Download Leibniz and Confucius: The Foundations of Cultural Exchange

Leibniz and Confucius: The Foundations of Cultural
Exchange
Richard N. Stichler
Alvernia University
Reading, PA I consider it a singular plan of the fates that human
cultivation and refinement should today be concentrated, as
it were, in the two extremes of our continent, in Europe and
in Tshina (as they call it), which adorns the Orient as
Europe does the opposite edge of the earth. Perhaps
Supreme Providence has ordained such an arrangement, so
that as the most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out
their arms to each other, those in between may gradually be
brought to a better way of life. –G. W. Leibniz, Preface to
Novissima Sinica.
Introduction
By the end of the seventeenth century the discovery of the
new world had generated a vigorous debate about the
significance of civilizations outside of Europe.
Philosophers and theologians were confronted with cultures
that challenged their understanding of the world and raised
questions about their own intellectual heritage. The highly
advanced civilization of the Chinese was of particular
interest, for its achievements were viewed as a
demonstration of the unaided power of natural reason.
China was widely seen as a utopian society that had
attained an advanced moral tradition without recourse to
dogma or faith.
From the very beginning, however, the Western reception
and interpretation of Confucianism was embroiled in
theological controversy. In the early 17th century, the
controversy centered on the so called “accomodationist
policy” of the Jesuit mission in China. Matteo Ricci (15521610), the Jesuit founder of the first Catholic mission in
China, viewed Confucianism as a theistic form of natural
religion that was compatible with the basic principles of
Christian monotheism; in order to win converts to
Christianity Ricci thus advocated a policy of
accommodating the Chinese ritual tradition of ancestor
worship or allowing Chinese converts to continue their
practice of Confucian rituals. Ricci’s Dominican and
Franciscan opponents, however, strongly opposed such a
mixture of what they deemed “pagan ritual” with
Christianity. They maintained that the Chinese Confucians
were actually atheistic materialists who lacked any
understanding of the Christian conception of the Deity.
Initially, the dispute over the interpretation of Confucian
natural theology was confined for the most part to the
Catholic hierarchy, but by the end of the 17th century a
wider knowledge of Confucian thought began to spread
throughout Europe. In 1687, Philippe Couplet, a Jesuit
missionary in China, published the first Latin translation of
the Confucian classics. In the preface to his translation,
Couplet wrote: "One might say that the moral system of
this philosopher is infinitely sublime, but that it is at the
same time simple, sensible and drawn from the purest
sources of natural reason... Never has Reason, deprived of
Divine Revelation, appeared so well developed nor with so
much power"1 As Couplet’s interpretation of Confucian
natural theology gained a wider European audience, the
reception of Confucianism in the West became further
entangled in an ongoing religious controversy over the
foundations of natural law.
In The Law of War and Peace Hugo Grotius had argued
that inasmuch as our knowledge of natural law could be
acquired by human reason alone, it would still be binding
on men even if there were no God. He thus maintained that
natural law could be regarded as literally and exclusively
natural, or as having no divine origin at all. Although
Grotius added that it would certainly be impious to suppose
that God does not exist, his shift toward a secular
interpretation of natural law was particularly upsetting to
European Pietists. According to the Pietists, natural law
was based solely and entirely on the divine authority and
decree of God, and without faith, human reason would be
unable to attain knowledge of any truth whatsoever. In
view of this controversy, Couplet’s interpretation of
Confucian natural theology was warmly embraced by
secularists who affirmed the independent validity of natural
law, while fideists viewed Confucianism as a pagan
religion that posed a grave threat to Christian orthodoxy. In
their view, if human reason could attain knowledge of
natural law without faith, then revealed knowledge of
God’s will would be deemed unnecessary and irrelevant.
However, Pietists and fideists who claimed revealed
knowledge of God’s will could not agree about exactly
what God had decreed and how He wanted things done.
Moreover, the sectarian violence and endless religious wars
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries intensified the
search for a resolution of conflict based exclusively on
natural or universal human reason. Explaining his motives
for writing The Law of War and Peace, Grotius wrote:
“Throughout the Christian world I observed a lack of
restraint in relation to war, such as even barbarous races
should be ashamed of; I observed that men rush to arms for
slight causes, or no cause at all, and that when arms have
once been taken up there is no longer any respect for law,
divine or human; it is as if, in accordance with a general
decree, frenzy had openly been let loose for the committing
of all crimes.”2 Thus, while Europeans fought wars of
religion, the Chinese, though “deprived of divine
revelation” (as Couplet put it), had achieved a peaceful and
harmonious civilization solely on the basis of Confucian
principles of natural reason. In the practical realm of law
and politics, it appeared that Europeans had much to learn
from the Chinese. Leibniz and other philosophers of the
enlightenment thus turned to the teachings of Confucius in
order to advance their cosmopolitan and humanistic ideals.
Leibniz and the Pre-Established Harmony of China and
Europe
In a world plagued with war and intolerance, Leibniz
labored constantly to achieve peace and mutual
understanding. Throughout his life he endeavored to bring
about a universal synthesis, a grand scheme for reconciling
everything and everyone—France and Germany, Catholics
and Protestants, Cartesians and Aristotelians, science and
theology—but his greatest ambition of all was to achieve
cooperative and harmonious relations between Europe and
Asia. Leibniz’s goals were enormous. As a philosopher and
statesman, he aspired to achieve the “grand design” of
creating global harmony through cultural exchange and
cooperation, and to this end, he devoted himself to the task
of constructing a harmonious universe in both theory and
practice.
