China in Giambattista Vico and Jesuit accommodationism

• Published in: Intellectual history review Vol. 29; no. 1; pp. 145 - 163
• Main Author: Canaris, Daniel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 02-01-2019; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Age of Enlightenment; Confucianism; Ethnocentrism; Giambattista Vico; intercultural understanding; Italian literature; Jesuit China mission; Matteo Ricci; Perceptions; China
• ISSN: 1749-6977; 1749-6985
• DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2019.1546443

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.