Placide Frans Tempels, OFM (18 February 1906 – 9 October 1977) was a Belgian Franciscan missionary in the Congo who became famous for his book Bantu Philosophy.
Born Frans Tempels, he took the name "Placide" on his entry into a Franciscan seminary in 1924.
In April 1962 he returned to live in a Franciscan monastery in Hasselt, where he died in 1977.
[1] [citation needed] Also in 1945, the Philosophie bantoue was published by Father Placide Tempels and immediately triggered a voracious debate among African philosophers, including Alexis Kagame and Mubabinge Bilolo.
Paulin Hountondji disdainfully called Tempels' ideas ethnophilosophies and as such nothing more than a classical ethnological study of Africa and its peoples.