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In Partibus Infidelium

Strange constructions of language. Strange thoughts.

Topics on this page ...

• "Why words rather than reality?"
  • Percepts without concepts are blind (Immanuel Kant)
  • And what if I decline that comparison? (Three reasons I might have to reject Wittgenstein's language-to-games comparison)
• He who has ears to mishear
  • The Socratic Method ...
    • ... is not the method of geometry
  • What is the essence of logic?
    • If words do not have essential meanings, then ...
  • Concepts and Misconcepts
    • Misconceptions of Philosophy
• The Learned Man from the Far West (Matteo Ricci in China)
  • Matteo Ricci's account of Confucianism
    • The Earliest Religion of China
  • The difficulty of a Christian mission in an ancient civilization and unconquered land
    • The mission to China in contrast to Europe's conquests of other lands
  • Ricci's Catechism - choosing the apt terms
    • Ricci's hope for the Christian Mission (The foundations of the Apostolate)
    • Can Catholic Christianity be separated from "Western methodology and customs"? (The incorporation of non-European customs and ways of reasoning)
  • The Western Conquest of China (The later mission)
• Is God "known by the things He has made"?

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"Why words rather than reality?"

Socrates to Theaetetus: "And if someone thinks mustn't he think something?" -- Th.: "Yes, he must." -- Soc.: "And if he thinks something, mustn't it be something real?" -- Th.: "Apparently." (PI § 518; cf. Plato, Theaetetus 189a)

Is not 'piety' the name of a phenomenon (or phenomena), and isn't that phenomenon real? And so why ask about how we use the word 'piety' rather than about the phenomenon that word names? (Because concepts define phenomena, not vice versa.)

Tell us what we are calling 'piety' -- i.e. give examples, and as with Socratic induction we shall see if there is an essence of piety, not by theorizing about what must be (preconception), but by describing the facts of language use that are public and thereby objective.

Percepts without concepts are blind (Immanuel Kant)

Concepts are definitions: they set limits: those limits are in the language, not in the phenomena. "There are many ways to slice a pie", which is what "phenomena" are: a pie sliced by concepts.

The limit of reality -- is concept-formation. The limit of reality is not raw phenomena (percepts), but the concepts that give order and meaning to phenomena. Concepts (rules for using the words of our language) say what is real. Philosophical investigations can only be concept investigations, not phenomena investigations.

"The picture is there" (in our imagination) ... But is it a picture of anything real? (cf. PI § 424) For instance, the picture of phenomena as objects you can throw a lasso around, like a cowboy with a steer, and ask: what is the thing in itself we have roped in; what is its essential nature? The picture is of a phenomenon as a nebulous object (nebula = cloud; cf. 'amorphous' and 'protean') in contrast to a physical object -- i.e. in contrast to an object. What we could say is that lasso we cast is the concepts with which we see and think about the world.

The 'conceived facts' means the 'conceptualized facts', not the facts in themselves (as if there were such things). And this is important, that we call selections of the conceived facts "phenomena", as if selected facts were not more or less arbitrary but the absolutely correct ones. Our everyday concepts are like theories in this respect only: that they are selections. All "phenomena" are defined by (This shows what "real definition" amounts to) selections of conceived facts and concepts. Both belong to a community of ideas.

Other questions. Must there be concepts for every phenomenon, and must the concepts we have draw a strict circle around every conceived phenomenon -- must a concept's limits always be clear -- i.e. has every concept (in fact) well-defined limits? Is an vaguely-defined border not a border, e.g. a discontinuous circle? Wittgenstein's comparison is to "a table that ... stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes wobbles", but is not on that account alone useless (PI § 79). The use of words must be described with care, not presumed to be what experience does not verify them to be.

If someone says, "Sorrow is ..." it doesn't follow that there is such a phenomenon: it is more a picture or map that may or may not match the facts. But likewise if someone says, "By the word 'sorrow' I mean ..."

And what if I decline that comparison? (Three reasons I might have)

Query: Plato's ideas about ethics revolved around the principle that "moral virtue is knowledge".

"... revolved around" -- Metaphors are contraband in philosophy (Plato, virtue, knowledge). Philosophy is prosaic. On the other hand, some "metaphors = comparisons" are clear in meaning. Nevertheless, no one is forced to make Wittgenstein's comparisons:

A philosopher says: Look at things this way! (CV p. 61, a remark from 1947)

And what if I decline to look at things that way? There are at least three criticisms of Wittgenstein's language-games metaphor, namely that --

• (1) Wittgenstein's comparison is invalid (A is not like B in the particular way Wittgenstein says it is, as e.g. we don't use language according to strict rules, whereas almost all games have strict rules, and the comparison Wittgenstein makes is between using language and playing games, where what defines a game is its rules).

