Abstract
There exists a lacuna in the prevailing understanding of the history of philosophy. It consists of an omission of certain contributions made by China. This paper is an attempt to fill in part of the picture.
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Notes
Among his recent work on religious scepticism are: The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1979, Chapters XI and XII; “Skepticism,” The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1985, pp. 625–633; Isaac La Peyrère, 1596–1676, and the History of His Influence in Theology and Anthropology, forthcoming, Harvard University Press; “Spinoza and Isaac La Peyrère,” The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 8,1977, pp. 177–195, also in Spinoza: New perspectives, Robert W. Shahan and J.I. Biro, eds. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978, pp. 177–195
“The Development of Religious Scepticism and the Influence of Isaac La Peyrère’s pre-Adamism and Bible Criticism,” in Classical Influences on European Cultures, R.R. Bolgar, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 271–278.
Variations on the Theme of the Philosopher’s God: Europe and China, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 1982, see pp. 13 ff.
Peter Burke, “Did Europe exist before 1700?”, History of European Ideas, Vol. 1,1980, pp. 21–29.
John Herman Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind, New York, Surrey: Columbia University Press, 1976, p. 90.
“Des Cannibales,” in Oeuvres complètes, Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1962, p. 203. Citations are from the English translation, in Donald M. Frame, The Complete Works of Montaigne, London: Hamish Hamilton, see p. 152. With regard to quotations throughout this paper, my general policy is to use English translations wherever possible, provided that they are reliable, and that I can check them against the most authentic versions.
Montaigne is inspired by several themes which are all loosely associated with naturalism:Being sensitive to the vagaries of human reason, Montaigne, unlike Charron, does not posit the existence of immutable laws of nature. See J.S. Slotkin, ed., Readings in Early Anthropology, Chicago: Aldine, 1965, pp. 54–63
Alan M. Boase has also pointed out that Montaigne was not a relativist. See The Fortunes of Montaigne, London: Methuen, 1935. Boase sees Montaigne as a moral optimist who regards the quality of consciousness as a rule of moral worth.
Essais, 1580 in Oeuvres complètes, J. Plattard, ed., Paris: F. Roches, 1931, Vol. 3, pp. 161, 244–245
These passages are cited in Slotkin, op. cit., p. 57.
De la Sagesse, 1601,1604, Book 2, Ch. V, “Etudier à la vraye piété,” in Toutes les oeuvres de Pierre Charron..., Paris: J. Villery, 1635; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970, Vol. 1, pp. 51–67.
Pensées de Blaise Pascal, Léon Brunschvicg, ed., Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1904;
Pensées de Blaise Pascal, Léon Brunschvicg, ed.,Nendeln/ Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1976, Vol. 11–14. Pensées 92, 93, 294, and 325.
Citations are from Pensées, W.F. Trotter, tr., New York: Random House, 1941.
See Popkin, History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Chapter XII.
Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, 3rd ed., Rotterdam: M. Bohm, 1720, art. “Spinoza,” and “Manichéens,” Vol. 3, pp. 2631–2647 and 1896–1901.
Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, De Religione Gentilium, Amsterdam: typis Blaeviorum, 1663. References are to the English translation, The Ancient Religion of the Gentiles, W. Lewis, tr., London: no publisher, 1705, pp. 3–4.
Popkin discusses this problem in various places. See, for example, “Theological and Religious Scepticism,” Christian Scholar, Vol. 39, 1956, pp. 150–158.
Randall, op. cit., p. 282.
A detailed study of this question has been done by Louis Capéran, Le problème du salut des infidèles, Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1912; Toulouse: Grand Séminaire, 1934.
De la vertu des payens, Paris: F. Targa, 1642, p. 4.
Herbert of Cherbury, op cit., p. 5; Pierre Charron, Les Trois Veritez, Paris: printed by S. Millanges, 1595, in Oeuvres, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970, Vol. 2. See Popkin, History of Scepticism, pp. 58–59.
La Mothe le Vayer, op. cit., p. 30.
See the exposition of Antoine Arnauld, De la nécessité de la foi en Jésus-Christ pour être sauvé, Paris: C. Osmont, Publie par L.-Ellies Dupin, 1701, Vol. 6 of Oeuvres, 43 vols.; Paris & Lausanne: S. D’Arnay, 1775–1783; Bruxelles, Culture et Civilization, 1964, pp. 219–220. The first part of this work shows that no one can be saved without faith in Jesus Christ; the third and the fourth parts consist of a scathing demolition of La Mothe le Vayer’s stance on this question.
Isaac de La Peyrère, A Theological Systeme upon that Presupposition that Men were before Adam, London: no publisher, 1655, Book 5, Chapter IX.
Popkin, op cit., p. 59.
La Mothe le Vayer, op cit., pp. 49–50.
Ibid., p. 37.
Arnauld, op cit., p. 291.
Ibid., pp. 85–89, 282.
Ibid., pp. 322–328.
