Tempels urged missionaries to abandon European methodologies for African dialogue.

Evidence

Tempels was an extraordinary thinker, philosopher, theologian, missionary and Franciscan. The Dutch anthropologist, Johannes Fabian (1969: 170), characterized him and his work as follows: … It will be remembered that Tempels started out as a revolutionary of sorts. What he did in Bantu Philosophy was to challenge dominant ideas about the intellectual capabilities of Africans, and, consequently, the methods of colonial administration and Christian mission, based on these dominant ideas. At this stage, he appears to us as a man who broke out of the sort of colonialism that has been aptly characterized as paternalism. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 69 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Tempels shifted from colonial monologue to dialogical method after observing mission failure.; The failure of mission work drove Tempels to study African thought; Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial assumptions that Africans could not think logically. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 69 (+1 more)

Related

• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial assumptions that Africans could not think logically. (similarity 0.91)
• Tempels’s dialogue with Africans arose from failed missionary conversion efforts (similarity 0.91)
• Questioning African intellect forced rethinking of colonial administration and mission methods. (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial paternalism toward African intellectual capabilities. (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels’s evangelization aim made him a philosopher of religion. (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels sought to understand Bantu thought only after missionary conversion failed (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels broke with colonial paternalism to defend African rational capacity (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels’s book targeted colonial practitioners despite his anticolonial aims (similarity 0.87)
• Evangelization failure led Tempels to dialogue-based mission methods. (similarity 0.87)
• Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy remains seminal to African philosophy despite its missionary origins (similarity 0.87)
• Tempels helped initiate the debate over whether African philosophy exists (similarity 0.87)
• Hume and Kant supplied the racial judgments Tempels opposed. (similarity 0.87)
• Tempels learned Kiluba and ethnology after missionaries failed to convert Congolese (similarity 0.87)
• Kaoze and Tempels both rejected the image of a savage Africa. (similarity 0.87)
• Tempels transcended colonial dichotomies yet still framed Christianity as the standard of humanity. (similarity 0.87)

Broader Connections

• Tempels broke with colonial paternalism to defend African rational capacity #expands (0.70)
• The failure of mission work drove Tempels to study African thought #corroborates (0.60)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy challenged colonial assumptions that Africans could not think logically. #expands (0.60) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 69