Bantu philosophy

Bantu philosophy, the philosophy, religious worldview, and ethical principles of the Bantu peoples—tens of millions of speakers of the more than 500 Bantu languages on the African continent—as articulated by 20th-century African intellectuals and founders of contemporary African philosophy and theology.

Originally, the term Bantu philosophy referred to research done on traditional culture between 1950 and 1990 in Central Africa—more specifically, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (called Zaire in 1971–97), Rwanda, and Uganda by philosophers and theologians such as Mulago Gwa Cikala Musharamina, John Mbiti, Mutuza Kabe, and Alexis Kagame. That research was part of the process of decolonization of knowledge that began with the collapse of European colonial empires in the wake of World War I and World War II. It was intended to rediscover the ancestral philosophical worldview and spiritual values that had been denigrated and distorted by colonial education. That goal was accomplished by analyzing African proverbs; the structure of Bantu languages, songs, art, and music; and various customs and social institutions. In so doing, “Bantu philosophy” scholars defined the criteria needed for a philosophy or theology to be “African.” Those criteria involved the use of African languages and an African worldview.

That method of philosophizing and theologizing was inaugurated in 1910 by Stefano Kaoze, the first Congolese to gain substantial training in modern philosophy. In his essay titled “La Psychologie des Bantu” (“Bantu Psychology”), Kaoze articulated what he regarded as the Bantu way of thinking about knowledge, moral values, God, life, and the afterlife. Working in the context of Christian evangelization, Kaoze called for the replacement of colonial Christianity with an “African Christianity.” For such an Africanization of Christianity to occur, he maintained that the Gospel should be preached in African languages and with African methods and that it should address the real issues of African lives, including colonial oppression. He inaugurated the basic method of African theology, which consists of the following elements:

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• The establishment of the elements of a traditional African philosophy and a philosophical anthropology to be used as the foundation for a theological discourse
• The use of traditional religion and wisdom (proverbs, myths of creation, traditional vision of God, traditional ethic, and oral literature) as the foundation for theology
• The use of African languages
• The unveiling of the “cultural unity” of African cultures through comparative studies that grasp the common features of African worldviews, ethical principles, and spiritual values and the use of them to articulate an African theology
• The defense and promotion of human rights as a fundamental task of African theology

However, it was Bantu Philosophy, a book published in 1945 by the Belgian missionary Placide Tempels, that popularized the notion of Bantu philosophy in Africa and in the West. That small book generated much controversy that played an important role in the development of contemporary African philosophy and inculturation theology. The merit of Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy resides not in its findings and conclusions, which are viewed as having several weaknesses, but rather in the challenge the book itself poses and in its revolutionary outlook. As Tempels states in the book’s last chapter:

The discovery of Bantu philosophy is a disturbing event for all those who are concerned with African education. We have had the idea that we stood before them like adults before the newly born. In our mission to educate and to civilize, we believed that we started with a “tabula rasa”, though we also believed that we had to clear the ground of some worthless notions, to lay foundations in a bare soil. We were quite sure that we should give short shrift to stupid customs, vain beliefs, as being quite ridiculous and devoid of all sound sense. We thought that we had children, “great children”, to educate; and that seemed easy enough. Then all at once we discovered that we were concerned with a sample of humanity, adult, aware of its own brand of wisdom and moulded by its own philosophy of life. That is why we feel the soil slipping under our feet, that we are losing track of thing; and why we are asking ourselves “what to do now to lead our coloured people?”

Like many European missionaries, Tempels had embarked for the Belgian Congo (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) imbued with Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s myths about the “primitive mind.” However, after years of work among the Luba, one of the many Bantu-speaking cluster of peoples in Africa, Tempels realized the mistakes of the Western idea of Africa. Having carefully studied the Kiluba language and discovered the wisdom of Luba proverbs and worldview, Tempels underwent a deep conversion that led him to acknowledge African moral values and the value of the Luba conception of God. In a time when the notion of primitive people was taken for granted, Tempels shocked European society by choosing as the title for his discovery of Luba worldview “Bantu philosophy,” rather than “primitive philosophy” or “religious thought,” as Marcel Griaule did with the philosophy of the Dogon.

Although Tempels’s work was criticized from several angles, his work did refute the colonial invention of a “savage” Africa by demonstrating the existence of a coherent Bantu ontology, a sound system of belief in the Supreme Being, and a coherent ethical system that guides an African existential trajectory. Tempels argued that the Bantu had a clear vision of human dignity and the rights of the individual. That was radically antithetical to prevailing theories. Although Tempels still remained captive to the colonial worldview and his belief in the superiority of Christianity, his mea culpa opened the door to a radical demystification of colonial scholarship. That is why some of the leading figures of the Negritude movement, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor and Alioune Diop, and the nascent publishing house Présence Africaine embraced Tempels and promoted the book in French and English translations.

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