On the theoretical side, Leibniz wanted to set human
thought on a new path by transforming the substance of the
prevailing world view. He developed a totally new concept
of universal science, according to Ernest Cassirer, by
substituting the concept of a pluralistic universe for
Cartesian dualism and Spinozian monism.3 He
accomplished this by combining Cartesian mechanism with
Aristotelian teleology thus giving precise mathematical
expression to a dynamic Aristotelian world of multiple
processes and events. Leibniz’s pluralistic universe was not
merely the mechanical sum of its parts but a dynamic and
continually unfolding actualization of multiplicity in unity.
He found the key to understanding the law that would
render the world’s diversity intelligible in his celebrated
discovery of the infinitesimal calculus.4 This Leibnizinan
conception of a dynamic pluralistic universe was to become
the predominant worldview of the eighteenth century.
On a practical level, Leibniz sought to develop harmonious
relations between Europe and Asia by facilitating a process
of cultural exchange and by demonstrating the
compatibility of Confucian and Christian ethics. He thought
that the Chinese had much to contribute to Western
civilization, but the main impediment to cultural exchange
lay in the controversy over the “natural theology” of the
Chinese. Between the two extremes of a secularism that
rejected revealed theology and a fideism that rejected
natural reason Leibniz typically tried to find the middle
ground. He attempted to defuse the tension between China
and the West by drawing parallels between Confucianism
and the natural philosophy of the ancient Greeks. He
reasoned that just as Christian theology had previously
retained its commitment to its principles of revealed
theology while being enlarged and improved through its
assimilation of Greek philosophy,5 so could it once again
be further perfected by absorbing the wisdom of China.
Throughout his life Leibniz maintained a lively interest in
China which he cultivated through his reading and
correspondence with a number of Jesuit missionaries in
China. For his time, Leibniz was extremely well-informed
about Chinese thought and culture; he read Philippe
Couplet’s translations of the Confucian classics, the Yi
Jing, and learned what he could about Zhu Xi and other
neo-Confucian philosophers. Wishing to become better
informed about Chinese culture, he even “expressed a
desire to travel to China himself.”6 Leibniz strongly
supported the work of the Jesuit missionaries in China who
followed the ecumenical policies of Matteo Ricci and
staunchly defended their accomodationist interpretation of
Confucianism against Christian critics who claimed that the
Chinese were atheists. In his Discourse on the Natural
Theology of the Chinese, Leibniz argued that the ancient
Chinese concept of tian or heaven was the equivalent of the
Christian idea of God, and he argued against the
materialistic interpretations of Confucianism propounded
by the Jesuit Nichola Longobardi and the Franciscan
Antoine Sainte Marie.7
Although the Jesuit missionaries had provided the Chinese
with much information about Western science and
civilization, Leibniz regretted the fact that the West was
still relatively uninformed about China. Believing that the
West had much to learn about practical philosophy from
the Chinese, he wanted to promote further cultural
exchange and even wanted to invite the Chinese to send its
own missionaries to the West to teach Europeans the art of
practical politics. For in comparing the civilizations of
China and Europe, Leibniz found that although the West
was more advanced in the theoretical sciences, China was
far superior in moral philosophy. He wrote: “it is difficult
to describe how beautifully all the laws of the Chinese, in
contrast to those of other peoples, are directed to the
achievement of public tranquility and the establishment of
social order, so that men shall be disrupted in their relations
as little as possible.” And though he found the West more
advanced in military science, Leibniz attributed this fact to
the superior wisdom rather than the ignorance of the
Chinese. “For,” he wrote, “they despise everything which
creates or nourishes ferocity in men, and almost in
emulation of the higher teachings of Christ…. They would
be wise indeed if they were alone in the world.”8
In developing his defense of Confucianism, Leibniz noted
many similarities between the neo-Confucian metaphysics
of Zhu Xi and his own conception of a pluralistic universe.
According to the Leibnizian worldview, the universe
consists of an infinite series of simple substances or
monads each of which is “a perpetual living mirror of the
universe.” “Every substance,” Leibniz states, “is like an
entire world and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the
whole world …”9 In Zhu Xi’s account of the relationship
between li and chi Leibniz found a striking resemblance to
his own conception of substance. According to Zhu Xi, Li
is the first principle and ground of all things, or the
universal substance which is present in each individual
being while chi is its coordinate material principle. Leibniz
considered Zhu Xi’s conception of Li to be the equivalent
of his own idea of God. In comparing the two concepts,
Leibniz wrote: “We say as much when we teach that the
ideas, the primitive reasons, the prototypes of all essences
are in God. And joining supreme unity with the most
perfect multiplicity, we say that God is one in all things,
one containing all, all things in one; but formally, all things
as their perfection.”1
In the Yi Jing (Book of Changes) Leibniz discovered yet
another remarkable correspondence between Chinese
thought and his own philosophical system. In his youth
Leibniz had developed a system of binary arithmetic in
order to facilitate the solution of mathematical problems. In
a binary system only two numbers, 0 and 1 are needed to
generate all numbers, and a zero added to any number will
multiply it by two. Thus, the numerical sequence counting
from zero to eight could be expressed as: 0000, 0001, 0010,
0011, 0100, 0101, 0110, 0111, and 1000. When
mathematical calculations “are reduced to the simplest
principles, like 0 and 1,” Leibniz wrote, “a wonderful order
appears everywhere.”11 Leibniz further maintained that the
binary system not only simplified mathematical operations
but also symbolically expressed the Christian doctrine of
God’s creation of the universe out of nothing. He wrote:
“All combinations arise from unity and nothing, which is
like saying that God made everything from nothing, and
that there were only two first principles, God and
nothing.”12
Leibniz was thus astonished to find that the Yi Jing
employed precisely the same set of binary symbols that he
had independently discovered. Through his correspondence
with the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet, Leibniz learned that the Yi
Jing was composed of a series of sixty four hexagrams each
of which consisted of a set of six broken and/or unbroken
lines. Each line could be individually interpreted as a
symbolic representation of the numbers one or zero. Thus,
a broken line (--) represented 0 while an unbroken line (–)
represented 1. Moreover, the sequence of hexagrams which
he received from Bouvet actually corresponded point by
point to the binary sequence which Leibniz himself had
previously constructed. Beginning with a hexagram
composed of six solid lines, the number of broken lines
gradually increase and end with a hexagram consisting of
six broken lines. If the hexagram’s broken and solid lines
are converted to zeros and ones, the numerical values of the
sequence turn out to be identical to Leibniz’s binary
numbers with the exception of the fact that their order is
inverted, sixty three being the first number in the series and
zero the last. Leibniz was delighted with his discovery, for
he considered it further proof of his view that spiritual
truths can be expressed mathematically.
