Background
Tempels, Placide Frans was born on February 18, 1906 in Berlaar, Belgium.
Tempels, Placide Frans was born on February 18, 1906 in Berlaar, Belgium.
Franciscan Novice, 1924. Studied Philosophy and Theology, Thielt, 1924-1930, ordained in the Roman Catholic Priesthood, 15 August 1930.
Roman Catholic missionary in the Belgian Congo. Katanga, 1933-1962.
AThomist by education, Tempels was a disciple of Lévy-Bruhl in the 1930s. He was convinced of the usefulness of distinguishing prelogical from logical mentalities, conceiving a conversion from the first to the second stage as an objective of missionizing and civilizing Africa. In the mid 1940s, while doing ethnographic work in Kabondo-Dianda, he experienced a spiritual rupture. He rejected Lévy-Bruhl's ideas and began to work on his Bantu philosophy. His book (1945) became a best seller almost immediately. Its main thesis is that all human conduct depends on a general system of principles and that there should accordingly be reason to find out and study the fundamentals of Bantu beliefs and behaviour, and their essential philosophical system. For Tempels this philosophy is an ontology which signifies an equation between being and force and which would result in a hierarchy of all beings and things, from those less animated by the vital force to those having a perfect vitality. Animal, human, ancestral and divine are dimensions in the exchange and interaction of forces which can be reinforced or diminished. Tempels believed that his Bantu-ontology could be an introduction to the anthropologies of all primitive people in general and the best way of Christianizing pagans. In 1953 Tempels, as a pastor of a parish in Ruwe and a professor of religion, initiated a movement called Jamaa or Family which celebrates and emphasizes the concepts of life, love and fecundity. He was expelled from the Congo by the Catholic hier archy and died in an ecclesiastical prison in Belgium in 1978.