Arnauld’s seven volume La morale pratique des Jésuites, Cologne: Gervinus Quentel [Elzevir], 1669–1694, which consists of a vehement attack on the Jesuits, including their mode of spreading the faith abroad, is along the same line as Pascal’s scathing criticism in his Lettres provinciales, 1656–1657. Against the Jansenist attack, Jesuit Father Michel le Tellier wrote the Défense des nouveaux chrétiens et des missionaires de la Chine, du Japon et des Indes contre deux livres intitulés “la morale pratique de Jésuites” et “l’esprit de M. Arnauld”, Paris: E. Michallet, 1687–1690. Le Tellier was the confessor of Louis XIV, and was powerful at court. A rebuttal was written by Arnauld entitled Lettre d’un théologien contre la défense des nouveaux chrétiens, in La morale pratique des Jésuites, Vol. VI. I am indebted to Arnold Rowbotham for these references. See Missionary and Mandarin in China: The Jesuits at the Court of China, New York: Russell & Russell, 1966, pp. 339, 351.
See note 19 above.
Nicholas Trigault, De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas, Augsburg: Christoph Mangium, 1615.
Matteo Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583–1610, Nicholas Trigault, ed., Louis J. Gallagher, tr., New York: Random House, 1953, p. 93.
Daniel Louis Le Comte, Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état present de la Chine, Paris: J. Annison, 1697–1698. This citation is from the English translation Memoires and Observations… of the Empire of China, London: B. Tooke, 1698, p. 317.
The Confucius Sinarum Philosophus was translated by a group of Jesuits under the leadership of Father Philippe Couplet. It includes the Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean. The two extracted translations referred to here include: Simon Foucher, Lettre sur la morale de Confucius, Philosophe de la Chine, Paris: chez Daniel Horthemels, 1688;
Jean de la Brune, La moral de Confucius, philosophe de la Chine, Amsterdam: P. Savouret, 1688
Foucher’s version was published under his initials only. The latter work is sometimes attributed to Victor Cousin. See Virgile Pinot, La Chine et la formation de Vesprit philosophique en France, Paris: Geuthner, 1932; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1971, p. 373. All references to La Brune’s work are from the 1844 edition.
See Adolf Reichwein, China and Europe: Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century, J.C. Powell, tr., New York: Barnes & Noble, 1925, p. 29.
Ibid., p. 84.
Christianity as Old as Creation, London, 1731, Vol. 1, p. 342.
Lettre de M.G.G. Leibniz sur la philosophie Chinoise à M. de Remond, in G.G. Leibnitii: Opera Omnia, L. Duttens, ed., Geneva: Fratnes de Tournes, 1768, Vol. 4, pp. 169–210. References are to the English translation Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese, Hawaii: The University of Hawaii Press, 1977, pp. 24, 32, 37.
See Pinot, op. cit., Book II, Chapter 1.
There is as yet very little written about the fascinating figurist movement within the Jesuit mission of China. The best accounts are: Arnold H. Rowbotham, “The Jesuit Figurists and Eighteenth-Century Religious Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 17, 1956, pp. 471–485
D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972, Chapter 6
Two recent studies which provide worthy background knowledge are: John W. Witek, Controversial Ideas in China and in Europe: A Biography of Jean-François Foucquet, S.J. (1665–1741), Rome: Institutm Historicm S-I., 1982
and David E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origin of Sinology, Studia Leibnitiana, Supplementa XXV, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1985.
John Webb, An Historical Essay endeavoring a probability that the Language of the Empire of China is the Primitive Language. London: Nath. Brook, 1669.
J.S. Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire, New York: Greenwood Press, 1960, p. 315.
Pierre Bayle, Lettre à M. L. A. D. C, docteur de Sorbonne, où il est prouvé par plusieurs raisons tirées de la philosophie et de la théologie que les comètes ne sont point le présage d’aucun malheur... Cologne: P. Marteau, 1682
Pierre Bayle Pensées diverses écrites à un docteur de Sorbonne à l’occasion de la comète qui parut au mois de décembre 1680, Rotterdam: R. Leers, 1683.
These points are made in Pensées diverses écrites à un docteur de Sorbonne, a l’occasion de la comète, 6th ed., pp. CLX, CLXXII, CLXXVII, CLXXX-CLXXXI, in Oeuvres Diverses, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, Vol. 3.
See, for example, La Brune, op. cit., Avertissement, p. 1
Voltaire’s opinion is cited by Reichwein, op. cit., p. 87.
La Brune, op. cit., pp. 32–33.
Le Comte, op. cit., p. 199.
See, for example, La Brune, op. cit., p. 26.
Frederick John Teggart, The Theory of History, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925, p. 88
See also Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.
The association of Confucianism and Cartesianism in terms of methodological avoidance of error can be seen clearly in the interpretations of La Brune and Foucher. See La Brune, op. cit., pp. 27, 72–73; and Rowbotham, “The Impact of Confucianism,” p. 277.