Leibniz’s interpretation of the historical origin of the
hexagrams was somewhat misguided, however, for he
accepted the traditional Chinese view that they had been
created by Fu Xi, the legendary sage-king who was alleged
to be the founder of the first Chinese dynasty in 2975 BC.
In fact, the particular sequence of hexagrams which Leibniz
received from Father Bouvet actually came from Xiao
Yung, a neo-Confucian philosopher of the eleventh century
AD. Nevertheless, as Julia Ching points out, Xiao Yung’s
arrangement may well have been derived from a more
ancient source.13 Basing his interpretation of the Yi Jing on
this erroneous assumption, however, Leibniz concluded
that Fu Xi must have had “insights into the science of
combinations” which had been completely lost to the
Chinese for thousands of years,14 and that he (Leibniz) had
rediscovered the true meaning and significance of the
hexagrams. Thus, he claimed that since “the Chinese have
lost the signification . . . of the linear symbols of Fu-hsi . . .
[and] have made commentaries on these, seeking I don’t
know what distant meaning . . . it has now become
necessary for them to get the true explanation from the
Europeans.”15 From these somewhat dubious assumptions,
Leibniz derived further support for his belief that the
ancient Chinese surpassed the moderns, “not only in piety
(which is the basis of the most perfect morality) but also in
learning.”16
Although Leibniz may have been misguided about the
historical origins of the Yi Jing, his main point was not
necessarily unfounded. To understand his reasoning, one
must bear in mind that for Leibniz mathematical truth is a
source of divine revelation. Thus, he thought that when the
Chinese recover the lost (theoretical) significance of their
own spiritual tradition they will be more readily disposed to
understand and accept such Christian teachings as the
mystery of God’s creation of the universe out of nothing.
Furthermore, Leibniz maintained that by acquiring the
Confucian tradition of moral practice, the Christian West
would also develop a deeper experiential understanding of
the practical applications of its own moral theory. That is,
from the Chinese Europe would acquire habits of moral
practice that would not only enable Europeans to
understand Chinese civilization but also to resolve their
own internal religious conflicts. The Chinese, on the other
hand, would acquire a more perfect understanding of the
theological foundations of their own tradition of moral
practice. In this way Leibniz sought to initiate a process of
cultural exchange that would enrich both cultures and
produce a harmonious world of unity in diversity.
At this point, however, several questions might be raised
about Leibniz’s proposals for cultural exchange. First, if the
Christian West had the advantage of divine revelation and
was also more advanced in the theoretical sciences, how
can we explain the supposed superiority of Chinese
morality and practical life? Given Leibniz’s views on the
relationship between theory and practice, one might expect
Western superiority in revealed religion to produce a more
enlightened level of moral practice. Moreover, if the
modern Chinese, as Leibniz claimed, had lost a true
understanding of the theoretical basis of their own moral
tradition, one also might expect Chinese standards of moral
practice to undergo corruption and decline. Thus, if we
assume the Chinese to be laboring under these
disadvantages on the side of theoretical knowledge, how
could they be expected to sustain a tradition of moral
practice superior to that of the West?
The explanation of Chinese superiority in the realm of
morality and natural theology lies in the fact that practical
knowledge of natural law is principally based, not on
theory, but on the everyday practice of doing things and
getting things done. Just as Aristotle described praxis as a
kind of techne, Leibniz too viewed practical wisdom as a
kind of skill or knowledge of what works, acquired
inductively through the activity of doing things and thus
learning how to do them well. In order to act well, the man
of practical wisdom need not know the why or the
wherefore but only the fact that human nature generally
tends to function better one way rather than another. The
Chinese, as Leibniz observed, had long cultivated and
accumulated a deep experiential knowledge of human
nature, a knowledge, that is, of how human beings can best
live together, resolve their differences, and thus build a just
and harmonious society. Such accumulated experiential
knowledge of human nature is embodied in the ancient
Chinese principles of ritual propriety, and works such as
the Confucian Analects and Book of Rites contain a
compendium of such accumulated practical wisdom. These
works do not contain theoretical discussions of the nature
of the virtues but practical guidance on how to acquire
them.
