The twentieth-century rediscovery of Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) by scholars such as Erich Auerbach and Isaiah Berlin was partly driven by the profound resonance of his hermeneutics for the valorisation of cultural alterity. Yet the actual content of his philological investigations is often difficult to square with this reading of his thought. The representation of China in his works is a case in point; despite the enthusiasm with which many of his contemporaries in Naples embraced China, Vico seems to view the intellectual and artistic achievements of Chinese civilisation with a certain disdain, characterising Confucianism as a “rough and ungainly” philosophy typical of the most primitive stage of civilisational development. Scholars who have maintained Vico’s contemporary relevance have tried to brush aside his apparent Eurocentrism in favour of his hermeneutics, whereas others have cited his treatment of China as symptomatic of the reactionary nature of his thought. The present study does not deny the importance of China to Vico’s polemic with libertinism but argues that his representation of China is best understood in view of its theological significance to contemporary Jesuit accommodations of Confucianism.
...MoreArticle Francesco Borghesi (2019) From the “Renaissance” to the “Enlightenment”. Intellectual History Review (pp. 1-10).
Article
Lim, Jong-tae;
(2008)
Locating a Center on the Surface of a Globe: Negotiating China's Position on the Spherical Earth in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century China and Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB000850159/)
Article
Giuliano Mori;
(2020)
Natural Theology and Ancient Theology in the Jesuit China Mission
(/isis/citation/CBB795207474/)
Article
Ryuji Hiraoka;
(2019)
Printed Editions and Manuscripts of Tianjing Huowen
(/isis/citation/CBB234733502/)
Thesis
Hu, Minghui;
(2004)
Cosmopolitan Confucianism: China's Road to Modern Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001561863/)
Chapter
Koke, Ho Peng;
(2012)
Did Confucianism Hinder the Development of Science in China?
(/isis/citation/CBB001320713/)
Chapter
Remmert, Volker R.;
(2008)
“Our Mathematicians Have Learned and Verified This”: Jesuits, Biblical Exegesis, and the Mathematical Sciences in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001031839/)
Thesis
Timothy D. Harfield;
(2015)
The Occasions of Community: Giambattista Vico and the Concept of Society
(/isis/citation/CBB262339207/)
Book
Volpe, Tony;
(2008)
Science et Théologie: Dans les Débats Savants de la Seconde Moitié du XVIIe Siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000950287/)
Chapter
Jami, Catherine;
(2004)
Teachers of Mathematics in China: The Jesuits and Their Textbooks (1580--1723)
(/isis/citation/CBB000551054/)
Article
Asen, Daniel;
(2009)
“Manchu Anatomy”: Anatomical Knowledge and the Jesuits in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century China
(/isis/citation/CBB000932785/)
Article
Sela, Ori;
(2012)
Confucian Scientific Identity: Qian Daxin's (1728--1804) Ambivalence toward Western Learning and Its Adherents
(/isis/citation/CBB001251504/)
Book
Hsia, Florence C.;
(2009)
Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China
(/isis/citation/CBB001020040/)
Article
Shi, Yunli;
(2000)
Eclipse Observations Made by Jesuit Astronomers in China: A Reconsideration
(/isis/citation/CBB000671361/)
Article
Jami, Catherine;
(2002)
Teachers of Mathematics in China: The Jesuits and Their Textbooks (1580--1723)
(/isis/citation/CBB000740635/)
Article
Yeo, Insok;
(2012)
Zhuzhiqunzheng, the Jesuit Translation of Western Medicine and Its Influence on Korean and Chinese Intellectuals
(/isis/citation/CBB001210627/)
Article
Puente-Ballesteros, Beatriz;
(2011)
Jesuit Medicine in the Kangxi Court (1662--1722): Imperial Networks and Patronage
(/isis/citation/CBB001221357/)
Article
Standaert, Nicolas;
(2012)
Jesuit Accounts of Chinese History and Chronology and their Chinese Sources
(/isis/citation/CBB570761553/)
Article
Golvers, Noël;
(2011)
The Jesuits in China and the Circulation of Western Books in the Sciences (17th--18th Centuries): The Medical and Pharmaceutical Sections in the SJ Libraries of Peking
(/isis/citation/CBB001221356/)
Article
Huiyi Wu;
(2018)
‘The Observations We Made in the Indies and in China’: The Shaping of the Jesuits’ Knowledge of China by Other Parts of the Non-Western World
(/isis/citation/CBB846033133/)
Thesis
Qingfan Jiang;
(2021)
Toward a Global Enlightenment: Music, Missionaries, and the Construction of a Universal History in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century China and Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB148300362/)
Be the first to comment!