François Noël’s Contribution to the Western Understanding of Chinese Thought: Taiji sive natura in the Philosophia sinica

Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 17 (2):219-230 (2018)
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Abstract

Jesuits in China adopted key Confucian terms to express Christian notions; for example, Tian 天 or Shangdi 上帝 was considered an equivalent for God, and guishen 鬼神 for angels. A Terms controversy started among the Jesuits and other missionaries and developed into the famous Rites Controversy. However, all the missionaries agreed in rejecting the Neo-Confucian concept of Taiji 太極, which was believed to be materialistic, pantheistic, or atheistic. The Flemish Jesuit François Noël, after a careful study of Neo-Confucian texts, interpreted Taiji with the Western concept of nature, and even claimed that it held theistic meaning. We shall analyze and evaluate here this early Western attempt in giving a positive meaning to Taiji.

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10.1007/s11712-018-9602-1

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Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light.Franklin Perkins - 2004 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The true meaning of the Lord of heaven =.Matteo Ricci - 1985 - St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources. Edited by Douglas Lancashire, Kuo-Chen Hu & Edward Malatesta.

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