Tempels systematized existing African thought using Western philosophical categories.

Evidence

What Tempels (1945) did, and what he deserves much credit for, was he applied European philosophical tools to understand the people he was working for, and he then shared the findings of his excavation with his superiors and colleagues in Belgium, the mission territories and the wider world. … Using the plural, he explicitly advises his colleagues to “trace out the elements of this thought, to classify them and systematize them according to the ordered systems and intellectual disciplines of the Western world.” — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 111

If one looks at the context in which Bantu Philosophy was formulated, Tempels can be praised for his efforts to promote African philosophy in the West. His objective with Bantu Philosophy was to stimulate an understanding of African thinking and, in that way, a dialogue. However, Tempels’s (1959: 21) method of interpretation was an analysis based on the logic of Western categories: “It is our task to trace out the elements of this thought, to classify them and to systematise them according to the ordered systems and intellectual disciplines of the Western world.” — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 1016

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘Bantu philosophy’ in Tempels’s sense means native African ontology to be classified into Western categories, not a field Tempels invented.
• XREF: Connects to the wider debate over whether non-Western traditions count as philosophy and the colonial origins of African philosophy as an academic field.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 111; Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 1016