Thinking with/for Many Others In Memory of Vincent Shen (1949-2018) Edited by João J. Vila-Chã and hu Yeping The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2022 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shen, Tsing-Song Vincent, dedicatee. | Vila-Chã, João, editor. | Hu, Yeping, editor. Title: Thinking with/for many others : in memory of Vincent Shen (1949-2018) / edited by João J. Vila-Chã & Hu Yeping. Description: [Washington] : The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021053925 | ISBN 9781565183506 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Comparative. Classification: LCC B799 .T55 2022 | DDC 100--dc23/eng/20211230 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021053925 Contents IntroduCtIon The Way of Strangification: Thinking with Vincent Shen João J. Vila-Chã 1 Part I. Reflections on Shen’s Philosophical and Theological Thought 1. The Meaningfulness of Life William A. BarBieri 19 2. Openness of Oneself toward Others: Vincent Shen’s Theory of Strangification Katia lenehan 27 3. The Relational Ontological Turn in Vincent Shen’s Catholic Social Philosophy Chou Ming-chuan 47 4. Interreligious Dialogue and the Contemporary Chinese Neo-Scholasticism: Vincent Shen’s Model of “Mutual Strangification” lee Yen-yi 67 5. Vincent Shen’s Many Others and Emmanuel Lévinas’s Third Party Teng Yuan-wei 81 6. Many Others, Strangification, and Communion: Vincent Shen’s View on the Confucian Remedy to the Crisis of Modernity Tan Mingran 101 VIII Contents Part II. Dialogue of Cultures and Religions 7. An Unfamiliar Hermeneutics: Interpretation for the Sake of Others huang Yong 121 8. Self-Awareness of Life and Intercultural Dialogue Peter Jonker 139 9. Divine Transcendence, Human Finitude: Dialogue and Mutual Recognition as Enacted Welcoming of “Otherness” Philip J. rossi 155 10. Matteo Ricci and His Method of Cultural Accommodation hu Yeping 165 11. Reading the Other’s Classics: The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati Benoît Vermander 179 12. China, the Jesuits, and Foucault: Tacit Connections in the Transformation of Seventeenth-Century Western Europe through Educational Practices Astrid ViCas 201 13. Prospero Intorcetta, S.J. and His Contribution to Sinology Thierry meynard 213 14. The Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the Translation of the New Testament into the Bafut Language Michael Suh niBa 233 Part III. Socio-Political and Philosophical Considerations 15. Individualist and Communitarian Principles of Justice William sweeT 257 16. Hebrew Justice: A Reconstruction for Today Fu Youde 271 Contents IX 17. Transcendent Moral Realism in Charles Taylor and Classical Confucianism Andrew Tsz Wan hung 293 18. The Metamorphoses of Memory: Rediscovering Vladimir Ghika Wilhelm dancă 313 19. Samuel Štefan Osuský’s Prophetic Wisdom: A Case Study Michal ValCo 333 20. Encountering Many Others in the Clinical Narratives lin Hui-ju 355 Part IV. Chinese Philosophical and Cultural Traditions 21. Chinese Diaspora as People of Their Own Countries and Chinese Philosophy as World Philosophy li Chenyang and Xiao Hong 369 22. The Human Being and the Ground of Philosophy: The East and the West yu Xuanmeng 385 23. Self-Awareness in Traditional Chinese Medicine Zou Shipeng 403 24. Chinese Landscape (Shanshui 山水) and the Sacred Yolaine esCande 413 ePIlogue Personal Recollection of Professor Vincent Shen guo Qiyong 427 Index 439 11 Reading the Other’s Classics: The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati Benoît Vermander * Introduction T he comparative reading of their respective classics by Jesuits and Chinese literati has decisively helped in shaping not only the relationship between China and the West, but also our global understanding of the goals and the dynamic of intercultural encounters. Reading the other’s classics was an endeavor loaded with challenges that required each side to progressively elaborate new hermeneutical principles. Besides, observing how the Other was reading one’s own classics was part of the interactive process through which both sides tried to apprehend their counterpart’s episteme. As a specific field of knowledge, sinology took shape through this interpretative interplay, the unfolding of which is still rich in questions and insights when reflecting upon intercultural dialogue in contemporary settings. This essay tries to capture the way Chinese and Western classics were exchanged and reinterpreted. It further examines how a reflexive appraisal of these attempts may enrich our contemporary endeavors at reading classics, focusing toward the end on “comparative theology” as a field still in the making. By doing so, this essay is also a modest homage to Professor Vincent Shen’s contribution to cross-cultural hermeneutics, a contribution that, on the one hand, mobilizes Chinese tradition for reading anew texts anchored into the Western one and, on the other hand, offers specific insights on Chinese * Fudan University, Shanghai, P. R. China. 180 Benoît Vermander classics that originate from Professor Shen’s resourceful application of contemporary Western hermeneutics.1 An Exchange of Gifts The history of the relationship between the Jesuits and China is part of global cultural history. It extends to geometry, astronomy, botany, painting, engraving, cartography, ethnomusicology, and even gun-making technologies.2 In the sixteenth to seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, “science” and “religion” were not considered to be distinct domains of knowledge as was going to be the case in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment period. The intermingling between the two was reflected in the curriculum of studies followed by Jesuits as well as by Jesuit educational institutions. This curriculum largely determined the way Jesuits introduced Christianity in China. More generally, the exchanges triggered by their arrival resulted in cultural creativity that the “interweaving of rituals,”3 new artistic styles, and local forms of religious sociability all expressed in their own ways.4 1 2 3 4 See notably Scholastic Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy (Shilin zhexue yu zhongguo zhexue) (Beijing: Beijing Commercial Press. 