Translating the Aristotelian Way of Thinking: The Jesuits’ Redefinition of ‘gezhi’ and ‘qiongli’ in Seventeenth-Century China
- Format:
- Conference Paper
- Year:
- 2019
- Event Date:
- October 5
- Panel Title:
- Christianity in Korea
- Event Institution:
- Kirishitan Bunko, Sophia University; Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, University of San Francisco
- Conference Title:
- Historical Legacies of Christianity in East Asia
- Conference Location:
- Tokyo
- Abstract:
Gewu zhizhi (格物致知, the investigation of things and the extension of knowledge) and qiongli (窮理, the search for principles of all things, events, and phenomena) had been the classic if disputable Confucian methods of understanding the world since the Song dynasty. When Jesuit missionaries came to China in the late sixteenth century, there were Cheng-Zhu schools, Wang Yangming followers, scholars of medicine, and encyclopedists who had their own ways of gezhi and qiongli. In this context, the Jesuits introduced natural science and European philosophy as methods of gezhi and qiongli. The Jesuits’ purpose was not only to introduce mathematics and astronomy, through works such as Jihe yuanben 幾何原本 and Tian wen lue 天問畧, but also to change the Chinese way of thinking. By borrowing the classic concepts of the Confucian learning method, they tried to cram Chinese people with the European logic in order to make them believe in God in their rational way. In this paper, I will investigate how these concepts were reinterpreted and used in two Jesuit works, Giulio Aleni’s Sanshan lunxue ji 三山論學紀 and Xi xue fan 西學凡 and Francisco Furtado and Li Zhizao’s Huan you quan 寰有詮 and Mingli tan 明理探. I will also show how the two Jesuits’ different writing styles were employed for persuasion of the Chinese.
- Who (Jesuits):
- What (Subjects):
- Where (Locations):
- When (Centuries):
- Conference URL: