working definition of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction grounds the whole methodological argument of the chapter.