2018); From Matteo Ricci to Heidegger: Interaction Philosophy East and West in an Intercultural Context (Cong Li Madou dao Heidege: kuawenhua mailuo xia de zhongxi zhexue hudong) (Taipei: Commercial Press, 2014). Among other works focusing on the scientific and technological dimensions of the global history into which to insert the narrative of the interaction between Chinese literati and Jesuits, see Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, vol. I, 655-1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Peter Engelfriet, Euclid in China: The Genesis of the First Chinese Translation of Euclid’s Elements Books I-VI (Jihe yuanben, Beijing, 1607) and its Reception up to 1723 (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Florence Hsia, Foreigners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2010); Catherine Jami, Peter Engelfriet, and Gregory Blue, eds., Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China. The Cross-cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Huyi Wu, Traduire la Chine au XVIIIe siècle: Les jésuites traducteurs de textes chinois et le renouvellement des connaissances européennes sur la Chine (1687-ca. 1740) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2017). Nicolas Standaert, The Interweaving of Rituals: Funerals in the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2008). In terms of the shaping of new forms of sociability, see, for instance, Eugenio Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati 181 As important as these phenomena were, it remains that the transmission and interpretation of canonical texts were at the center of the encounter. The Jesuit educational cursus, as drawn by the Ratio Studiorum, was first based on a “mapping of the classics”: Encyclopedic, the science taught in Rome was also highly organized.5 During the period under study (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries), the Aristotelian/scholastics corpus was progressively interpreted throughou an evolving prism provided by modern sciences and philosophy. Though biblical studies remained dominated by traditional literal and allegorical readings, the stress on classical languages had already timidly modified the way the Bible was read compared to earlier periods.6 The deciphering of Chinese chronologies was going to further this development. Somehow, the way knowledge extracted from the China mission field was presented would draw “alternative mappings” allowing for the shaping of a new episteme. Treatises, Letters, and Relations sent from China tell their recipients about continents of thought and knowledge previously unheard of. From the late sixteenth century until well into the eighteenth century, the Jesuits going to China play the role of cartographers. To the benefit of Westerners as well as Chinese literati and decision-makers, they draw the maps of new territories to be progressively explored.7 Upon his entry into China, Matteo Ricci charts with Chinese literati a world map that will be enriched and corrected until the end of his life and beyond; and Ricci’s apologetic and scientific writings function as routes cut through the “Western sciences” (xixue), routes that his successors will detail further – for instance, Alfonso Vagnone (1568-1640) explicitly divides his argument according to Aristotelian categories and introduces China to Aristotelian ethics.8 Chinese characters are used to account for Christian notions, their meaning and origin 5 6 7 8 Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009). Gianni Criveller, “The Background of Matteo Ricci. The Shaping of His Intellectual and Scientific Endowment,” in Portrait of a Jesuit: Matteo Ricci (Macao: Macao Ricci Institute, 2010), 15-35. Cf. Pierre Gibert, L’invention critique de la Bible, XVe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des Histoires,” 2010). David E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989); Antonella Romano, Impressions de Chine: L’Europe et l’englobement du monde (XVIe-XVIIe siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 2016). Thierry Meynard, “Aristotelian Ethics in the Land of Confucius: A Study of Vagnone’s Western Learning on Personal Cultivation,” Antiquorum Philosophia 7 (2013): 145-169; “The First Treatise on the Soul in China and its Sources,” Revista Filosófica de Coimbra 47 (2015): 1-39. 182 Benoît Vermander being integrated into apologies of the Faith; maps of the sky underpin not only the accuracy of astronomical predictions made by the newcomers but their knowledge of “heavenly matters” in general. Ricci and some of his early successors were able to work in cooperation with Chinese literati, which contributed to make the presentation of the new faith in China as well as the Chinese episteme in the West a decisive contribution to the field of “comparative reading,” if not full-fledged “comparative theology” (see below). It is all too well-known that the Jesuit method followed in China relied for a good part on indirect evangelization: Western science and technology (astronomy, watchmaking, geometry, mapping) were introduced in China as a sort of confirmation of the truth of Christianity. Ricci had brought with him the Treatise of the sphere of the world (1570) of Clavius and the Sfera del Mondo by Piccolomini. A few years later, Clavius sent him more recent works (Gnonomices 1581; Astrolabium, 1593). What the Jesuit Alvarez Semedo (1586-1658) writes of the convert Leo Li Zhizhao testifies to the fact that this approach was indeed attractive for part of the audience it was aiming at: Our Leo, endowed with a keen and ardent spirit was eager to learn, and such desire made him enter into conversation and familiarity with our Fathers: he could not depart from their company after he had tasted the order and the beauty of our sciences, and particularly the curious and innocent pleasures of Geography. He was dealing with the Science of God together with human sciences, marrying Heaven and Earth. He was learning conjointly the positioning of the kingdoms of the world, and the Laws of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.9 The encounter of Western knowledge with Chinese notions could not but generate creative intellectual endeavors. The apologetic treatise written by Ricci (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven) skillfully refers to Confucian vocabulary and worldview – while remaining structured by Aristotelian and scholastic logic.10 Ricci also aimed to present to Europe the civilization he was discovering – but his Latin translations of Chinese classics have been lost. Alvarez Semedo, Histoire universelle du grand royaume de la Chine (Paris: Kiné, 1996[1667]), 216. 