Sinophilism During the Age of Enlightenment

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Sinophilism During the Age of Enlightenment
N.A. Samoylov

• Contents
• I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture
• - The Society of Jesus
• - Jesuit activity in China
• - Success and dissemination of Confucian ideas
  in Europe
• II. Admiration of European Philosophers for
  Chinese Culture. Formation of idealized image of
  China
• III. Chinoiserie

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• - The Society of Jesus
• (Latin Societas Iesu, abbreviated as S.J. and
  S.I.)
• Christian religious order of the Roman Catolic
  Church at the service of the Universal Church.
• Members are known as Jesuits, and have
  colloquially been called "Soldiers of Christ",
  first, and "Foot soldiers of the Pope",
  second,partly because the Society's founder,
  Saint Ignatus of Loyola (a Spaniard of Basque
  origin), was a knight before becoming a priest.
• Foundation August 15, 1534 (Montmartre at that
  time outside Paris).

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• - Seal of the Society of Jesus
• The IHS" comprises the first three Greek
  letters of "IHSOYS" ("Jesus" in Greek) later
  reinterpreted as "Iesus Homini Salvator" ("Jesus,
  Saviour of Mankind") or "Iesum Habemus Socium"
  ("We have Jesus as Companion").

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• Jesuits in China

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• - Jesuit activity in China
• The Jesuit China Mission of the 16th and 17th
  centuries
• - Introduced Western science to Chinese.
• - Made China known in Europe.
• (Through their correspondence European
  scientists first learned about the Chinese
  science and culture.)
• - Translated Confucius' works into European
  languages.
• (Father Prospero Intorcetta published the life
  and works of Confucius in Latin in 1687.)

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• Life and works of Confucius, by Prospero
  Intorcetta, 1687.

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• - Success and dissemination of Confucian ideas in
  Europe
• The Jesuits were very active in transmitting
  Chinese knowledge to Europe.
• The Deists and other philosophical groups of the
  Enlightement who were interested in the
  integration of the system of morality of
  Confucius into Chtistianity.
• The French physiocrat François Quesnay, founder
  of modern economics, and a forerunner of Adam
  Smith was in his lifetime known as the European
  Confucius.
• The doctrine and even the name of
  Laissez-faire may have been inspired by the
  Chinese concept of Wu wei.
• Goethe, was known as the Confucius of Weimar.

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• - Matteo Ricci (October 6, 1552. Italy May 11,
  1610. Beijing). (Traditional Chinese ???
  Simplified Chinese ??? Pinyin Lì Madòu
  courtesy name?? Xitài.) Italian Jesuit priest.
• The first Westerner to be invited into the
  Forbidden City.
• Produced a map of the world, on Western
  principles in Chinese.
• The Ricci map went through several versions from
  1574 to 1603 and profoundly influenced western
  cartography.

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• Although East Asia - and China in particular -
  is represented clearly and with scientific
  precision, nevertheless several of China's own
  cartographers, writing independently of the
  court, criticized the configuration as an insult
  to China's centrality.
• Sometime in the 1620s Giulio Aleni had this
  abridgment of Ricci's map printed and
  hand-tinted.
• Aleni's name is in the left-most column of
  Chinese on the upper half, above the Jesuit seal.
  

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• Riccis Far East map, 1602

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• - Ricci's approach to Chinese culture
• Ricci could speak Chinese as well as read and
  write classical Chinese
• (wen yan), the literary language of scholars and
  officials.
• Added to this he was known for his appreciation
  of the indigenous culture of the Chinese.
• Ricci became the first to translate the
  Confucian classics into a western language
  (Latin).
• "Confucius" was Ricci's own Latinisation.
• He came to call himself a "Western Confucian"
  (??).

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• - Johann Adam Schall von Bell
• (Chinese ???) (1591 - 15 August 1666). German
  Jesuit missionary to China.
• Born of noble parents in Cologne, Germany.
• 1611 - joined the Society of Jesus in Rome
• 1618 - left for China, reaching Macao in 1619.

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• Apart from successful missionary work, Schall
  became the trusted counsellor of the Shunzhi
  Emperor of the Qing dynasty, was created a
  mandarin, and held an important post in
  connection with the mathematical school.
• His position enabled him to procure from the
  emperor permission for the Jesuits to build
  churches and to preach throughout the country.
• He participated in compiling and modifying the
  Chinese calendar then known as Chongzhen
  Calendar, named after the last emperor of the
  Ming Dynasty. The modified calendar provided more
  accurate predictions of eclipses of the sun and
  the moon.
• Cosmological map by Schall

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I. Jesuits as interpreters of Chinese culture

• - Father Ferdinand Verbiest (October 9, 1623
  January 28, 1688). Known as Nan Huairen (???) in
  Chinese. Born at Pittem near Kortrijk, Belgium.
  Flemish Jesuit missionary in China. Studied in
  Leuven, Mechelen, Sevilla and Rome.
• Entered the Society of Jesus on September 2,
  1641.
• In 1658 he accompanied Father Martino Martini to
  China and reached Macao in 1659.
• He led the mission in Shanxi until 1660, when he
  was called to assist, and later replace, Father
  Adam Schall von Bell in Beijing in his work in
  astronomy.
• He died in Beijing and was succeeded as the
  chief mathematician and astronomer of the Chinese
  empire by another Belgian Jesuit, Antoine Thomas
  (1644-1709).
• His remains were buried near those of Matteo
  Ricci on March 11, 1688.
• Verbiest was the only Westerner in Chinese
  history to ever receive the honour of a
  posthumous name by the Emperor.

