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This post was initially a topic I discussed on a separate website, The Philosophy Forum, but I have noticed a lot of militant atheists brewing in the forum lately so I have decided to distance myself from it. That being said, I will post a few threads that I wrote here to hopefully generate thoughtful discussion and dialogue. Hope you enjoy. This post in particular introduces a little known work by the great Jesuit evangelizer Matteo Ricci that attempts to blend Confucianism with the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus and Christian theology. The text became a popular moral treatise in 16th and 17th century China.
Matteo Ricci was known for being a great evangelizer of Catholicism as well as advocating for the use of Confucianism as a philosophical method in understanding Christian doctrine. Much like how Aquinas used Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, Ricci believed that Confucius and his followers ideas were complimentary with Christianity and the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Before we even get to this point, it is well known that Ricci had an interest in Stoicism. By his time the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius had been floating around in Latin and Seneca was also a big deal. Epictetus' Enchiridion, or Handbook, was very influential on him and he used this to formulate a work called the Ershiwu Yan or The Twenty-Five Paragraphs. This work is a translation of the first 25 chapters of Epictetus' Enchiridion without any reference to Greco-Roman religion or culture. All it contains are the ethical principles outlined by Epictetus. Ricci also enjoyed Epictetus because of his belief in a personal God rather than an impersonal one (this in my eyes seems to be the chief difference between the Greek Stoics like Cleanthes and Chrysippus and the later Roman Stoics). In the Erishiwu Yan he also tries to use as many references to Confucian philosophy as he can.
I theorize that if Ricci was not exposed to Stoicism then he probably wouldn't care much for Confucianism. In the following articles, the authors discuss Ricci and his use of Epictetus while evangelizing. Christopher Spalatin in his article Matteo Ricci's Use of Epictetus' Enchiridion says "Ricci's Book of 25 Paragraphs not only is an original example of trying to create a bond of human understanding between East and West through Stoicism and Confucianism, but also represents a unique historical effort to create and establish a Chinese Christian humanism." In another article by historian Yu Liu, The Complexities of a Stoic Breakthrough: Matteo Ricci's Ershiwu Yan, he states "In Tianzhu Shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), in particular, he eulogized ancient Confucianism implicitly as analogous to Stoicism in being an ethical theism lacking only the revelation of Jesus Christ." The articles are here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23575440
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43818412?seq=13
Matteo Ricci was known for being a great evangelizer of Catholicism as well as advocating for the use of Confucianism as a philosophical method in understanding Christian doctrine. Much like how Aquinas used Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, Ricci believed that Confucius and his followers ideas were complimentary with Christianity and the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Before we even get to this point, it is well known that Ricci had an interest in Stoicism. By his time the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius had been floating around in Latin and Seneca was also a big deal. Epictetus' Enchiridion, or Handbook, was very influential on him and he used this to formulate a work called the Ershiwu Yan or The Twenty-Five Paragraphs. This work is a translation of the first 25 chapters of Epictetus' Enchiridion without any reference to Greco-Roman religion or culture. All it contains are the ethical principles outlined by Epictetus. Ricci also enjoyed Epictetus because of his belief in a personal God rather than an impersonal one (this in my eyes seems to be the chief difference between the Greek Stoics like Cleanthes and Chrysippus and the later Roman Stoics). In the Erishiwu Yan he also tries to use as many references to Confucian philosophy as he can.
I theorize that if Ricci was not exposed to Stoicism then he probably wouldn't care much for Confucianism. In the following articles, the authors discuss Ricci and his use of Epictetus while evangelizing. Christopher Spalatin in his article Matteo Ricci's Use of Epictetus' Enchiridion says "Ricci's Book of 25 Paragraphs not only is an original example of trying to create a bond of human understanding between East and West through Stoicism and Confucianism, but also represents a unique historical effort to create and establish a Chinese Christian humanism." In another article by historian Yu Liu, The Complexities of a Stoic Breakthrough: Matteo Ricci's Ershiwu Yan, he states "In Tianzhu Shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), in particular, he eulogized ancient Confucianism implicitly as analogous to Stoicism in being an ethical theism lacking only the revelation of Jesus Christ." The articles are here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23575440
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43818412?seq=13