10 Thierry Meynard, ed. and trans., “Introduction,” in Matteo Ricci: Le sens réel de “Seigneur du Ciel” (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, “Bibliothèque chinoise,” 2013), IX-LXVII. 9 The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati 183 This way of proceeding triggered strong resistance and sometimes bitter debates within the Society of Jesus itself, even before further controversies divided the Chinese as well as the universal Church. After the death of Ricci, his successor as head of the mission of China, Niccolò Longobardo (1565-1655), readily listened to the objections raised by the Jesuits of the Japanese mission who had taken refuge in Macao after the start of the persecutions in the archipelago: the Chinese notions that Ricci and other Jesuits had adopted for the sake of presenting the Christian faith to a Chinese public and the theological vocabulary that resulted from their lexical choices went under attack. Ricci’s assertion according to which the ancient Chinese philosophers were (pious) theists was similarly challenged. For Ricci, the introduction of Buddhist notions within the Confucian teaching during the Song Dynasty was the factor that had driven modern Chinese thinkers toward Atheism (rehabilitation of the Song thinkers would be attempted by some Jesuits of the mission at a much later period). An internal Memoir by Longobardo, which was a contribution to the raging debate and was probably written around 1623-1624, found its way outside China and was published in Paris in 1701.11 Leibniz wrote his Discours sur la théologie naturelle des Chinois (1716) on the basis of the French translation of Longobardo’s Memoir, but he reached conclusions opposite to the ones of the Sicilian Jesuit: our philosopher discerned in the writings and testimonies gathered by Longobardo a form of “natural theology” that he declared to be closer to Christianity than were Cartesian constructs. As the ensuing Rites Controversy would show, the comparative reading of classics was also grounding a political theology. John Lagerwey has argued that the civil/religious distinction drawn by the Jesuits for defending their tolerant attitude toward state and family rituals was basically misrepresenting the very nature of the Chinese rite while contributing to the modernist approach of “Religion” in Europe. And he notes: “The Chinese elite was, in many ways, a willing participant in the Jesuit misinterpretation. The neo-Confucian elite had its own project, namely to transform Chinese society 11 Niccolò Longobardo (id. Longobardi), Traité sur quelques points de la Religion des Chinois (Paris: Josse, 1701); Henri Bernard-Maître, “Un dossier bibliographique de la fin du XVIIème siècle sur la question des termes chinois,” Recherches de Sciences Religieuses XXXVI (1949): 25-79; Nicolas Standaert, Yang Tingyun, Confucian and Christian in Late Ming China: His Life and Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 83sq.; Jacques Gernet, Chine et Christianisme: Action et réaction (Paris: Gallimard “Bibliothèque des Histoires,” 1982), 45-58. 184 Benoît Vermander by ridding it of the rituals of shamans, Buddhists, and Daoists, and putting Confucian rituals in their place.”12 The caution displayed by Jesuits when it comes to the introduction of the Bible as a corpus distinct in essence from the rest of the Western canon has been often noticed. Political reasons were certainly prominent (the Bible, after all, is full of subversive narratives). However, liturgical translations progressively introduced the Bible to Chinese readers.13 When it comes to biblical acculturation, Giulio Aleni was probably the most influential actor. His works include liturgical fragments and oral exhortations, familiar conversations about faith and the person of Christ, recorded and edited by his literary friends.14 Notable is his initiative in 1637 to engrave an illustrated life of Christ, based on a wide selection from the Evangelicae Historiae Imagines edited by Jerome Nadal in Antwerp in 1593. The engravings of this work represent the first known synthesis between Renaissance art and Chinese aesthetic concepts. Reading the classics is an endeavor that also entails a visual dimension, as is also shown by Philippe Couplet’s and others’ introduction of the Chinese canon to the West. Translations of major books usually came with illustrations meant to impress a specific “image” of the author who was thus entering the reader’s cultural world. The Western knowledge of Chinese thought and classics developed at the same time the Aristotelian, scholastic, and biblical classics were introduced into China. Paradoxically, in this initial period, the introduction of China to the West may have reached a larger public than the one concerned with the diffusion of the Western canon into China. Couplet, Christian Wolfgang Herdrich, Intorcetta, and François de Rougemont published the first Latin translation of three of the Four Books in Paris in 1687. They had grounded their efforts upon the manuscript translations of their predecessors, undertaken for almost a century at that time. Their opus magnum, Confucius, 12 13 14 John Lagerwey, China, A Religious State (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 3. Cf. Yanrong Chen, “The Shengjing zhijie: A Chinese Text of Commented Gospel Readings in the Encounter between Europe and China in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Early Modern Christianity 1, no. 1 (2014): 165-193. Erik Zürcher, ed. and trans., Kouduo richao. Li Jiubiao’s Diary of Oral Admonitions. A Late Ming Christian Journal, 2 vols. (Sankt Augustin: Nettetal “Monumenta Serica Monograph Series LVI/1, 2,” 2007); Gianni Criveller, Preaching Christ in Late Ming China: The Jesuits’ Presentation of Christ from Matteo Ricci to Giulio Aleni (Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 1997). The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati 185 sinarum philosophus, met