We find in the Book of Rites, for example, detailed advice
on topics such as how to speak with reverence, how to
avoid acquiring improper habits, how to stand or sit in
relation to older and younger people, how to behave in the
presence of one’s father’s friends, how to care for one’s
parents in their old age, and how to conduct oneself in
different stages of life.17 Generally speaking, the li or rules
of propriety provide a comprehensive guide for
determining the appropriate means for performing one’s
duties and cultivating one’s character.18 But the Analects
frequently emphasize that what is most important is not the
external act but the spirit in which it is performed. When
asked about filial piety, Confucius replied, “Today people
are considered filial because they support their parents. But
even dogs and horses are given that much care. Without
reverence, what is the difference?”19 In another context
Confucius observes that without the rules of propriety
respect becomes laborious bustle and candor becomes
rudeness.2 Actions that accord with the rules of propriety,
however, are done with an effortless natural ease that can
be acquired only by means of attentive practice, selfexamination, and habituation. Mastering the rules of
propriety is thus the means to self-completion (zicheng),
integrity (cheng), and the unity of internal motive and
external act.21
In praising the accomplishments of the Chinese in his
Preface to the Novissima Sinica, Leibniz drew a sharp
contrast between the civility of the Chinese and the
comparative incivility of the Europeans:
[In China] scarcely anyone offends another by the
smallest word in common conversation. And they
rarely show evidences of hatred, wrath, or excitement.
With us respect and careful conversation last for
hardly more than the first days of a new
acquaintance—scarcely even that. Soon familiarity
moves in and circumspection is gladly put away for a
sort of freedom which is quickly followed by
contempt, backbiting, anger, and afterwards enmity. It
is just the contrary with the Chinese. Neighbors and
even members of a family are so held back by a hedge
of custom that they are able to maintain a kind of
perpetual courtesy.22
The Chinese had inherited a vast store of experiential
knowledge accumulated over thousands of years; but
lacking an adequate theoretical structure, practical
knowledge is disordered and incomplete. As Franklin
Perkins observes, Leibniz thought that Confucian natural
theology reflected this weakness.23 He thus maintained that
Western science and philosophy could provide a better
theoretical structure that would enable the Chinese to
establish their experiential knowledge on a more solid
footing. As an illustration of the benefits of cultural
exchange Leibniz cited the specific example of the Kangxi
Emperor’s study of Western mathematics and astronomy
and his readiness to learn from his Jesuit tutors. Although
the emperor himself was apparently more interested in
Western science and technology than in its ethics and
religion, both Leibniz and the Jesuit missionaries believed
that Christianity could be transmitted through science and
philosophy. All truth, they believed, reveals the wonder and
order of the universe and thus leads to God. In any case, by
teaching mathematics and the sciences the Jesuits gained
influence within the imperial court, and in 1692 the Kangxi
Emperor issued an Edict of Toleration that allowed the
Chinese to practice Christianity. His edict was widely
acclaimed throughout Europe where religious tolerance was
far from being the prevailing custom of the times.
Although the Chinese were open to cultural exchange with
the West, Leibniz was troubled by the fact that the
exchange was too one sided, for Europeans were not
equally willing to learn from the Chinese. Leibniz feared
that China would eventually absorb all the knowledge the
West had to offer and then close its doors. He recognized
that experiential knowledge is much more difficult to
acquire than theoretical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge
can be grasped more easily because it is more public and
based on reason while experiential knowledge is based on
habit and is passed on by custom and tradition. Thus, the
acquisition of experiential knowledge requires the tutelage
of skillful practitioners. Given the inherent difficulty of
acquiring practical knowledge, Leibniz thought it essential
for the Chinese to send its own missionaries to teach
Europeans, as he put it, “the natural religion, on which
revelation itself is founded, and without which revelation
would always be taken poorly.”24 If Europe did not open
itself to learning from the Chinese, the exchange would not
be reciprocal; European civilization would receive little
benefit, and the Chinese would eventually surpass the West
in both theory and practice.
As an illustration of Leibniz’s view of the relationship
between theoretical and practical knowledge, consider the
ancient Chinese medical practice of acupuncture.
Acupuncture is a healing technique developed through a
long process of trial and error over several thousand years.
The Chinese have learned by experience that acupuncture
works but cannot give an adequate theoretical explanation
of how it works. Thus, skill in using its therapeutic
techniques cannot be acquired by theoretical demonstration
but only by application and practice under the close
supervision of an experienced teacher. But Western
medical science, in the absence of adequate experiential
knowledge of Chinese medicine, dismissed acupuncture as
a pseudoscience merely because its practitioners could not
provide a theoretical account of its principles. Leibniz saw
an analogous error in European attitudes toward Chinese
ethics and politics. Europe prized theory over practice but
failed in its application of theoretical principles due to
inexperience and improper habituation. But Leibniz
maintained that in practical life what is of primary
importance is not the knowledge of universals but the
perception of particulars, and the ability to perceive
particulars can be gained only by experience. Hence, if A is
a particular, knowing the universal principle that all A is B
will be of no use if you cannot recognize A when you see
it.
Leibniz maintained that although Europe surpasses China
in the theoretical sciences and revealed theology, its corrupt
practices and failure to incorporate its moral theory in
everyday habits and customs had left it with a deficient
understanding of its own principles. In a letter to the
Electress Sophie (written September 10, 1697) he claimed
that “the essential truths of religion” have been “disfigured
in a frightful manner by the sectarian spirit of condemners,
even so far as to pervert the idea of God, . . .” He adds
further that “for the sake religion they destroy the more
fundamental religion, which is to honor and love God.”25 In
speaking of “the more fundamental religion” Leibniz refers
to the truths of natural theology which can be known
through the power of natural reason alone.26 Leibniz held
the truths of natural theology to be “more fundamental” in
the sense that they provide a common standard for
adjudicating the validly of the claims of revealed religion.
Thus, he believed that the principles of natural theology
would provide the key to resolving the sectarian conflicts
between the various religions. Nevertheless, Leibniz did
not conclude that revealed theology could be simply
discarded and replaced by natural theology. On the
contrary, he held that revealed truth perfects our
understanding of natural theology as well as the
foundational principles of natural law. Also, insofar as
human corruption has obscured the natural light of reason,
revealed religion can lead men back to moral practice and
restore their understanding of the nature of God and the
soul. On the other hand, revealed theology is not absolutely
essential for moral practice; natural theology alone is
sufficient for attaining an adequate, though imperfect,
understanding of natural law.
Leibniz’s enthusiasm for Confucian ethics was rooted in his
idea of natural law as a manifestation of universal justice
accessible to the natural reason of all humanity. He rejected
the Pietistic doctrine that natural law derived solely from
God’s will because it reduced to God an irrational tyrant
who could, if he wished, condemn an innocent person.27
Justice, Leibniz maintained, is a necessary attribute of the
divine essence, and God’s will is governed by reason and
justice. For similar reasons, Leibniz opposed Hobbes’s
absolutist theory of the state and his derivation of positive
law from the command of the sovereign. Hobbes defined
justice as the external observance of the terms of a social
contract or the laying down of one’s natural rights on the
condition that others did so as well. But Leibniz’s
definition of justice as “charity or a habit of loving
conformed to wisdom” requires the unity of moral virtue
and natural law. At the same time, it imposes duties on the
sovereign that go well beyond Hobbes’s minimal
requirement of keeping the peace by enforcing obedience to
positive law. In his comments on Pufendorf, Leibniz wrote,
“He who has control of the education or instructions of
others is obligated, by natural law, to form minds with
eminent precepts, and to take care that the practice of
virtue, almost like second nature, guides the will toward the
good.”28 In the legendary sage-kings of China, and
particularly in the reigning Kangxi Emperor, Leibniz found
the ideal embodiment of the virtuous ruler—an enlightened
emperor who was obliged by the mandate of heaven to
cultivate the moral character of the people and contribute to
the well-being of the entire kingdom. In his Preface to the
Novissima Sinica, Leibniz wrote that despite his divine
status, the Chinese emperor
is educated according to custom in wisdom and virtue and
rules his subjects with an extraordinary respect for the
laws and with a reverence for the advice of wise men.
Nor is it easy to find anything worthier of note than
the fact that this greatest of kings, who possesses such
complete authority in his own day, anxiously fears
posterity and is in greater dread of the judgment of
history, than other kings are of the representatives of
estates and parliaments.29
The Kangxi Emperor represented, for Leibniz, the polar
opposite of the despotic French monarch, Louis XIV,
whom he sarcastically described as “the most Christian war
God.” The monarchy of Louis XIV epitomized a
Hobbesian Empire in which the absolute sovereignty of the
King went unchecked by any internal or external
constraints. The French Crown, Leibniz declared, “by its
greediness, has caused a horrible letting of Christian blood
for nearly thirty years, by constantly attacking others; and
almost all the evils that Europe has suffered during that
time ought to be imputed to her.”3 Furthermore, by his
insolent disregard for the nobility and his exaltation of
flatterers, the King had corrupted French manners and
morals and spread the “venom of the French spirit”
throughout Europe. Describing the decay of French society,
Leibniz wrote,
Everyone allows himself no repose, and leaves none to
others; the grave and the serious pass for ridiculous,
and measure or reason for pedantic; caprice, for
something gallant, and inconstancy in one’s
interactions with other people, for cleverness. . . .
Youth above all glories in its folly and in its disorders,
which go quite far today, as if this were a sign of wit;
it respects neither sex, nor age, nor merit.31
The contrast between Europe and China could hardly be
portrayed more vividly. The French monarchy, though
nominally a constitutional government, was ruled by an
insolent tyrant who violated every principle of universal
justice and posed a great danger to the peace and security
of Europe. The Chinese Empire, on the other hand, stood as
an exemplary model of just society under the guidance of a
wise and benevolent ruler. Though the Chinese lacked the
more advanced theoretical sciences and the revealed
theology of the Europeans, they had accumulated a rich
store of practical wisdom which was conspicuously absent
in the West. But while Europe had developed the
theoretical sciences but didn’t know how to apply them,
China had accumulated experiential knowledge but didn’t
grasp its larger theoretical implications. In this opposition
of East and West Leibniz found what recent scholars have
called a pre-established harmony of cultures.32 Herein lay
the basis of Leibniz’s plan for a program of cultural
exchange. Each culture had its complementary strengthens
and weaknesses; thus, through mutual cooperation and
exchange each could help the other to overcome its
weaknesses and become whole.
The End of the Enlightenment and the Rise of European
Imperialism
One might question some of the underlying assumptions of
Leibniz’s plan for cultural exchange. For example, Leibniz
seems to assume that European theory and Chinese practice
are related as form is to matter. But would the matter of
Chinese practice conform to European theory? The reports
of the Jesuits in China provided some evidence of
compatibility, but many problems remained. For instance,
China’s practice of polygamy and its treatment of women
were quite obviously incompatible with Christian
teachings. Leibniz and the Jesuit missionaries believed that
the dissemination of Christianity would eventually lead the
Chinese to abandon such undesirable practices.
