Angela Roothaan

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · Faculty of Humanities

Abstract In the much-disputed classic Bantu Philosophy (1945/6), Placide Tempels attempted to critically describe our human being-in-the-world as he understood it from his Congolese interlocutors. To this end he connected the conceptual framework of Bantu languages, rooted in Bantu Life-worlds, to a Flemish-Dutch conceptual framework, rooted in La...

In Bantu Philosophy, the 1945/6 book by Placide Tempels, culture and ontology were theoretically connected in the idea of ‘Bantu Ontology’. Tempels critiqued the focus of ethnology on description and its avoidance of a search for the deeper meaning and ontological impact of culturalized knowledge. Only around 2000 we see anthropologists center such...

Well-Being in African Philosophy: Insights for a Global Ethics of Development, edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, explores the notion of well-being in African and intercultural philosophy and its insights into global ethics of development. Drawing from longstanding debates on communitarianism in the contex...

Introduction In: Well-Being in African Philosophy: Insights for a Global Ethics of Development. Maryland, USA, Lexington Books by Rowman and Littlefield, 1-11. Well-Being in African Philosophy: Insights for a Global Ethics of Development, edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, explores the notion of well-bei...

'Beauty in African Thought: A Critique of the Western Idea of Development' has been selected as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2023! See http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/outstanding & https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793630759/Beauty-in-African-Thought-Critical-Perspectives-on-the-Western-Idea-of-Development The book investigates how the concept...

Beauty in African Thought: A Critique of the Western Idea of Development investigates how the concept of beauty in African philosophy and related qualitative social sciences may contribute to a richer intercultural exchange on the idea of development. While working within frameworks created in post-colonial and arguably neo-colonial times, African...

In dit artikel zal Bantoe Filosofie (1945), het boek van de Belgische missionaris Placide Tempels, in zijn tijd geplaatst worden en onderzocht naar zijn betekenis voor hedendaagse (Afrikaanse) filosofie. De dynamische ontologie, de psychologie en de ethiek van de volkeren die Bantoetalen spreken die Bantoe Filosofie tot onderwerp heeft, worden veel...

The concept of 'vital force' has been much discussed in connection with the book Bantu Philosophy by Belgian missionary Placide Tempels. Tempels' 1945 book was hailed as the source for négritude consciousness (Alioune Diop, Léopold Sédar Senghor) and criticized as an instrument of colonial power to keep African subjects focused on spirituality rath...

In a time when discourse about religious difference is used to explain so many violent confrontations, philosophy is asked to take up Derrida’s early call to speak again of religion, in the singular. Even though its place in global interactions has significantly changed since the appearance of Placide Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy (1959 [1945]), religi...

In my paper I will analyze and highlight the distinctions between the three mentioned approaches, and show how they should complement each other. Combining the three approaches necessitates philosophical understanding to open up to interdisciplinarity, working together with researchers and making use of research from the humanities and the sciences...

The experience of moral values is often side-lined in discussions about moral reasoning, and yet our values define a large part of our moral motives, standards and expectations. Theological Ethics and Moral Value Phenomena explores whether the experience of a meeting point of the immanent and the transcendent, i.e. the moral self and God, can be th...

This article provides a philosophical reflection on African-European migration, referring to postcolonial theory and deconstructive philosophy.

My lecture was part of the Winterschool Course in African Philosophy in Global Times. See: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. https://www.ozsw.nl/event-calendar/african-philosophy-in-global-times-knowledge-and-culture/.

https://youtu.be/P1PnqCpKr6g De Nigeriaanse filosoof Sophie Olúwolé (1935 – 2018) was een belangrijke Afrikaanse Yoruba filosofe met internationale bekendheid. Ze haalde als eerste vrouw in Nigeria een doctorstitel in de filosofie. Ze werd een voorvechtster van anti-koloniaal denken en van vrouwenrechten binnen de traditionele Yoruba cultuur. Haar...

I discussed the books 'Black Skin, White Mask' and 'The Wretched of the Earth' by Frantz Fanon in an Intercultural Perspective.

The world is full of persons (people if you prefer), but few of them are human

Indigenous, Modern and Postcolonial Relations to Nature contributes to the young field of intercultural philosophy by introducing the perspective of critical and postcolonial thinkers who have focused on systematic racism, power relations and the intersection of cultural identity and political struggle. Angela Roothaan discusses how initiatives to...

In this chapter we will look into the kind of world experience that allows for trance states that are central to knowing nature in indigenous shamanistic cultures. In such alternate states of consciousness, animal spirits and other spiritual agents enter in communication with humans. Developing my investigation as a critical discussion with the Wes...

Ever since the influential Thomas Hobbes, who claimed that ‘natural men’ were ‘like wolves’ to one another, Western philosophy has valued the animal aspects of our humanity negatively, and seen the growth of reason and civilization as the way to overcome them. The relations between different human peoples were understood in a similar vein: the West...

“The important thing is not to waste time in more or less hair-splitting debates on the specificity or non-specificity of African cultural values, but to look upon these values as a conquest by a part of mankind for the common heritage of all mankind, achieved in one or several phases of its evolution” (Cabral, 2007, p. 180). In my paper, I will l...

Collectie artikelen over vrouwen in de filosofie, ter gelegenheid van het afscheid van Dr. Loes Derksen.

This paper investigates how, in the condition of postcolonialism, claims of political and cultural identity depend on the understanding of humanity, and how this understanding ultimately relates to historical agency. I understand postcolonialism as the condition that aims at the decolonization of thought of formerly colonized and former colonizers...

The past decades have seen the introduction, in scientific institutions, of codes of conduct that describe good practices of scientific research and clarify which behavior is not to be tolerated. They find their basis in some version of the norms of science formulated by Robert K. Merton in 1942. They tend to have a double effect, on the one hand s...

We leven in een periode waarin traditionele levensverbanden sterk onder druk staan. In het westen is dit al enkele eeuwen een zich steeds verder verspreidend verschijnsel door de voortschrijdende modernisering van de maatschappelijke en persoonlijke werkelijkheid. Maar de laatste decennia is de dynamiek van de modernisering in alle uithoeken van de...

De huidige westerse cultuur wordt gekenmerkt door een sterke nadruk op menselijke autonomie. Letterlijk betekent autonomie ‘jezelf de wet stellen’. Tegenwoordig verstaan we eronder het vermogen, maar ook de opdracht om je eigen leven actief zelf vorm te geven. Men spreekt hier wel van een positieve vrijheid, tegenover negatieve vrijheid als het uit...

Philosophy is a difficult subject to pin down. Most philosophers have occupied themselves not only with pursuing their subject, but also with defining the object and the methods of philosophy — and in this they are by no means always in agreement.

Pontiaan Van Hattem was a Dutch seventeenth century thinker who has, so far, been very largely ignored by historians of philosophy. This can be explained by the fact that, even during his lifetime, the Calvinist community in which he lived and worked as a clergyman stigmatized him as a heretic on account of his philosophical attitude. His work has,...