with a resounding success throughout Europe.15 “We can say that the ethical system of the philosopher Confucius is sublime. It is at the same time simple, sensible, and derived from the best sources of natural reason. Never has human reason, without the support of Divine Revelation reached such a level and such a force,” writes Couplet in his introduction. When it comes to Geography and History, the work of Martino Martini (1614-1661) exerted a special impact on the philosophical debate in Europe. His De Bello Tartarico met with a learned and avid readership. The writing and the success of the De Bello Tartarico show Martini’s (and his public’s) swift assessment of the far-reaching political changes happening in China, lived as a “global event.” Furthermore, Martini’s Novus Atlas Sinensis referenced Chinese and Jesuit sources as well as Martini’s own travels and observations; it was drawn and written in a language meant to be approved by the community of astronomers, notably by the Dutch Protestant scientist Philip Lansbergen.16 Finally, through his Sinicae Historiae Decas Prima (1658), Martini contributed to the shaping of a cross-disciplinary learned community: throughout this work, he recorded a series of events from Fuxi (2952 BCE) until the beginning of the Christian era, and thus played an essential role in the questioning of a literal understanding of biblical chronologies. Crafting a New Code A turning point in the history of the Jesuit mission in China was the arrival of five French Jesuits in 1687. They bore the title of “Mathematicians of the King” (the King being Louis XIV, patron of the expedition), but the honorific naming took a new meaning when they started to teach mathematics to (and share technological expertise with) Emperor Kangxi. Their success in curing the fever of the latter by administering quinine17 made Kangxi gift them with a plot of land inside the Palace grounds. There, the Jesuits duly constructed a church, a library, and an astronomical observatory. Within fifteen years after this first arrival, forty French Jesuits settled in China. 15 16 17 See Thierry Meynard, ed. and trans., Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1987): The First Translation of the Confucian Classics. Latin translation (1658-1660) of the Chinese by Prosper Intorcetta, Christian Herdtrich, François Rougemont, and Philippe Couplet (Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, new series 6, 2011). Romano, Impressions de Chine, 234-235. John Witek, Controversial Ideas in China and Europe: A Biography of Jean-François Foucquet, S.J. (1665-1741) (Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 1982), 62. 186 Benoît Vermander Due to the specific background of the French nationals, the China Jesuit mission entered the Age of Enlightenment which also led to new approaches to the study of an evolving “canon.” Jesuit narratives provided “evidences from China”18 that customs, religious traditions, and political systems observed in Europe were a product of history rather than being inscribed in nature, and (most importantly) that remarkable civilizational achievements could take shape and evolve on bases other than those of the Mediterranean and European civilizations. Confucianism, in particular, provided the model of a “civil religion” based on reason and as a guarantor of social order without being bound to the dogmas of the Christian religion. Descriptions of Chinese political and technological practices similarly deconstruct the codes of Western knowledge. Said otherwise, a China-generated shift in episteme questioned the consistency of spheres of knowledge (biblical chronology, logic, and metaphysics, the distinction between human wisdom and biblical revelation) that were previously thought unbreakable from the faith being proclaimed. The Figurist project can be read as an exploration of the linguistic and sapiential resources proper to China in order to establish a meta-language transcribing the beliefs and knowledge of humankind. One of the “mathematicians of the King,” Joachim Bouvet, corresponded with Leibniz and suggested to him the connection between the binary system of arithmetic and the hexagrams of the Yijing (The Classic of Mutations).19 In the view of Bouvet, the hexagrams that are at the basis of the divination system expounded by the Yijing provided the model upon which to establish a kind of universal metalanguage, an algebra of realities. Said otherwise, Bouvet was not limiting himself to mathematics: “Figurism” was essentially a search for correspondences between the Chinese classics and the Bible. These correspondences were partly “syntactic” (provided by a similar understanding of cosmic and meta-cosmic patterns) and partly historical: identifying “figures” akin to the ones of the biblical narrative within the corpus of Chinese classics occupied a good part of Bouvet’s endeavors. As can be expected, his superiors made obstacles to them, but Bouvet proved to be stubborn. The controversies awakened by the Figurist movement showcase the difficulties that the traditional Christian understanding of history, other religions, morality, and the 18 19 Isabelle Landry-Deron, La Preuve par la Chine: La Description de J.-B. Du Halde, jésuite, 1735 (Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2002). David E. Mungello, Leibniz and Confucianism: The Search for Accord (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1977). The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati 187 human mind met with when encountering civilizations such as the Chinese.20 In some respects, Figurism was a “prefiguration” (so to speak) of latter-day “contextual theology,” but it also illustrates the deadlock of a literal way of reading the Bible not yet dethroned by the critical advances of the seventeenth century (the eighteenth century will register surprisingly few progresses, and biblical studies will take new impetus around the beginning of the nineteenth century). As already noted, Bouvet was carried away by his enthusiasm for the Yijing: he had found there a “key applicable to all sciences”: theology, philosophy, and science were to be unified by the use of a common code or language, the one that the “figures” (xiang) of the hexagrams were patterning. These images were “the