La Brune, op. cit., p. 29.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Alexander Campbell Fraser, ed., New York: Dover, 1959, Volume II, Book IV, Chapters 1–4, pp. 167–243.
Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing, London: printed by E.C. for H. Eversden, 1661.
For the universalist, the concept of charity was promising because it was seen as being independent of all religions. The Cartesian Pierre Sylvain Régis subsumed what he understood to be Confucian morality into the concept of charity in his attempt to emphasize the universality of Confucianism. See the review of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus in Journal des sçavans, 5 Jan. 1688. This is referred to by Pinot, op. cit., pp. 375–376.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, “Dogmes,” in Oeuvres, Vol. 18, p. 412.
La Mothe le Vayer, op. cit., p. 239.
Sir William Temple’s Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning and on Poetry, ed. by J.E. Spingarn, Oxford: Clarendon, 1909, p. 13
This is cited in Arnold H. Rowbotham, “The Impact of Confucianism on Seventeenth Century Europe,” Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 4, 1944–1945, p. 237.
Basil Guy, The French Image of China before and after Voltaire, Vol. XXI of Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Theodore Besterman, ed., Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1963, p. 134.
François de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon, Dialogue de morts in Oeuvres complètes, Paris: J. Leroux et Jouby, 1851–52; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1971, Vol. 6, pp. 240–245.
La Brune regards the Golden Rule as the Universal principle apprehended by reason and as the sole foundation of all other moral principles. For him the teaching of Jesus Christ consists of nothing more. Another contemporaneous admirer of Confucius, Etienne Silhouette, averred that Confucius had expounded the one great “Principe de la Loi naturelle” as the foundation of all other laws. Again, it consists of nothing more than the Golden Rule. See La Brune, op. cit., Maxim XXIV, p. 95, and p. 59
Etienne Silhouette, Idée générale du gouvernement et de la morale des Chinois, Paris: G.F. Quillau, 1731, p. 30.
See La Brune, op. cit., p. 109.
Silhouette, op. cit., p. 7.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, “Fraude,” in Oeuvres, Vol. 19, pp. 205–208.
For further elaboration of this point, see Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, “Religion,” in Oeuvres, Vol. 20, p. 342.
Arthur O. Lovejoy, Essay in the History of Ideas, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1948, p. 108.
François Quesnay’s Depotisme de la Chine was first published in a Parisian journal entitled Ephémérides du citoyen, in four separate instalments, in March, April, May, and June of 1767. It is included in Oeuvres économiques et philosophiques de F. Quesnay, August Oncken, ed., New York: Burt Franklin, 1888, 1969.
Quesnay’s work has been translated into English by Lewis A. Maverick, China, a Model for Europe, San Antonio: Paul Anderson, 1946. See Ch. 8, Sections 6 and 8.
The elder Mirabeau made this clear in his funeral oration to Quesnay. See Quesnay, Oeuvres économiques et philosophiques, p. 9. This is quoted in Reichwein, op. cit., p. 104.
See Richard H. Popkin, “Scepticism in the Enlightenment,” Transactions of the 1st International Congress on the Enlightenment III, Geneva, 1963, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, Vol. 26, pp. 1321–1345.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, “Morale,” in Oeuvres, Vol. 20, pp. 111–112.
Maverick, op cit., p. 27 ff.
See Reichwein, op cit., p. 91.
Norman Lewis Torrey, Voltaire and the English Deists, Hamden: Archon Books, 1930,1967, p. 171.
D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972, Chapter 6.
Foucher, op cit., p. 4.
Ibid., p. 2.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique. This passage is quoted by H.G. Creel, Confucius, the Man and the Myth, Westport: Greenwood, 1949, p. 261.
Arnold Rowbotham, “China and the Age of Enlightenment in Europe,” The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, Vol. 19, 1935–1936, p. 191.
Torrey, op cit., p. 111.
Voltaire, “Profession de foi des théists,” in Oeuvres, Vol. 27, pp. 55–56.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, “Religion,” in Oeuvres, Vol. 20, p. 347. See Note 56 above.
Louis Daniel le Comte, Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine, Paris: J. Anisson, 1697–1698.
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, New York, Evanston, London: Harper Torch, 1961, p. 122.
René Pintard, Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle, Paris: Boivin, 1943, pp.58–60.
Tindal, op cit., pp. 342–343, 350.
Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, Praefatio Libro Inscripto Novissima Sinica in Opera Omnia, L. Dutens, ed., Geneva: Fratnes de Tournes, 1768, p. 83.
Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, The Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1935, p. 452.
Richard H. Popkin,Elizabeth Labrousse, Pierre Bayle et l’instrument critique’’, a review, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 4, 1966, pp. 176–177.
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Lai, YT. (1988). Religious scepticism and China. In: Watson, R.A., Force, J.E. (eds) The Sceptical Mode in Modern Philosophy. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d’histoire des idées, vol 117. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2744-5_2
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