Related Papers
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment (RAE)
Leibniz and China: Religion, Hermeneutics, and Enlightenment
2009 •
Eric S Nelson
Leibniz’s engagement with China is informed by his use of the principles of charity and understanding better. Leibniz defines justice as the “charity of the wise,” and uses this principle not only in his practical philosophy but to interpret the statements of others in such a way as to maximize their coherence and meaning and minimize undue suspicion. Appealing to the example of St. Paul, Leibniz uses the principle of charity to critically interpret Chinese beliefs as consistent with natural theology and even “true Christianity.” He rejected the suspicion of authors such as Malebranche who interpreted the Chinese as immoral, irrational, and irreligious. The second principle of “understanding better” is based on the early church fathers’ reinterpretation of Hebrew and Greek texts as revealing Christian truths. The maxim of “understanding the author better than he understood himself” seems to coincide with the principle of charity. Yet, even though it can be said to preserve truth and maximize agreement, it threatens to transform charity toward others into assimilation to oneself.
Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture
The Great Harmony: An Essay on Man and Confucianism
2008 •
Peter Feng
This paper examines the parallels between the natural, psychological, and social harmony in Alexander Pope's philosophical poem An Essay on Man (1733-34) and various Confucian texts. Both Pope and Confucians base psychological and social harmony on a cosmos that brings apparently contending movements towards higher uniformity, and both Pope and Confucius identify an ethical mean as the ideal of life. Popean harmony, compared with Confucian harmony, remains mechanical and isolated because Pope fails to address the possible interactions between inner and outer harmony. The similarities between Popean and Confucian harmony may be traced to the influences of Leibniz and Bolingbroke who studied Confucianism with great interest, and more probably, to the general enthusiasm for sinology in Europe in the 17 th and 18 th centuries. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the two anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments on various issues had actually reshaped this paper.
Metafísica y persona
Leibnizian Philosophy and the Pluralism of Religion and Culture: The Case of China. Filosofía Leibniziana y el Pluralismo de la religión y la cultura: el caso de China
Shohei Edamura
In this paper, I present Leibniz’s understanding of natural theology and reason for which, according to him, any person in the world has her natural reason, through which she can realize eternal truths such as that every human soul is immortal. Secondly I discuss how Leibniz evaluated the Chinese theology. According to him, the ancient Chinese understood God or the supreme substance by the name of “Li (理)” or Shangdi (上帝), and without a revelation they knew that God created everything in the universe in accordance with His providence. Then I argue that although Leibniz’s understanding of the Chinese theology was not altogether accurate, we can still understand that in a limited sense, Leib- niz had a pluralistic view in terms of religion and culture that can foster dialogue today between the philosophies of the world.
ASIANetwork Exchange
Review of _Confucianism An Introduction_ and _Daoism An Introduction_
2015 •
Robert Steed
A review of Ronnie L. Littlejohn's two books on Confucianism and Daoism.
paper published in: Is the 21st Century the Age of Asia? ed. J. Marszałek-Kawa, Toruń 2012, pp. 20-41
Confucianism 2.0
Mateusz Stępień
Lyceum
Leibniz and Huayan Buddhism: Monads as Modified Li?
2014 •
Casey Rentmeester
Leibniz and the European Encounters with China: 300 Years of Discours sur la théologie naturelle des Chionois
Leibniz and the Political Theology of the Chinese (page proofs)
2017 •
Eric S Nelson
in: Wenchao Li (ed.): Leibniz and the European Encounters with China: 300 Years of Discours sur la théologie naturelle des Chinois (Studia Leibnitiana, Sonderhefte, Stuttgart 2017). In this paper, I reconsider the ethical-political and political theological contexts of Leibniz’s reception and interpretation of Chinese political culture and thought. This study examines Leibniz’s political philosophy and ‘political theology’ in order to clarify how he interpreted the Chinese political system and Confucian political thought as providing a model of benevolent enlightened kingship rooted in natural theology in the context of the early Enlightenment. This approach – articulated with varying degrees of enthusiasm in thinkers such as Leibniz, Wolff, Bilfinger, and Voltaire – would in the later and post-Enlightenment period—in thinkers such as Herder, Kant, and Hegel – become an instance of the abuses of absolute power and represent the obedience and heteronomy of the ancien régime as much as of the ‘Orient’. The Western idea of China as an ahistorical and timeless regime of ‘Oriental despotism’ developed in earlier thinker such as Montesquieu and was subsequently shaped by disputes over the appropriate relationship between politics and religion and enlightened monarchy and popular self-determination during the long eighteenth-century.
Review of Religion and Chinese Society
Confucianism and Daoism: From Max Weber to the Present
2020 •
Anna Sun
Guest editor's introduction to the special issue "Confucianism and Daoism: From Max Weber to the Present," Review of Religion and Chinese Society 7(2): 161-163, 2020.
(2007b) Confucian Theology: Three Models
Yong Huang
If there are still disagreements about whether Confucianism is a religion, there seems to be a consensus that Confucianism does not have a theology. In this article, I attempt to show that there are at least three models of serious god-talks in the Confucian tradition: (i) heaven is discussed in the Confucian classics of Book of Documents, Books of Poetry, and Analects as something transcendent of the world, similar to Christian God in crucial aspects; (ii) heaven is discussed among contemporary Confucians, represented by Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan, and Tu Weiming, as something ‘immanently transcendent’, the ultimate reality immanent in the world to transcend the world; and (iii) heaven is discussed by neo-Confucians, particularly the Cheng brothers of the Song dynasty, as the wonderful life-giving activity transcending the world within the world.
Confucianism: a study guide
Patrick S. O'Donnell