writing system used by scholars before the Flood.”21 Leibniz’s quest for a universal language was certainly at least partly triggered by such a claim. It is true that a propensity to engage in “linguistic alchemy” is a characteristic of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Zeitgeist. The endeavor found a father figure in Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), who based part of his extrapolations on information he collected from China-based Jesuits. Concretely, the legendary figure of Fuxi (to whom Chinese mythology attributes decisive cultural inventions) was identified by some Figurists with Enoch; similarly, in the first five Chinese Emperors, a typos of Christ was unearthed. Figurists also detected in the Yijing the doctrine of the three ages of the world, and in the Daodejing (The Classic of the Way and its Virtue) vestigia of the Trinity. Joseph de Prémare (1666-1736) well represents the Figurists’ hermeneutic. One of his works, a Latin manuscript with long quotations in Chinese, completed in Canton and dated 1724, was eventually published in a French translation in 1878. Its title clearly states its intent: Remains of the main Christian dogmas, taken from the ancient Chinese books. This quest for divine vestigia, typical of every enterprise of natural theology, heads back to the source: All the jing [classics] come back to the Yijing [Book of Mutations] as the streams go back to their source. … It is necessary to reduce to a common principle [“chef unique”] all the doctrines that can be contained in the jing. Whoever finds a way to bring all these books 20 21 Claudia von Collani, P. Joachim Bouvet, S.J. – Sein Leben und Sein Werk (Sankt Augustin: Steyler Verlag, Monumenta Serica Monograph Series XVII, 1985); Witek, Controversial Ideas. Letter of Bouvet to Leibniz of February 28 1698, quoted in Mungello, Leibniz and Confucianism, 314. 188 Benoît Vermander back to a coherent system of doctrines will have found their true meaning. … [At the same time,] the knowledge of the true doctrine of the jing is entirely lost among the Chinese.22 Quoting various Chinese authorities who meditated over the mysteries hidden in the Chinese classics, Prémare concludes: One can say with a very great probability that all the jing relate to a holy and divine personage as their only object. His virtues, his merits, the benefaction he brings, his mysteries, his holy law, his reign, his glory, even more his very works are reported in these books in a way that is obscure for the Chinese, but very clear for us who know Jesus Christ.23 The incapacity of Chinese commentators to proceed to such identification, asserts Prémare, reminds one of the Jewish commentators who did not want to discern the scriptures’ “true meaning.” However, Chinese interpreters, Prémare recognizes, are not entirely to be disdained: (1) because quite often they cling to the natural meaning of the text and assert many good things, perhaps without understanding what they say. (2) They can be of great help to criticize different authors. (3) From their very errors and their contradictions, the truth can sometimes be drawn; thus, poisons are used to compose excellent remedies.24 In the course of this work and in his other manuscripts, Prémare, notwithstanding the obvious shortcomings of the objective and method he propounds, proves himself to be a keen and astute reader of the whole Chinese classical corpus as well as a distinguished grammarian. Let us note that contemporary Chinese scholars show special sensitivity to the fact that sinology, both as a 22 23 24 Vestiges des principaux dogmes chrétiens, tirés des anciens livres chinois, avec reproduction des textes chinois, par le P. de Prémare, jésuite, ancien missionnaire en Chine: Traduits du latin, accompagnés de différents compléments et remarques par MM. A. Bonnetty et Paul Perny (Paris: Bureau des Annales de philosophie Chrétienne, 1878), 28-30. The interpretation of Chinese narratives according to biblical topoi extends beyond Figurism. See the analysis of a Christ-like figure of Chinese antiquity as commented by a number of missionaries in Roman Malek, “The Christian Carrière of King Cheng-Tang” in Miscellanea Asiatica, Mélanges en l’honneur de Françoise Aubin, eds. Denise Aigle et al. (Sankt Augustin: Steyler Verlag, Monumenta Serica Monograph Series LXI, 2010), 719-752. Prémare, Vestiges des principaux dogmes chrétien, 47. Ibid., 49. The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati 189 corpus of knowledge and as a hermeneutical endeavor, was somehow born from the comparative reading of the classics endeavored with the Jesuits in dialogue and sometimes conflict with the Chinese literati. Already toward the end of the seventies of the last century, the reevaluation of the first generations of Jesuits had started to take place.25 Later on, some Chinese scholars would embark on resolutely positive evaluations of Jesuit influence on China’s thought development.26 The hermeneutical interpretation of the encounter between Confucianism and Christianity, from the publication of Ricci’s True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven onward, is a topic of particular interest,27 and, more generally, the “comparative study of Classics” as rooted in such tradition is generating a growing body of literature. Textual Encounters and Contemporary Settings Throughout the historical sequence that (maybe in too cursory a fashion) I summarized above, different missionary strategies were put into motion.28 The first one, oriented to the Chinese, was to offer an interpretation of the Chinese classics grounded in the content of the Western faith and gnoseology that were concurrently and progressively introduced to the literati, this in order to demonstrate that the second “basket” confirmed but also complemented the first and had an authoritative value when it came to the knowledge of humankind’s final destiny. Matteo Ricci’s apologetics belongs to this approach. A second, complementary strategy addressed itself to Europe and Christianity, acclimating the Chinese classics so as to bridge the gap 25 26 27 28 Paola Calanca, La Chine populaire face aux jésuites (1582-1723): Le début d’une réévaluation historique (MA thesis, Paris, INALCO, 1988). Li Tiangang, “Chinese