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Mudimbe, V. Y.
2021.
Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy.
p.
147.
Article contents
Conceptual Take-Off Conditions for a Bantu Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
We still cannot speak of a Bantu philosophy today—or, more generally, of a Negro-African philosophy—without referring first of all to a pioneer work: La philosophie Bantou, by R. P. Tempels, which in 1948 created for the first time an orthodoxy in this hitherto unexplored, or nearly unexplored, field. The fact that this orthodoxy has become accepted would certainly not be enough to justify a heresy. But there may, however, be good reasons to reject it.
In its time R. P. Tempels' work was well received, on the whole with sympathy by the Europeans whom it endeavored to reach, and with unreserved enthusiasm by the intellectuals of Central and West Africa, for whom it opened a way back to their native roots. Quite apart at the moment from any question of philosophy, the author interpreted something essentially and inherently African.
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © 1965 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 The text of a lecture given at the Goethe Institute of Léopoldville, March 19, 1965.
2 Editions de Présence Africaine.
3 The conference at which this article was originally presented was addressed to an audience composed in major part of Congolese students at the University of Léopoldville. We were confident that they would prefer as a matter of principle the bothersome, perhaps unpleasant truth to the maintenance of comforting illusions.
4 This counter-sense—and others of the same genre—pervade the various articles gathered in the volume Aspects de la culture noire, Paris, Fayard, 1958.
5 Mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences coloniales, N.S. XII, 1, Brussels, 1956. The author uses the "Bantu" graph; we keep the term "Bantu" for the sake of uniformity.
6 La notion luba-bantoue de l'être, Documents et Recherches, Centre Eglise Vivante, Louvain, 1964.
7 We call attention to the fact that we have not concluded that there is no Negro-African philosophy, although the credit side of the balance sheet may be meager: works of L. S. Senghor, Alioune Diop, Sékou Touré and Kwame N'Krumah. We will deal later with the work of N'Krumah.
8 Its establishment is doubtless not possible in Congolese universities.
9 We carefully avoid reducing philosophy to the level of ideology (in the sense of a minimal speculation closely tied to a concerted action.)
10 Cf. B. Verhaegen, "L'université et les étudiants. Sociologie d'une grève," Présence Africaine, December 1964.
11 To use the happy expression of U. Campagnolo, "L'Afrique entre dans l'histoire," Comprendre, 21-22, 1960, p. 155.
12 We presume that this philosophy would be expressed in Bantu language. This may not be indispensable. But we are skirting the question, as the even more delicate one of the choice of the most adequate of the dominant languages.
13 This is suggested in particular by the absence of a clear distinction between time and space.
14 The criticism raised against Rostow's concept do not seem to us to negate it. Cf., for example, those of Raymond Aron in "La Théorie du développement et les problèmes idéologiques de notre temps," Preuves, April 1963.
15 On this question see L. V. Thomas, "Temps, Mythe et Histoire en Afrique de l'Ouest," Présence Africaine, 1961, 4, and, more generally, G. Gusdorf, Mythe et métaphysique, Paris, Flammarion, 1953.
16 See, for example, the proceedings of a recent conference on "Technique and Casuistry" at the Institute of Philosophical Studies, Rome, 1964.
17 Claimed by Neo-African culture, this value is as much psychophysical as moral
18 The discussion, however, is summary and peripheral to the problematics of our time.
19 Kagame, op. cit., p. 278.
20 F. N'Sougan Agblemagnon, "Totalités et systèmes dans les sociétés d'Afrique Noire," Présence Africaine, 1962, 2, pp. 13-22; e.g. p. 15 and p. 21.
21 Kwame N'Krumah, Le Consciencisme, French translation, Paris, Payot, 1965.
22 Op. cit., p. 169.