  Query: using grammatical hypothesis, what do you understand by the statement?

  In a game played according to strict rules -- e.g. no one asks that question about a move in chess: what do you understand? No, the chessman was moved from square A to square B. (That is the logic of language question; it is different from the question: what did you think your opponent's strategy was in moving the chessman from A to B?) The query uses the word 'grammar' the way Wittgenstein does; i.e. the query doesn't seem to be asking a question about syntax, but instead "What did you take to be the meaning of the speaker's words?" e.g.

• (2) I don't want to make this comparison (I prefer some other comparison) -- or I think that a theory of meaning, as e.g. the theory of abstraction, accounts for all the data whereas Wittgenstein's comparison does not: Philosophy is philosophical hypotheses about reality, as in Bertrand Russell's view, not a description of the facts in plain view; but, on the other hand, an hypothesis that creates more problems than it solves is to be rejected surely (Newton: replacing reality with "dreams and vain fictions of our own devising").
• (3)  I don't understand that this is a comparison, but instead I think Wittgenstein has a theory of language-meaning, saying what language-meaning really is.

There is no "must" in empirical propositions, and preconceptions -- as e.g. the meaning of a common name must the be common nature it names -- are vain fictions (Isaac Newton's "hypotheses" = idle speculation), not knowledge of reality in itself.

Query: Wittgenstein's theory of language-games is too unclear to be useful.

And what "theory" of language meaning is clearer? Again, there is both Wittgenstein's selected definition of 'meaning' and his comparison between using language and playing games (where what defines each is its rules).

Where rules are vague or apparently absent -- "it is a language without grammar; you couldn't say what its rules are" (CV p. 75, remark from 1948; e.g. the English word 'beauty', maybe 'prayer' as well) -- the comparison is not as useful as when the rules are clear: most games are played according to strict rules, whereas most language use is not governed by strict rules.

"The principle that moral virtue is knowledge"

... wherefore I lose my temper, but am well-prepared to state how that comes about in despite of my knowledge that losing my temper is a moral vice. (Moral "virtue is knowledge" of good and evil)

What we do from habit is sweet to us (Epictetus), and habit is "second nature", bad habits corresponding to base instincts and low impulses of our nature. (I think anger is clearer than lying (which is used in the Manual of Epictetus), unless it is impulsive, uncalculating lying -- if there is such a phenomenon (which it isn't evident to me that there is).)

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"Give ear and try to understand." (Matthew 15.10)

He who has ears to mishear

Query: temple of apologize in Delphi.

That is the best query never ever. Either Apollo or Apology >> apologize. But Socrates' defense (apologia) to the jury is not an apology, but an exhortation to the life of philosophy and virtue. (Euthydemus 281d-282a: In sum, wisdom is the only good, ignorance the only evil.) Another example: "Query: Apollo is a Greek follower of Socrates", which confuses the god Apollo with the philosopher Plato.

Query: how the Oracle concluded that Socrates was the wisest fellow in Greece.

Apollo's oracle did not draw a conclusion but set a riddle. It was Socrates who saw the oracle's words as a conclusion that he had to find the premisses which both explained the meaning of and justified, because the oracle's statement (namely, "Of all men living, Socrates most wise") did not seem to follow at all from what Socrates presumed about himself, namely that he was in nowise wise.

Query: what concept is defined as the method of leading people out of ignorance?

It certainly isn't "the Socratic Method" of question and cross-question in Plato's dialogs, is it? But rather: people are led not to believe they know what they do not know: they remain ignorant, but now aware of their ignorance (Apology 21d). That is the difference between Socratic ignorance and presumptuous ignorance (Sophist 229c-230d), and it is all that Socrates' art (method) can accomplish (Theaetetus 210d).

[Guthrie calls the Greek word logos "a maid-of-all-work", and that seems to be the place of the word 'concept' in English ("factotum": one which does of every kind of work, or anyway, one to which every kind of work is assigned).]

Query: Socrates is not ashamed to admit his ignorance; in fact, he stresses it as the basis for what little wisdom he has.
Query: awareness of your ignorance is wisdom.

