Placide Tempels

Placide Frans Temple ( born February 18, 1906 in Berlaar, Belgium, † October 9, 1977 ) was a Belgian missionary. He became famous for his work La philosophie bantoue in 1945.

Life

Born as Frans temple, he took over 18 years the name Placide when he entered the seminary of the Franciscans ( OFM). After his ordination to the priesthood in 1930, he taught for three years in Belgium, before being appointed in 1933 to the Belgian Congo ( now the Democratic Republic of Congo). He remained there for 29 years. His stay was interrupted only by two short-term travel to Belgium. In April 1962, he eventually returned to live in a Franciscan monastery in Berlaar, where he died in 1977.

Bantu Philosophy

Although he was neither African nor a philosopher, had great influence on the temple African philosophy, by the publication of his work La philosophie bantoue in 1945 (Eng. 1956. Bantu philosophy ontology and ethics). This work of ethno- philosophy has been criticized, among other things, Paulin Hountondji, Aimé Césaire, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kwasi Wiredu and Peter Bodunrin. Many agreed but also ( partially or completely, implicitly or explicitly ) the transported him ideas or ideologies, such as Alexis Kagame. Temple itself occupied by this work to have found a key to the understanding of "primitive" thinking.

His Bantu philosophy is broadly as follows:

Reception

Paulin Hountondji criticized the theoretical approach the temple '. This served as Hountondji, both the rehabilitation of African culture as well as the thesis Lévy -Bruhl. The success of the literary work temple ' is understandable, because he satisfied with his work varied expectations:

It is also important to note:

• Thomism in the work shows that it is not the philosophy of the Bantu, but the temple 's own philosophy.
• The object imperial rule discourse is relieved by this pseudo- philosophy of worldviews of participation.
• A popular, ideological use of " philosophy " is in contrast to philosophy proper in the strict, theoretical use of the word.

Aimé Césaire exercised political criticism ( Discours sur le colonialisme, 1950), by showing the serious consequences of such a reduced African philosophy. However, he accepted implicitly the theoretical approach of ethno- philosophy, which says there was indeed a spontaneous, collective Bantu philosophy.

Alexis Kagame (priest in Rwanda) also claimed the existence of a collective Bantu philosophy. He limited, however - unlike Placide temple - the claim to the region Rwandas and neighboring countries a. To the idea of an unchanging, eternal thought system to lend plausibility, he led from the ontology of the grammatical structure of the Kinyarwanda. Theoretical thinking is so Kagame, in their mother tongue due; a mother tongue conditional therefore a completely different way of thinking. Kagame presented his work explicitly as a monograph, but he said that formal logic is same in all cultures. Kagame describes power as being in motion. Being alone and being in motion are simply two aspects of the same being.