Renaissance: The Role of Early Jesuits in China,” in China and Christianity, Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, eds. Stephen Huhalley Jr. and Xiaoxin Wu (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 117-126. Sun Xiangyang, Mingmo tianzhujiao yu ruxue de jiaoliu he chongtu (Exchanges and Conflicts between Catholicism and Confucianism in Late Ming Period) (Taipei: Wenjin Press, 1992); Liu Yunhua, Quanshi de yuanhuan (The Hermeneutic Circle) (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2005); Li Tiangang, Kuawenhua de quanshi (Intercultural Hermeneutics) (Shanghai: Xinxing Press, 2007); Yang Huilin, China, Christianity, and the Question of Culture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014). For an analysis of missionary textual strategies, starting with a specific narrative thread, see Nicolas Standaert, The Intercultural Weaving of Historical Texts. Chinese and European Stories about Emperor Ku and His Concubines (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 190 Benoît Vermander between them and the Western Creed and episteme. Resources found in the “natural theology” tradition helped to suggest venues of conciliation between Christianity and the Chinese world. An opposite strategy – the third of the set here discussed – was to approach the Chinese classics as being in basic opposition to Christian orthodoxy, so as to conduct the missionary enterprise in a way that would ensure terminological, dogmatic, and ritual integrity. Longobardo’s Memoir is an illustration of this strategy, based on a personal reading of the Chinese classics and also on “fieldwork” among literati. Its merit, when read today, is to provide us with a direct grasp on the “spiritual theology” proper to Chinese converts, Xu Guangqi notably. Unfortunately, Longobardo’s lexical scruples and scholastic turn of mind made him unable to appreciate the richness of a synthesis still in the making. Our fourth strategy is exemplified by the Figurist project, which was nurturing the dream of coming up with a meta-language through which to reconcile the varieties of idioms encoding divine Revelation. As such, Figurism was addressing itself indifferently to Chinese and Western audiences, though it was never in a position to speak meaningfully to the first. The second, third, and fourth strategies were directed by concerns and methods that all contributed to the initial shaping of the sinological endeavor. Although it aimed at the Chinese audience, the first strategy played a decisive part: it obliged missionaries to make the study of Chinese classics the basis of their studies and their apologetics; moreover, as missionaries were observing the reactions of their Chinese audience, they were consequently shaping and reshaping their own understanding of the Chinese canon and, more largely, of the extent their faith could accommodate the surrounding culture. Taken as a whole, these reading strategies have durably influenced Western sinology as well as theological and philosophical interpretations given to the diversity of world cultures. It remains most difficult to offer an account of the reading strategies developed by Chinese scholars.29 They obviously varied according to the degree to which the Christian faith was accepted or rejected.30 A wish to 29 30 See Nicolas Standaert, “The Study of the Classics by Late Ming Christian Converts,” in Cheng – All in Sincerity: Festschrift in Honor of Monika Ubelhör, eds. Denise Gimpel and Melanie Hanz (Hamburg: Hamburger Sinologische Gesellschaft, 2001), 19-40; Pan Feng-chuan, “Xing shen xiangyi, dao qiang cheng: Zai si Xu Guangqi yu kua wenhua duihua (Xu Guangqi and Intercultural Exchange),” Daofeng (Logos and Pneuma) 43 (2015): 209-233. See also Yu Liu, Harmonious Disagreement: Matteo Ricci and His Closest Chinese Friends (New York: Peter Lang, 2015). See especially Gernet, Chine et Christianisme. Some of the anti-Christian evidences Gernet presents have been put into larger context; see for instance Sangkeun The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati 191 reinterpret Confucianism according to its “original” inspiration and, consequently, mixed feelings toward the Neo-Confucian synthesis (some expressions of which may have been seen as contributing to the destruction of the Empire’s moral fabric) probably contributed to fostering a kind of alliance, of complicity between some literati, who subsequently often converted, and the Jesuits. The agreement reached between these literati and the Jesuits also contributed to forging the tenets of sinology at its birth. Our understanding of the converts’ reading strategies could be furthered by analyzing the various hermeneutics put into play by the tradition of jingxue [study of the classics] as well as the degree to which literati were exposed to Buddhist-inspired modes of reading. The interest given to scientific and practical knowledge also influenced the reception and understanding of Christianity and the Western canon, which were, as one should stress again, only very progressively discovered. Whatever the differences and even oppositions just noted, the crosshermeneutic that Ricci, Longobardo, the Figurists, and converted Chinese scholars endeavored should be considered as a whole: their interactions changed somehow the position of all the interlocutors vis-à-vis the canons of both China and the West. And, beyond the diversity of theological and catechetical approaches promoted by missionaries, personal and intellectual displacements could not but challenge acquired frames of thought, relationships to founding texts, and assessments of the other’s canon. Somehow, internal disagreements needed to go full swing for these displacements to produce longlasting effects. The gradual assimilation of scriptural and scientific material brought by the missionaries would similarly transform the Chinese episteme expressed and transmitted by the Confucian canon and commentaries. This twofold breakthrough was not being theorized, at least not in our terms. However, it did take place. And the awareness of such a breakthrough opens up a space for new displacements. The deadlock where Figurism found itself forbade for some time to further the inchoate attempts at “comparative theology” that the movement triggered. As a matter of fact, even today, comparative theology can be considered to be a new discipline. It entails recognizing one’s anchorage within a given religious tradition before investigating another, exploring the similarities and differences between the two, before returning to one’s tradition somehow “transformed,” bringing in questions and insights. One’s religious commitment thus needs to be clearly acknowledged, as needs to be acknowlKim, Strange Names of God: The Missionary Translation of the Divine Name and the Chinese Responses to Matteo Ricci’s ‘Shangti’ in Late Ming China, 1583-1644 (New York: Peter Lang, “Studies in Biblical Literature, 70,” 2004). 