Unfortunately, Leibniz’s plan was never given a chance to
succeed, for shortly before his death, cultural exchange
with China began to suffer a series of setbacks. In 1715
Pope Clement XI issued the Papal Bull Ex illa die which
officially condemned the practice of Chinese rites among
Christian converts. Chinese Christians were henceforth
prohibited from referring to God as Tian (Heaven) or
Shangdi (Lord of Heaven) since God was the creator of
both heaven and earth as well as the entire universe. The
Papal Bull further stipulated:
The tablet that bears the Chinese words "Reverence for
Heaven" should not be allowed to hang inside a
Catholic church and should be immediately taken
down if already there. The spring and autumn worship
of Confucius, together with the worship of ancestors,
is not allowed among Catholic converts. It is not
allowed even though the converts appear in the ritual
as bystanders, because to be a bystander in this ritual
is as pagan as to participate in it actively.33
Upon reading the Pope’s prohibition, the Kangxi Emperor
issued a decree in 1721 banning further missionary activity
in China. In response to the Papal Bull, he stated:
Reading this proclamation, I have concluded that the
Westerners are petty indeed. It is impossible to reason
with them because they do not understand the larger
issues as we understand them in China. There is not a
single Westerner versed in Chinese works, and their
remarks are often incredible and ridiculous. To judge
from this proclamation, their religion is no different
from other small, bigoted sects of Buddhism or
Taoism. I have never seen a document which contains
so much nonsense. From now on, Westerners should
not be allowed to preach in China, to avoid further
trouble.34
At about the same time, in Europe, the religious
controversy over Confucianism became more heated, and
during the late 18th and early 19th centuries Leibniz’s
positive assessment of Confucianism was completely
reversed. China came to be viewed not as a land governed
by a wise and virtuous emperor but rather as a country
ruled by an oriental despot. Confucius was similarly
perceived as the sanction for a despotic system that secured
harmony at the expense of freedom. China was ruled by the
spirit of slavery and had nothing to contribute to Western
ethics and political science. This negative opinion of China
became the dominant consensus of the West and
contributed to the decline of the cosmopolitan ideals of the
enlightenment while it strengthened the rising tide of
Eurocentric hubris and imperialistic ambition which
resulted in irreparable harm to civilizations all over the
world. I will conclude with a brief summary of some of the
intellectual sources of those unfortunate developments.
Christian Wolff on Confucianism
Christian Wolff, who is generally regarded as a disciple of
Leibniz, was the most important European philosopher
during the first half of the 18th century. Wolff also sought to
promote the teaching of Confucianism in the West, and like
Leibniz he maintained the Confucian ethics was founded on
principles of natural reason, but he differed sharply from
Leibniz in one very important respect. Wolff held that the
Chinese had no natural theology at all because they lacked
a conception of God. Thus, he maintained that Confucian
morality was based solely and exclusively on natural
reason. In The Practical Philosophy of the Chinese, Wolff
praised the moral purity of Confucius and argued that by
his example he had proved that it was possible to achieve
moral excellence by the power of human reason alone. He
supported this view by distinguishing three degrees of
moral excellence. The first and least perfect type of
morality was based solely on precepts of natural reason; the
second was morality based on precepts of natural theology;
and the third and highest type of morality was based on
revealed or supernatural truth. Wolff explained these
distinctions as follows:
Those who regulate their actions according to events have
no other guide than reason, and their virtues, purely
human, are due only to the strength of nature. Those
whose actions are determined by the light of divine
perfections and of Providence, seen only by the light
of reason, derive their virtues from natural religion.
And finally, those who act in conformity to revealed
truths for which there is no natural evidence have, as
principles of their virtues, the strength coming from
grace.35
Although Confucian morality was thus assigned to the
lowest level of moral excellence, the important point was
that the moral life was possible not only for those who
lacked faith but even for agnostics (and possibly atheists)
as well.
I claim that since the ancient Chinese did not know the
Creator of the world, they therefore had no natural
religion . . . Yet I do not say that the ancient Chinese
(including Confucius) were atheists. An atheist, you
see, is someone who denies that there is a God. But
one cannot deny God if one does not understand
clearly what God is. I do not doubt that the ancient
Chinese and even Confucius admitted that there was
some kind of Creator. But I am certain that they did
not know his attributes. They had a confused notion of
the Godhead, but no clear idea of it.36
By assigning Confucianism to the lowest level of moral
excellence, Wolff intended to promote its acceptance in the
West, but while his interpretation appealed to certain
French intellectuals, it aroused the fury of Pietists and thus
intensified the conflict between secular and religious
factions in Europe. Wolff was a professor at the University
of Halle, a bastion of Pietism in Prussia, and his publication
of The Practical Philosophy of the Chinese in 1721 resulted
in one of the most celebrated academic dramas of the
century. The faculty of theology at the University was
enraged, and when King Frederick William I was informed
of Wolff’s views, he was so furious that he not only
dismissed Wolff from his teaching position but commanded
him to leave Prussia within 48 hours or be hanged. Wolff
left Prussia immediately and was offered a position at the
University of Marburg where he went on to become one of
the most popular teachers in Europe. Though Wolff’s
interpretation of Confucianism as a Godless natural
morality was endorsed by skeptics such as Pierre Bayle, the
net effect of his teaching did little to advance Leibniz’s
hope of achieving global harmony through cultural
exchange.
