Mateusz Janik

This paper explores the role of Spinozism in the European reception of Chinese thought during the first half of the eighteenth century. The first part focuses on the sources from which European authors at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries obtained their knowledge of China. These sources were primarily Jesuit texts that offered a monistic interpretation of Chinese thought. The second part portrays the “Chinese Spinozist” based on characteristics attributed to this figure in texts by authors such as Pierre Bayle, Johan Franz Buddeus, and Jean-Baptiste de Boyer d’Argens. The third section proposes a distinction between two issues that comprise the concept of “Chinese Spinozism” or Spinoza’s reception in general: atheism and monism. These issues are usually linked, especially in studies on the critical reception of Spinoza in modern Europe. However, their projection onto Chinese thought requires caution when attempting to equate them. Atheism was often a rhetorical addition to criticisms of philosophical concepts that assumed the substantial unity of the world. However, monism remained an actual “other” of European philosophy. Thus, the Spinozian interpretation of Chinese thought in Europe reveals the structural limitations of European philosophical discourse.

This essay focuses on A Brief Response on the Controversies over Shangdi, Tianshen and Linghun by Niccolò Longobardo (1559–1654), a text that played a crucial role in the formation of European understanding of Chinese philosophy. Taken historically, the text is an important vehicle for the transmission of Chinese concepts into early modern European philosophy as well as a key intervention in the debate shaping the ideological premises of the Jesuit mission in China. It contains one of the first systematic accounts of Chinese philosophy written by a European author. More importantly, it presents a narrative that links Mediterranean and Chinese intellectual history into a single historical current. In this way Longobardo plays a role analogous to the mapmaker who distorts three-dimensional spaces in order to project them together onto a two-dimensional plane. We present some of the peculiar shifts and emphases made by Longobardo in his reading of what seems to him a transhistorical current linking the Chinese and ancient Mediterranean philosophical milieus. In particular, we examine (1) the relationship between Longobardo’s attempt to situate Chinese thought in a global context and the choice to place special emphasis on the philosophy of Shao Yong 邵雍, treating him as a figure of primary importance among Song 宋 Neo-Confucian authors, and (2) the focus on the monist and cosmogonic aspects of Chinese thought, summarized by the “ten thousand things forming one body” (wanwuyiti 萬物一體) “axiom.”

This is a critical examination of Bryan Van Norden’s latest book, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto. Van Norden’s call for more diversification in philosophical curricula points to an important problem, that is, the predominance of a Western perspective in global philosophy departments. However, the notion of multiculturalism advocated by Van Norden reveals certain limitations when it comes to addressing the structural preconditions that render possible the dominant position of the Western perspective. One possible alternative for the multiculturalist approach might be a global perspective. The recent development of global history and its methodological frames might prove effective in weakening the Western bias in academic philosophy.