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Author : Dongfeng Xu Publisher : State University of New York Press Page : 371 pages File Size : 37,40 MB Release : 2021-08-01 Category : History ISBN : 1438484968
The Jesuit mission to China more than four hundred years ago has been the subject of sustained scholarly investigation for centuries. Focusing on the concepts of friendship and hospitality as they were both theorized and practiced by the Jesuit missionaries and their Confucian hosts, this book offers a new, comparative, and deconstructive reading of the interaction between these two vastly different cultures. Dongfeng Xu analyzes how the Jesuits presented their concept of friendship to achieve their evangelical goals and how the Confucians reacted in turn by either displaying or denying hospitality. Challenging the hierarchical view in traditional discourse on friendship and hospitality by revealing the irreducible otherness as the condition of possibility of the two concepts, Xu argues that one legacy of the Jesuit-Confucian encounter has been the shared recognition that cultural differences are what both motivated and conditioned cross-cultural exchanges and understandings.
This dissertation discusses the China-West encounter in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, an encounter initiated by the Jesuit priests who took their apostolic missions from the Post-Reformation Europe to the Middle Kingdom. Of the issues raised and contended during this encounter, which cover virtually all concerns that the human race has ever had such as culture, religion, ethics, moral philosophy, arts, literature, science, technology and many more, the dissertation chooses for examination some topics related directly and closely to the concepts and practices of friendship and hospitality. Divided into two parts, with the first devoted to the friendship presented and promoted by the Jesuits in China and the second, to the Confucian hospitality displayed or denied to the missionaries, the dissertation contains seven main chapters, each approaching from its own perspective an issue related to the subjects of friendship and hospitality. Chapter One investigates the thinking of friendship in the Society of Jesus, discussing what friendship as determined by and elaborated in the Ignatian spirituality means to the Jesuits. Chapter Two continues the discussion on the Jesuit view of friendship by focusing on one specific example of work, A Treatise on Friendship, written in classical Chinese by Matteo Ricci (1552--1610), an early Jesuit missionary to China. Treating friendship as a concept concerning alterity, the discussion looks to dismantle the effort of assimilation in Ricci's friendship. Indeed, Ricci elaborated vigorously on friendship, hoping to establish some cultural analogy between, and eventually a Christian assimilation of, the West and China. His rhetoric and his very act of speaking to the Chinese audience, however, not only show that the difference could not be erased, but also prove that alterity is the absolute condition of possibility under which friendship--friendship between two individuals or a friendly relation between two cultures--happens. Chapter Three argues that Ricci's effort and practice in translating the term or concept of Deus or God into Chinese enacts both the impossibility and necessity of translation. Convinced by his theology that the name of God, the most proper of all proper names, had been from the beginning innate in all cultures and languages, Ricci argued that, a ready phrase Shangdi or Lord-on-High that he found from the Confucian classics, was the indication that the ancient Chinese had faith in God. The discussion will argue that Ricci's intention to use his translation, that is, his "rediscovery" of God in ancient China, to assimilate China under the Christian God as a universal and absolute reference could not succeed for the simple reason that he could not keep the same signified while adorning it with other signifiers. With Chapter Four, an introductory chapter on the Derridean and Levinasian theories of hospitality and the Chinese traditional Rite of Hospitality, the dissertation moves into Part II, the part tackling Ming China's Sino-centrism through examining from different angles the Confucian response to the Jesuits. Chapters Five and Six deal with a related problem: the impact on the Confucians and their ideologies left by modern science and technology such as cartography and astronomy of the West introduced by the Jesuits. With the world map showing the Chinese that the earth was a globe and the missionaries' calculation through modern mathematics being more accurate in the prediction of eclipse, the Confucians were forced to rethink and restructure their worldview and their dichotomy of the self and other. Chapter Seven takes this rethinking and restructuring further by looking at the Confucian effort to restore or return to the primitive Confucianism, a form of Confucianism supposedly free from and immune to foreign influences. But this attempt of restoration, an effort to separate the self from the other, the discussion will show, is already an assured sign that the other is nowhere else but in the self.
Author : Albrecht Classen Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG Page : 652 pages File Size : 31,77 MB Release : 2023-09-04 Category : History ISBN : 3111190226
Although it is fashionable among modernists to claim that globalism emerged only since ca. 1800, the opposite can well be documented through careful comparative and transdisciplinary studies, as this volume demonstrates, offering a wide range of innovative perspectives on often neglected literary, philosophical, historical, or medical documents. Texts, images, ideas, knowledge, and objects migrated throughout the world already in the pre-modern world, even if the quantitative level compared to the modern world might have been different. In fact, by means of translations and trade, for instance, global connections were established and maintained over the centuries. Archetypal motifs developed in many literatures indicate how much pre-modern people actually shared. But we also discover hard-core facts of global economic exchange, import of exotic medicine, and, on another level, intensive intellectual debates on religious issues. Literary evidence serves best to expose the extent to which contacts with people in foreign countries were imaginable, often desirable, and at times feared, of course. The pre-modern world was much more on the move and reached out to distant lands out of curiosity, economic interests, and political and military concerns. Diplomats crisscrossed the continents, and artists, poets, and craftsmen traveled widely. We can identify, for instance, both the Vikings and the Arabs as global players long before the rise of modern globalism, so this volume promises to rewrite many of our traditional notions about pre-modern worldviews, economic conditions, and the literary sharing on a global level, as perhaps best expressed by the genre of the fable.