192 Benoît Vermander edged the context and background from which the theologian initially operates. Doing comparative theology is akin to operating dialogically, as one unceasingly circulates from one’s own tradition to the one with which a privileged, transformative relationship is taking shape.31 Raimon Panikkar had already expressed the approach to dialogue upon which such displacement takes place: Dialogue seeks truth by trusting the other, just as dialectics pursues truth by trusting the order of things, the value of reason and weighty arguments. Dialectics is the optimism of reason; dialogue is the optimism of the heart. Dialectics believes it can approach truth by relying on the objective consistency of ideas. Dialogue believes it can advance along the way to truth by relying on the subjective consistency of the dialogical partners. Dialogue does not seek primarily to be duo-logue, a duet of two logoi, which would still be dialectical; but a dia-logos, a piercing of the logos to attain a truth that transcends it.32 Probably, Matteo Ricci, anchored as he was in the optimism proper to the Renaissance man, would not have distinguished between the optimism of the heart and the optimism of reason the way Panikkar endeavors to do. However, one senses in the paragraph just quoted issues and concerns similar to the ones that agitated both missionaries and Chinese literati. All the strategies that we previously identified were engaging the Christian creed into new challenges and venues; the terms of the questions that were arising were largely defined by the Confucian canon (and not the Buddhist or Taoist ones, as is more often the case nowadays when similar endeavors take place). In some respect, not only did sinology allow for these first, inchoate attempts at comparative theology, but also the questions raised by such attempts defined the way sinology started to delineate its field and methods. Somehow, a “hermeneutical triangle” was drawn by the correlative shaping of sinological knowledge, the comparative reading of classics, and preliminary attempts at doing comparative theology. Such a hermeneutic triangle was left largely unexploited during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Its exploration, from the 1930s onward, was attempted again by some modern Chinese philoso31 32 Francis X. Clooney, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders (Malden, MA-Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Raimon Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 243. The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati 193 phers through ways and means utterly different from the ones privileged by their predecessors. The Western canon that these philosophers were dealing with had largely changed, both modified and enriched by nineteenth-century philosophers. In contrast, the frontiers of the Chinese canon had remained strikingly constant. It was rather its relevancy that had become an object of debate and anguish. Still, exceptions to the “decay of the comparative endeavor” undergone during one century and a half can be easily found, notably in the work of the great translators. Legge’s dealings with the Taoist classics is a case in point, brilliantly analyzed by Girardot: The issue of Taoism at the end of the nineteenth century was twofold. From one perspective, it could be carefully defined, classified and tamed as a textual object or sacred book-religion by Müller and Legge’s relatively reverent and civil methods of comparison. Yet in the sense suggested by Giles’s more overtly suspicious, combative and non-comparative approach, it could be made to disappear altogether as a ‘religion’ by being reduced to other fragmented, though ostensibly more ‘objective’ and ‘natural’, philological and historical categories. … Whereas before, as a missionary, [Legge], as the discoverer of a Chinese Sky God, had been viciously attacked by other more conservative missionaries on theological grounds, now, as a professional scholar, he was assaulted for the same findings by sinologists who were profoundly disturbed by the ambiguity and fragmentary nature of the textual evidence. … Sinology after Leggism was mostly satisfied with what was taken as the manifest secularity and rationality of the classical Confucian canon – principles that were ironically also based largely on Legge’s translation of the classic.33 What was indeed at stake in Legge’s attempt was its ultimate feasibility and legitimacy: could one associate into the same “hermeneutical triangle”34 sinology, the study of classics, and comparative theology? The boldness of this attempt could only alienate him from the majority of the missionaries as 33 34 Norman J. Girardot, “‘Finding the Way’: James Legge and the Victorian Invention of Taoism,” Religion 29, no. 2 (1999): 116-117. I have justified and developed this expression in “Sur un triangle herméneutique – Sinologie, théologie et étude comparée des classiques,” in Michel Espagne and Jin Guang-yao, eds., Conférences chinoises de la rue d’Ulm (Paris: Démopolis, “Quaero,” 2017), 379-422. 