Vitalism is a shared orientation, not an exclusively African or Western one

Evidence

Tempels’s strategy was to unilaterally present the Bantu conceptual vitalistic framework. By making this choice, he missed the opportunity to define the similarities between Bantu thinking and logical positivistic topics within European philosophy. Tempels was inspired by Thomas Aquinas and Henri-Louis Bergson, who, just like the Bantus, were convinced of the existence of a vital force. In retrospect, Tempels could have emphasized that vitalism is not exclusively African or Western but a shared philosophical orientation determined by the local context. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 1029

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the usual African-vs-Western dichotomy by connecting Bantu vital force to Aquinas and Bergson; ties to Tempels’s own training and to my reading on postcolonial epistemology. — connects to: The English Civil War revived vitalist philosophy as an alternative to mechanism — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 526