This is the first interdisciplinary effort to study friendship in late imperial China from the perspective of gender history. Friendship was valorized with unprecedented enthusiasm in Ming China (1368-1644). Some Ming literati even proposed that friendship was the most fundamental relationship among the so-called “five cardinal human relationships”. Why the cult of friendship in Ming China? How was male friendship theorized, practiced and represented during that period? These are some of the questions the current volume deals with. Coming from different disciplines (history, musicology and literary studies), the contributors thoroughly explore the complexities and the gendered nature of friendship in Ming China. This volume has also been published as a special theme issue of Brill's journal NAN NÜ, Men, Women and Gender in China.
Taking as a starting point his first treatise in Chinese, 'On Friendship' (Jiaoyou lun, 1595), this paper aims to analyze the process by which the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1583-1610) shaped the concept of virtuous friendship in late Ming China, specifically among the Confucian literati. 'On Friendship' is a treatise that reflects and is part of the Renaissance and humanist culture brought to China. It is, in part, a translation into Chinese of maxims by authors such as Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Herodotus, Augustine and Ambrose, juxtaposed with ideas derived from the Confucian tradition, especially those on virtuous friendship. In recent years, cultural historians have begun to recognize how important friendship was as a topic of great interest to late Ming intellectuals, which suggests that Ricci was attempting to participate in, and to benefit from, a discussion that was already taking place in China. This paper aims at analyzing the way Ricci shaped virtuous friendship in his Jiaoyou lun by taking both paths, the European and the Chinese, but also focusing on the more or less 'winding' nature of these paths. Indeed, Ricci's treatise was nurtured from different sources, which in turn implied selections and omissions. In a first section I address the less problematic aspect of Ricci's Jiaoyou lun: its humanistic hue; in a second section I focus on the adaptation to - but also the manipulation of - Confucian values and precepts; in a third section I address a key - and debatable - aspect, that is, the idea of Ricci's treatise as 'secular'. Last but not least, a fourth section is dedicated to concluding remarks.
Christian dialogic writings flourished in the Catholic missions in late Ming China. This study focuses on the mission work of the Italian Jesuit Giulio Aleni (Ai Rulüe 艾儒略, 1582–1649) in Fujian and the unique text Kouduo richao 口鐸日抄 (Diary of Oral Admonitions, 1630–1640) that records the religious and intellectual conversations among the Jesuits and local converts. By examining the mechanisms of dialogue in Kouduo richao and other Christian works distinguished by a certain dialogue form, the author of the present work aims to reveal the formation of a hybrid Christian–Confucian identity in late Ming Chinese religious experience. By offering the new approach of dialogic hybridization, the book not only treats dialogue as an important yet underestimated genre in late Ming Christian literature, but it also uncovers a self–other identity complex in the dialogic exchanges of the Jesuits and Chinese scholars. Giulio Aleni, Kouduo richao, and Christian–Confucian Dialogism in Late Ming Fujian is a multi-faceted investigation of the religious, philosophical, ethical, scientific, and artistic topics discussed among the Jesuits and late Ming scholars. This comprehensive research echoes what the distinguished Sinologist Erik Zürcher (1928–2008) said about the richness and diversity of Chinese Christian texts produced in the 17th and 18th centuries. Following Zürcher’s careful study and annotated full translation of Kouduo richao (Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, LVI/1-2), the present work features a set of new findings beyond the endeavours of Zürcher and other scholars. With the key concept of Christian-Confucian dialogism, it tells the intriguing story of Aleni’s mission work and the thriving Christian communities in late Ming Fujian.
A 16th century Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci was the founder of the Catholic Mission in China and one of the most famous missionaries of all time. A pioneer in bringing Christianity to China, Ricci spent twenty eight years in the country, in which time he crossed the cultural divides between China and the West by immersing himself in the language and culture of his hosts. Even 400 years later, he is still one of the best known westerners in China, celebrated for introducing western scientific and religious ideas to China and for explaining Chinese culture to Europe. The first critical biography of Ricci to use all relevant sources, both Chinese and Western, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City tells the story of a remarkable life that bridged Counter-Reformation Catholic Europe and China under the Ming dynasty. Hsia follows the life of Ricci from his childhood in Macerata, through his education in Rome, to his sojourn in Portuguese India, before the start of his long journey of self-discovery and cultural encounter in the Ming realm. Along the way, we glimpse the workings of the Portuguese maritime empire in Asia, the mission of the Society of Jesus, and life in the European enclave of Macau on the Chinese coast, as well as invaluable sketches of Ricci's fellow Jesuits and portraits of the Chinese mandarins who formed networks indispensible for Ricci's success. Examining a range of new sources, Hsia offers important new insights into Ricci's long period of trial and frustration in Guangdong province, where he first appeared in the persona of a foreign Buddhist monk, before the crucial move to Nanchang in 1595 that led to his sustained intellectual conversation with a leading Confucian scholar and subsequent synthesis of Christianity and Confucianism in propagating the Gospels in China. With his expertise in cartography, mathematics, and astronomy, Ricci quickly won recognition, especially after he had settled in Nanjing in 1598, the southern capital of the Ming dynasty. As his reputation and friendships grew, Ricci launched into a sharp polemic against Buddhism, while his career found its crowning achievement in the imperial capital of Beijing, leaving behind a life, work, and legacy that is still very much alive today.