194 Benoît Vermander well as from the quasi-totality of the sinologists. Till today, it is clear that the rules, style, and limits of sinological inquiry prevailing in academia continue to confirm the principled exclusion of such attempts. However, debates around the object and methods of sinology may be progressively relaxing the principle of “non-comparison” that implicitly defines the “scientific character” of the field. For if sinology is less a “science” (as it has no method of its own) than a “robust engagement” with its “subject” (not its “object”), then a reflexive reappraisal of its origins may gain renewed relevancy: I speak of ‘New Sinology’ as being descriptive of a ‘robust engagement with contemporary China’ and indeed with the Sinophone world in all of its complexity, be it local, regional or global. It affirms a conversation and intermingling that also emphasizes strong scholastic underpinnings in both the classical and modern Chinese language and studies, at the same time as encouraging an ecumenical attitude in relation to a rich variety of approaches and disciplines, whether they be mainly empirical or more theoretically inflected. In seeking to emphasize innovation within sinology by recourse to the word ‘new,’ it is nonetheless evident that I continue to affirm the distinctiveness of sinology as a mode of intellectual inquiry.35 Such focus on the dialogical nature of sinology has implications for our topic. The archeology of sinology may reveal the continuous relevancy and fecundity of its initial stage. This can be the case only if sinology reflects on its premises and its goals. The main point lies in the fact that the locus of truth is set in histories and cultures, a setting to which only dialogue gives access. In such a setting, dialogic exchange is no longer a mechanical, “objective” process; rather, it centers around establishing relationships between “others”: exchanges imply that the very act of listening is a transformative process. It cannot be separated from the one through which truth is reached. It so happens that, nowadays, dialogical exchanges often refer to two or several “canons,” which define the way a culture determines its setting in the world. This means that the comparative study of the classics is an integral part of the dialogic endeavor that develops among cultures. At the same time, meeting with a variety of classics is akin to being confronted with a diversity of styles. The dialogues that take place between Confucius, Zhuangzi, Jesus, the Indian Sages, Shakyamuni, Socrates, or Seneca and their disciples, their adversaries, and successive generations of readers borrow from an astonishing diversity of rhetorical expressions. The realization of the fact that 35 G. R. Barmé, On New Sinology (2005), http://ciw.anu.edu.au/new_sinology/. The Encounter between Jesuits and Chinese Literati 195 “dialogue” does not come in one shape obliges us to reconsider what it entails. Ultimately, dialogue should be approached as a regulatory idea, which three principles govern: (a) The variety of dialogical styles forbids us to establish one of them as a “standard.” We need to study them according to the “family resemblances” that groups together these dialogical styles and also account for their differences.36 (b) Dialogical styles developed in different contexts meet and transform each other throughout time and space. (c) At the same time, as these dialogical styles meet and evolve, the modalities of their encounter are necessarily modified: the “common habitation” of the earth triggers a “dialogical meta-style” that the confluence of all dialogic styles contributes to shaping.37 Conclusion Canons are linked into an inchoate and yet continuous conversation. Obviously, the methods used for such linkage are utterly different from the ones experienced by the first sinologists: the dialogic reading of our classics has become a global conversation. Today, dialogue is continuously nurtured by narratives that sometimes divide and sometimes gather the disciples of Confucius, Laozi, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohamed.38 However, these narratives also anchor the global into the local: specific dialogic endeavors foster, first and foremost, local communities. Chloë Starr opens up interesting perspectives as to the relationship between text and 36 37 38 Here, I extend to “dialogue” an expression that Wittgenstein famously applied to “game” (and various forms of dialogue could be legitimately defined as constituting as many “language games”): “I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, color of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and crisscross in the same way. And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.” See Philosophical Investigations, no. 67. See Benoît Vermander, “Scholasticism, Dialogue and Universalism,” Universitas (Zhexue yu wenhua) 37, no. 11 (2010): 23-39; “Dialogue, cultures et universalité,” Gregorianum 96, no. 2 (2015): 303-318. At the same period when the encounter discussed in this contribution takes place, the meeting between Confucianism and Islamic thought within the Chinese world constitutes another fascinating case in point. See notably Sachito Murata, William C. Chittick, and Tu Weiming, The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi: Islamic Thought in Confucian Terms (Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 2009); J. D. Frankel, Rectifying God’s Name: Liu Zhi’s Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011). 196 Benoît Vermander practice in the Chinese way of reading classics and, consequently, in Chinese theological tradition: Chinese theology, like Chinese text reading, is essentially relational: this is not the virtuoso performance of a scholastic, where the reader, or students, follows along the steps to their logical conclusion, but a more open process, where the reader, conceived as a peer, is invited to make connections from within a shared intranet of allusion. A common heritage in the Chinese classics and a reading pattern that proceeds via a series of implicit associations in the mind of the reader create a more participative and open-ended way of reading and of engaging with theology. … Just as Christianity was being transformed into Chinese forms by local adaptation and innovation in communities and patterns of prayers built around a church or mission house, so Chinese Christian theology underwent its own process of transformation into a local textual religion.39 In the example provided here, a local form of relationality progressively becomes a model for a global form of doing theology. Within the narrow space of a local community rooted in a certain way of conversing and living together, global trends are shaped and ultimately transmitted. 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