The repeated critiques of Tempels obstruct more useful philosophical developments.

Evidence

The debate about this “philosophy” that has since developed, and which is regularly repeated, appears to me unduly intellectual. Tempels’s work is certainly ambiguous. It is not, however, worth the extreme responses that it sometimes provokes. Surely one could reproach Tempels for confusing the vulgar meaning of philosophy with its technical definition, but by returning insistently and incessantly to this weakness, as though, philosophically, it constitutes a mortal sin, African philosophers obstruct more useful developments. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 370

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the general phenomenon of ritualistic critique — a body of scholarship fueled by refuting one flawed text, paralleling Milgrom on institutions self-sustaining around a focal target.