Bant u pHilosophy : Placide Tempels Revisited

Abstract

The French translation of Father Tempels' book (it was originally written in Flemish) was published in Zaire in 1945 under the title, La philosophic bantoue. Its English translation was not published until 1959. It is with the latter, entitled Bantu philosophy, that we are concerned. The book is divided into seven chapters following on the preface. However, the chapters form an organic whole. The central thesis of that whole is the theory of vital force. It is first established in chapter one; while chapters two to six relate it to God/divinities, man, and society. Tempels insists on understanding and interpreting the roles of these agents in the light of the theory. He appears to have more or less viewed it as possessing the kind of senses expressed by modern sociological studies in terms of explanatory concept and predictive theory.' It is these understandings which obviously underpin the discussion of the final chapter entitled 'Bantu philosophy and our mission to civilize'. We may now turn to the thesis for a closer scrutiny. Tempels doubts the validity of the various eighteenth/nineteenth century2 Western definitions of the African world, definitions still in vogue in the twentieth century, which proceed with such definitive concepts as 'animism', 'dynamism', 'mana' etc. To him,