Description
Book SynopsisWhile the resonance of Giambattista Vico’s hermeneutics for postcolonialism has long been recognised, a rupture has been perceived between his intercultural sensibility and the actual content of his philological investigations, which have often been criticised as being Eurocentric and philologically spurious. China is a case in point. In his magnum opus
New Science, Vico portrays China as backward and philosophically primitive compared to Europe.
In this first study dedicated to China in Vico’s thought, Daniel Canaris shows that scholars have been beguiled by Vico’s value judgements of China without considering the function of these value judgements in his theory of divine providence. This monograph illustrates that Vico's image of China is best appreciated within the contemporary theological controversies surrounding the Jesuit accommodation of Confucianism.
Through close examination of Vico’s sources and intellectual context, Canaris argues that by refusing to consider Confucius as a “filosofo”, Vico dismantles the rationalist premises of the theological accommodation proposed by the Jesuits and proposes a new functionalist valorisation of non-Christian religion that anticipates post-colonial critiques of the Enlightenment.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Preface
Introduction: resurrecting the Chinese fossil
‘A monstrous Chinese fossil’
China and Confucianism in Vico’s Naples
Vico and Jesuit accommodationism
Revisiting the rozza e goffa philosophy of Vico’s Confucius
Plan of this work
Chapter 1: Providence and Rome in the Diritto universale
Retheologising Vico
Background to grace and providence in Vico’s Diritto universale
Providence between fate and chance
Chapter 2: The problem of China in early modern historiography
Placing China in a Judaeo-Christian metanarrative
Development of the Jesuit view of China
Chapter 3: The Scythian exception in the Diritto universale
The Romans of the East
The Scythians in early modern historiography and ethnography
Vico’s Scythians and Noachide monotheism
Chapter 4: Towards a new theological valorisation of China
Normalising the Scythians
A hermeneutic of ignorance
Demystifying Chinese ideograms
Re-evaluating Jesuit accommodationism
Chapter 5: Poetic truth and Christian truth
Scienza versus coscienza
Ontological truths and teologia civile ragionata
Conclusion: La discoverta del vero Confucio
Bibliography
Index