China as an Oriental Despotism: Montesquieu, Kant, and
Hegel37
Montesquieu was the first to oppose the enlightenment
view of China, and in the Spirit of the Laws (1748) he laid
down the principles that would completely reverse the
prevailing opinion. His claim that the spirit of China was
the spirit of slavery was based on a rejection of the
enlightenment theory of natural law which entailed the
unity of moral virtue and the order of nature. Montesquieu
redefined natural law as the physical laws of climate and
geography that determine the temperament and character of
a county’s inhabitants thus separating reason and virtue
from the natural order of things. By virtue of their reason,
Montesquieu maintained, human beings are not completely
determined by the physical laws of nature but are free to
create their own laws and social institutions. Positive law
should thus be adapted to the natural temperament of
particular people rather than deduced from the idea of
universal human nature, and so far as possible, laws should
be instituted to protect and sustain human freedom.
Montesquieu thus drew the distinction between monarchy
and despotism not on the basis of whether the king is
virtuous or corrupt but on the basis of whether he governed
according to “fixed and established laws” or “by his own
will and caprice.”38
Montesquieu maintained that the geography and climate of
China explain why it is predisposed to despotism. Unlike
Europe, the geography of China provides no buffer zone
between the warlike people of the north and the timorous
people of the south; and given their close proximity “one
must, therefore, conquer, and the other be conquered.”39
More importantly, in the absence a constitution or legally
mandated separation of powers, the emperor’s divine status
allowed him to rule according to his own caprice. To secure
absolute power, the emperors of China instituted laws
designed to make the people submissive, industrious, and
peaceful. According to Confucius the empire was to be
considered a large family and the emperor its father. Laws
thus were confounded with customs, manners, and religion,
and no distinction was drawn between human law and the
order of nature; hence, no conception of human freedom
could be formed. Montesquieu thus maintained that the
Jesuit missionaries were deceived by appearance of social
order and tranquility. “China is therefore a despotic state,”
he concluded, “whose principle is fear.”4 In principle, there
was no significant difference between China and the
despotic regimes of Persian princes. The Chinese Empire
was an oriental seraglio writ large and its people slaves to
the tyranny of manners.
Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason reinforced
Montesquieu’s view of oriental despotism and dealt the
death blow to the enlightenment ideal of the unity of reason
and nature, the last philosophical bastion of European
sinophilia. For Kant, as for Montesquieu, moral freedom
required the separation of reason and nature and the ability
to reflect critically on the customs and mores of one’s
society. Unlike Leibniz and Wolff, Kant found the unity of
man and nature in Chinese thought the source of its moral
backwardness. Since Confucianism lacked a conception of
the principles of practical reason, Kant concluded that the
tradition had no genuine conception of morality at all.
“Philosophy is not to be found in the whole Orient,” he
wrote. “Their teacher Confucius teaches in his writings
nothing outside a moral doctrine designed for princes….
But a concept of virtue and morality never entered the
heads of the Chinese … In order to arrive at an idea … of
the good [certain] studies would be required, of which [the
Chinese] know nothing.”41
Similarly, in his Philosophy of History, Hegel placed China
at the beginning of world history at the stage in which spirit
has not yet attained freedom through reflective selfconsciousness. Following Montesquieu and Kant, Hegel
viewed natural law as a principle of external force. Chinese
moral laws, he states, “are just like natural laws, external,
compulsive commands, claims established by force,
compulsory duties or rules of courtesy toward each other.
Freedom, through which alone the essential determinations
of reason become moral sentiments, is wanting.”42 This
lack of freedom in China was due to what Hegel called the
unity of ‘substantiality’ and ‘subjective freedom’ or in
plainer terms, the unity of nature and spirit. The failure of
the Chinese spirit to differentiate itself from nature meant
that its spirit was embedded in nature and thus could not
freely determine itself. Thus, Hegel maintained that China
not only had no history but had remained stagnant for
thousands of years, like nature, producing only a fixed and
endless cycle of processes and events. In his Lectures on
the Philosophy of Religion Hegel further argued that in the
religions of China there is “no morality in the strict sense,
no immanent rationality by means of which man would
have worth and dignity within himself. . . . The individual
is wholly without power of personal decision and without
subjective freedom.”43 In Hegel’s account, the march of
historical progress leaves the Chinese spirit behind,
wrapped in the bondage of oriental despotism; while the
dynamic world-spirit of Europe moves on to attain absolute
freedom in bring to completion the culmination of the
world historical process.
Henceforth, Leibniz’s admiration for China would be
dismissed as sentimental and naïve; the foundations of his
cosmopolitan worldview were thus effectively demolished.
But the Western spirit’s liberation from nature and natural
law opened up hitherto undreamed of possibilities for
progress. References:
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Hippocrates
G. Apostle. Grinell: The Peripatetic Press, 1984.
Cassier, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment,
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1951.
Ching, Julia and Willard G. Oxtoby. Moral
Enlightenment: Leibniz and Wolff on China, Nettetal,
Steyler Verlag, 1992.
Confucius. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical
Translation, translated by Roger Ames and Henry
Rosemont, Jr. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.
Cook, Daniel and Henry Rosemont, Jr., “The Preestablished Harmony Between Leibniz and Chinese
Thought.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 42, 1981,
pp. 253-67.
