The Catholic hierarchy tried to suppress Bantu Philosophy as heretical

Evidence

There were immediate reactions to Tempels’s book. French philosopher Gaston Bachelard greeted Tempels’s book as a treasure. Senegalese intellectual Alioune Diop pledged his faith on it and wrote an introduction to the French version, in which he described Bantu Philosophy as the most influential work he had ever read. In this work Tempels rebutted the primitiveness of Africa and affirmed its lived philosophy. Nevertheless, the book met with stiffresistance from the Roman Catholic hierarchy. For example, Bishop Jean-Felix de Hemptinne tried to control the circulation of Bantu Philosophy and persuade Rome to condemn the book as heretical. He even insisted that Tempels be expelled from the country. All these attempts, however, failed and did not dissuade Tempels from proposing his work and, particularly, his ontology as a good way for white men to encounter Africans and understand them. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 520

Categorization

• XREF: Bachelard and Diop’s praise versus the hierarchy’s resistance parallels broader patterns of colonial church-state clashes over African inculturation.