By Daniel Canaris
Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment 2020:06
ISBN: 9781789621068, 296 pages, £65.00
Vico's contribution to intercultural hermeneutics has long been recognised, but his view that China is a primitive civilisation has been cited as a blight on his reputation. This first comprehensive study of China in Vico illustrates how his treatment of China is best appreciated not in secular terms but as part of his theory of divine providence.
- Uses a wide-range of sources to reconstruct the core theological issues that Vico and his contemporaries grappled with
- First monograph-length study on China in Vico that encompasses the full breadth of Vico's intellectual career
- A theological evaluation of Vico's work that moves beyond the questions of orthodoxy
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Table of Contents :
Acknowledgements
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 universal
Retheologising Vico
Background to grace and providence in Vico’s Diritto universal
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 universal
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
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Daniel Canaris is a research fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Sun Yat-Sen University. After receiving his PhD from the University of Sydney in 2017, he has held appointments in Australia, Germany and England. His current work focuses on the founder of the Jesuit China mission, Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607).
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The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.