Davis, Walter W. “China, the Confucian Ideal, and the
European Age of Enlightenment.” Journal of the
History of Ideas, 44, 1983, pp. 523-548.
Grotius, Hugo. The Law of War and Peace, translated by
Francis Kelsey. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962.
Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,
Vol. 1. Translated by E. B. Speirs and J. Burdon
Sanderson. New York: The Humanities Press, 1974.
____. The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree.
Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1978.
Hobson, John M. The Eastern Origins of Western
Civilization, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Lach, Donald. Preface to Leibniz’ Novissima Sinica:
Commentary, Translation, Text. Honolulu, University
of Hawaii Press, 1957.
Legge, James, trans. The Li Ki, or Collection of Treatises
on the Rules of Propriety or Ceremonial Usages.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cfu/liki/liki00.htm.
Leibniz, G. W. Discourse on Metaphysics, in Basic
Writings, trans. George Montgomery. LaSalle, Open
Court Publishing, 1962.
____. Discourse on The Natural Theology of the Chinese,
in Ching and Oxtoby, 1992.
____. An Explanation of Binary Arithmetic, in Moral
Enlightenment, in Ching and Oxtoby, 1992.
____. New Essays on Human Understanding, translated
by Peter Remnant and Jonathon Bennet. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981.
____. Political Writings, 2nd Ed., translated and edited by
Patrick Riley. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988.
____. Writings on China. Translated by Daniel Cook and
Henry Rosemont, Jr. Open Court Publishing
Company, 1994.
Montesquieu, Charles de. The Spirit of the Laws.
Translated by Thomas Nugent. Chicago: Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1978.
Perkins, Franklin. Leibniz and China: A Commerce of
Light. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
____. “Virtue, Reason, and Cultural Exchange: Leibniz’s
Praise of Chinese Morality,” Journal of the History of
Ideas. Vol. 63, No. 3, 2002, pp. 448-464.
Randall, John Herman. The Career of Philosophy, Vol. 2.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.
Roetz, Heiner. Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1993.
Wolff, Christian. The Practical Philosophy of the Chinese,
in Ching and Oxtoby, 1992.
1
Quoted in Hobson, p.194
2
The Law of War and Peace, Prol. sect. 28.
3
Ernst Cassier, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, pp.
42-45.
4
See J. H. Randall, The Career of Philosophy, Vol. 2, pp.
30-32.
See Leibniz’s lecture “On the Greeks as Founders of
Rational Theology,” in Political Writings.
5
6
See Julia Ching, Moral Enlightenment: Leibniz and Wolff
on China, pp. 14-15.
See Leibniz’s Discourse on the Natural Theology of the
Chinese, in Writings on China, pp. 75-97.
7
Preface to Leibniz’ Novissima Sinica: Commentary,
Translation, Text, by Donald Lach, pp. 68-70.
8
9
Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, in Basic Writings, p.
15.
1
Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese, section
6.
11
G. W. Leibniz, An Explanation of Binary Arithmetic, in
Moral Enlightenment: Leibniz and Wolff on China, p. 84.
12
Quoted in Ching and Oxtoby, p. 17.
13
. See Ching and Oxtoby, p. 84n.
14
G. W. Leibniz, Discourse on The Natural Theology of the
Chinese, in Ching and Oxtoby, p. 138.
15
G. W. Leibniz, An Explanation of Binary Arithmetic, in
Ching and Oxtoby, p. 85.
16
G. W. Leibniz, Discourse on The Natural Theology of the
Chinese, in Ching and Oxtoby, p. 138.
17
See James Legge, trans., The Li Ki, Ch. 1.
18
Analects, Bk. VIII, 8.
19
Analects, Bk. II, 7.
2
Analects, Bk. VIII, 2.
21
Doctrine of the Mean, XXV, 3.
22
Preface to the Novissima Sinica in Writings on China, pp.
47-48.
23
For a more extensive discussion of the topic see Perkins,
Leibniz and Confucius, pp. 119-121.
Quoted in Perkins, “Virtue, Reason, and Cultural
Exchange: Leibniz’s Praise of Chinese Morality,” p. 461.
24
25
Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, I, 14, 72.
For further explanation of this point see Perkins, “Virtue,
Reason, and Cultural Exchange: Leibniz’s Praise of
Chinese Morality,” p. 460.
26
27
Leibniz, Opinion on the Principles of Pufendorf, in
Political Writings, p.72.
28
Ibid., p. 69.
29
Leibniz, Preface to the Novissima Sinica, p. 48.
3
Leibniz, Manifesto for the Defense of the Rights of
Charles III (1703), in Political Writings, p. 158.
31
Ibid, p. 157.
See Cook and Rosemont, “The Pre-established Harmony
Between Leibniz and Chinese Thought.” Journal of the
History of Ideas 42, pp. 253-67.
32
33
China in Transition, 1517-1911, Dan. J. Li, trans. (New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969), pp. 22.
34
Ibid, p. 24.
35
Christian Wolff, The Practical Philosophy of the
Chinese, section 15, in Ching and Oxtoby, p. 161.
36
Ibid, section 16, note, p. 163.
37
For an illuminating and more extensive discussion of this
topic see Heiner Roetz, Confucian Ethics in the Axial Age,
1993.
38
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, p. 4.
39
Ibid, p. 123.
4
Ibid, p. 58.
41
Quoted in Ching and Oxtoby, p. 223
42
G. E. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 186.
43
Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 1,
pp. 348-9.