Bantu Philosophy

A short book by a Belgian Franciscan missionary who worked among the Baluba in the Belgian Congo. Written in Dutch, it first appeared in French in 1945 and in its Dutch form in 1946. Tempels argues that the Bantu have a coherent philosophy, implicit in their language and customs, which Europeans must understand if they wish to teach or govern them. Its core is an ontology of vital force. Where Western philosophy treats being as static, Tempels claims that for the Bantu being simply is force. Forces form a hierarchy, from God through the founding ancestors and the dead to living people, animals, plants and minerals, and every being can strengthen or weaken others. Later chapters derive a theory of wisdom, of human nature and of ethics and law from this idea: what increases life is good. The book is often credited with opening the debate on African philosophy, but critics, notably Paulin Hountondji, called it ethnophilosophy serving colonial aims.

It started the modern debate on whether, and in what sense, there is an African philosophy, and nearly every later work in the field responds to it.