Bantu Philosophy

Bantu Philosophy (La philosophie bantoue in French) is a 1945 book written by Placide Tempels which argues that the Bantu peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa have an implicit philosophy, and attempts to describe its basic tenets.

Overview

In his book, Tempels argues that the African philosophical categories can be identified through the categories inherent to language. According to Tempels, the primary metaphysical category in the thought of Bantu-speaking societies is Force. That is, reality is dynamic, and being is force.

Tempels argues that there are three possible views of the relationship between being and force.

  • Being as distinct from force, that is, beings may have force or may not.
  • Force as part of being, that is, being is more than force, but dependent upon it.
  • Being is Force, that is, the two are one and the same.

He argues that members of Bantu-speaking cultures hold the last view of force. Specifically:

'Force' is not for Bantu a necessary, irreducible attribute of being: no, the notion of 'force' takes for them the place of the notion 'being' in our philosophy. Just as we have, so they a transcendental, elemental, simple concept: with them 'force' and with us 'being'.

Tempels argues that as a result of this fundamental difference in categories, the African life of the mind is structured around understanding and defining Force, which contrasts sharply with the Western enterprise of understanding and defining Being.

Publication History

Placide Tempels wrote Bantu Philosophy in (Flemish-) Dutch, his original language. The chapters were first published one by one in two different journals Equatoria and Band. This first version was in Dutch.

His friend Émile Possoz, magistrate in Congo, who had also inspired him to write the book, immediately started to translate the chapters in French, the main language in the Belgian colony. When Lovania wanted to publish it as a book, in French, they asked for another translator. For this project Antoine Rubbens, another friend of Tempels was found. His translation is in the 1945 Lovania edition.

Only after this publication the Dutch version came out as a book, in 1946 with publishing house De Sikkel in Antwerp, Belgium. This version contains the words 'original version' on the title page.

When the Parisian publishing house Présence Africaine wanted to republish it, Tempels corrected Rubbens first version extensively, and this became the 1949 edition. A third French translation, which aimed to correct errors in the earlier versions and get closer to the Dutch original, was made by Tempels expert A.J. Smet in 2001, which is published online. See external link below.

In 1956 a German translation by Joseph Peters was published at Wolfgang Rothe Verlag. This contains several articles by German Africanists after the main text. In 1959 Présence Africaine now published an English translation of the book, made by Colin King.

The Présence Africaine translations are the most widely read versions of Bantu Philosophy. There are still others, however. In Angola, two different translations in Portuguese were made, and there also exists an Italian translation, and recently a Spanish translation has been published. All these apparently are made on the basis of the French 1949 edition.

See also
  • Ben Dekker - Bantu Philosophy was the subject of his master's degree thesis in 1969.

Bibliography
  • Mubabinge Bilolo, La Sémiologie d'un hommage au Révérend Père Placide Tempels. In : Ethique et Société. Actes de la 3ème Semaine Philosophique de Kinshasa, avril 1978 (Coll. Recherches Philosophiques Africaines, 5), Kinshasa, 1980, p. 307-331.
  • Mubabinge Bilolo, La Philosophie Nègre dans l'œuvre d'Emile Possoz. I. de 1928-1945, in Revue Africaine de Théologie, V, 10 (1981), p. 197-225.
  • Mubabinge Bilolo, L'impact d'Emile Possoz sur P. Tempels. Introduction au destin du possozianisme. In Revue Africaine de Théologie, 11 (1982), p. 27-57.
  • Fr. Bontinck, Aux origines de La philosophie bantoue, Kinshasa/Limete, FTC, 1985.
  • Diagne, Souleymane Bachir (2000) "Revisiter « La Philosophie bantoue », L'idée d'une grammaire philosophique". In Politique africaine 2000/1 (N° 77), pages 44 à 53.
  • Smet, A.J., Histoire de la philosophie africaine contemporaine: Courants et problèmes (Cours et documents, 5). Kinshasa-Limete, Départ. de PRA, FTC, 1980, 299 p. - Bibliographie, p. 5-14 et 277-292.
  • Monnier, Laurent (1993). "L'arrière-plan historique de la Philosophie bantoue de Tempels: La Rébellion". Le Zaïre à l'épreuve de l'histoire immédiate: hommage à Benoît Verhaegen. Paris: Karthala. pp. 105–24. ISBN 2-86537-409-2.
  • Roothaan, Angela (2022) "Terug naar Bantoe Filosofie. Tekst en betekenis van het werk van Placide Tempels". In: FILOSOFIE & PRAKTIJK, 43 (2022) 3+4, pp. 77-91.
  • Vinck, Honoré (2012). "Ideology in Missionary Scholarly Knowledge in Belgian Congo: Aequatoria, Centre de recherches africanistes; The Mission Station of Bamanya (RDC), 1937-2007". In Harries, Patrick; Maxwell, David (eds.). The Spiritual in the Secular: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. pp. 221–44. ISBN 978-0-8028-6634-9.
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