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II. Admiration of European Philosophers for
Chinese Culture. Formation of idealized image of
China

• - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (July 1 1646
  November 14, 1716).
• Famous German philosopher and mathematician,
  wrote primarily in Latin and French.
• Educated in law and philosophy, and serving as
  factotum to two major German noble houses (one
  becoming the British royal family while he served
  it), Leibniz played a major role in the European
  politics and diplomacy of his day.
• He occupies an equally large place in both the
  history of philosophy and the history of
  mathematics. He discovered calculus independently
  of Newton, and his notation is the one in general
  use since.
• He also discovered the binary system, foundation
  of virtually all modern computer architecture.

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II. Admiration of European Philosophers for
Chinese Culture. Formation of idealized image of
China

• - Leibnizs sinophilism was nurtured primarily by
  the Jesuit writings on China.
• Leibniz also maintained a personal
  correspondence with erudite Jesuit fathers in
  Beijing.
• Leibniz was thoroughly fascinated by Chinese
  culture, admired Confucius, Emperor Kangxi, the
  Chinese language, and Yi-jing (the Book of
  Changes).
• In his book Novissima Sinica (Latest News
  from China), published in 1697, Leibniz
  expressed his belief for an intellectual aliiance
  between Europe and China, the two great
  civilizations.

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II. Admiration of European Philosophers for
Chinese Culture. Formation of idealized image of
China

• Image of Emperor Kangxi ( ?? 1662- 1722)
• as a model for benevolent monarchs

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II. Admiration of European Philosophers for
Chinese Culture. Formation of idealized image of
China

• - Voltaire
• François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 30 May
  1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire.
• French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and
  philosopher known for his wit, philosophical
  sport, and defense of civil liberties, including
  freedom of religion and the right to a fair
  trial. Prince of pholosophes. He was an
  outspoken supporter of social reform despite
  strict censorship and harsh penalties for those
  who broke them. A satirical polemicist.
• Educated at Jesuit school .

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II. Admiration of European Philosophers for
Chinese Culture. Formation of idealized image of
China

• - Voltaires image of China was primarily derived
  from the literature of Jesuits, especially the
  works of DuHalde and LeComte.
• Voltaire and Leibniz idealized those elements of
  Chinese religion and philosophy which were
  similar to the principles of the religious
  philosophy of the Enlightenment known as Deism
• - belief in natural law
• - image of God as an impersonal force
• - belief that the basic goal of religion was
  virtue.
• Voltaires statue at Pantheon, Paris

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II. Admiration of European Philosophers for
Chinese Culture. Formation of idealized image of
China

• - François Quesnay
• (June 4, 1694 - December 16, 1774).
• French economist of the Physiocratic school.
• Court physician to Louis XV.
• The influence of Chinese ideas and concepts on
  Quesnay should not be forgotten in his lifetime
  he was known as the European Confucius. The
  doctrine and even the name of Laissez-faire may
  have been inspired by the Chinese concept of Wu
  wei.

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II. Admiration of European Philosophers for
Chinese Culture. Formation of idealized image of
China

• Laissez-faire is a French phrase meaning "let
  do". From the French diction first used by the
  18th century physiocrats as an injunction against
  government interference with trade, it became
  used as a synonym for strict free market
  economics during the early and mid-19th century.
• It is generally understood to be a doctrine that
  maintains that private initiative and production
  are best allowed to roam free, opposing economic
  interventionism and taxation by the state beyond
  that which is perceived to be necessary to
  maintain individual liberty, peace, security, and
  property rights.
• Wu wei (Traditional Chinese characters ??
  Simplified Chinese characters ??) is an
  important tenet of Taoism that involves knowing
  when to act and when not to act. Wu may be
  translated as not have Wei may be translated as
  do, act, serve as, govern. The literal meaning of
  Wu Wei is without action
• In his book Le Despotisme de la Chine,
  published in 1767, Quesnay praised Chinese
  systems of government, economy, and society.
• He considered Chinese despotism (Despotisme
  legal) the best possible form of government.

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III. Chinoiserie

• Chinoiserie refers to a recurring theme in
  European artistic styles since the seventeenth
  century, which reflects Chinese art and is
  characterized by the use of fanciful imagery of
  an imaginary China, by asymmetry in format and
  whimsical contrasts of scale, and by the attempts
  to imitate Chinese porcelain and the use of
  lacquerlike materials and decoration.
• Chinese House, Potsdam

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III. Chinoiserie

• Chinoiserie entered the European repertory in
  the mid-to-late seventeenth century its
  popularity peaked around the middle of the
  eighteenth century, when it was easily
  assimilated into rococo, then declined somewhat,
  foir it seemed to European eyes the very
  antithesis of neoclassicism.
• Pagoda at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew,
  London l

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III. Chinoiserie

• Chinoiserie is expressed entirely in the
  decorative arts of Europe, and its expression in
  architecture was entirely in the field of
  whimsical follies. By contrast, the serious
  transformations that Chinese models effected in
  the eighteenth century, on the plain style of
  Early Georgian English furniture, notable in the
  cabriole leg, or on the naturalistic style of
  English landscape gardening, are not considered
  instances of Chinoiserie.

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III. ChinoiserieLouis XV style, chinoiserie
secretary ("dos d'ane")
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III. ChinoiserieItalian, painted, lacca
contrafatta, and parcel-gilt secretaire bookcase
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III. ChinoiserieLouis XV style, chinoserie
commode scriban