What is the query's "it" that Socrates stresses? "it" is not Socrates' ignorance, but instead Socrates' admission of his ignorance (Plato, Apology 21d). But the pronoun's unclear antecedent allows the query to continue: "But if ignorance is good, and if education dispels ignorance, then is education bad?" (Is it true that "education dispels ignorance"? or does it only replace old ignorance with new ignorance? Socrates (Apology 22d-e) thought it better to be wholly ignorant than to know some things while also believing that you know other things that you don't know (the "Fallacy of the Artisans"). "I don't think I know what I don't know" is man's only wisdom (Apology 23a-b). That awareness is not "the beginning of wisdom"; it is wisdom, Socratic wisdom (which is also Socratic in contrast to "conceited ignorance").

Query: Socrates. Explain why we should question the things we are taught.

To see whether or not they are true -- i.e. whether or not we know them (whether we have been deceived). What we have been taught may have been no more than ignorance ("the received view", tradition): we may have been misled by those who think they know what they don't know (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1).

My example was the definition of the word 'point' in geometry, a word about the grammar of which students have indeed been deceived for millennia. (Comparison of the geometric plane to an map, geometry to map-reading.)

The Socratic Method ...

Query: what is the relationship between Socratic dialectic and Socrates' claims of ignorance?

About his own philosophical work, Wittgenstein said to G.E. Moore, "a method had been found". And that was true about Socrates as well, that a method, namely Socratic dialectic (question and answer and cross-question), had been found, a method based on a distinction between knowing and not-knowing according to the standard "If someone knows anything, he can tell others what he knows" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1; Plato, Laches 190c), meaning that he can explain and defend his claim in discussion with companions who cross-question him to determine whether his claim is true or false or his words are nonsense. In the Socratic dialogs of Plato, the result of the Socratic method is not " Socrates' claims of ignorance" -- but proofs that Socrates is ignorant: what he cannot tell others, he does not know himself.

Further, as Wittgenstein said to Moore, it did not matter whether his results were correct or not, but that the method for finding the correct results had been found (PP iii, p. 322). And that is the case as well with the results of Plato's Socratic dialogs. The agreements and refutations in those discussions are themselves open to cross-questioning to see whether they are true or false or nonsense. Philosophy is never-ending that way.

Query: why to avoid contradictions in philosophy?

The standard of truth and falsity? Not that, but the standard of falsity. Refutation in Socratic question-and-answer is (either the discovery of words without meaning) or a contradiction in the defense someone has given of what he knows. But note well: refutation is done by finding a contradiction in meaning, not merely a contradiction in syntax. As with Wittgenstein's axiomatic distinction between sense and nonsense (i.e. that there is such a distinction in our language, regardless of how that distinction is made), if a contradiction in meaning [sense] doesn't falsify an argument, then there is no truth or falsity in argument. (Coincidental agreement in sense perception is not philosophizing.)

... is not the method of geometry

Query: Socrates taught that the truth can be found by breaking down a problem into a series of questions.

But Socrates' method is not this way: "The problem has so-and-so number of parts, which are such-and-such, which are solved in such-and-such order." (Euclid's proofs in geometry can be presented that way, in that form of argument: "To prove theorem C we must first prove theorem A, then theorem B from A, because theorem C follows from B." That is an example of breaking a problem down into parts.) Rather, Socrates' step-by-step discussion (dialog with his companion) follows the answers (his companion gives) to the questions (Socrates asks). The argument follows a course suggested by the (companion's) answers.

Query: definition of logic in philosophy.

There is no "definition of logic", 'nor is there a definition of 'logic', but there are instead many definitions of 'logic' in philosophy, as in the English language (The English word 'logic' is not philosophical jargon).

Query: philosophical logic questions.

Is "philosophical" logic (i.e. the logic of Socrates and later Wittgenstein) different from "mathematical" logic (i.e. the logic of Frege and Russell) -- or, in other words "the logic of meaning" versus "the logic of form" -- i.e. are the things we call 'logic' fundamentally different or do all those things have a defining common quality (a shared essence)?

What is the essence of logic?

'Logic is the study of everything ruled by rules' -- is that the essence of logic? Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" metaphor will not answer the question of whether the various things we call 'logic' are wisely placed in a single category -- "wisely" in the sense that: does this way of classifying the phenomena create confusion, a picture of a glossed-over reality? Wittgenstein's metaphor describes (characterizes), but it gives no philosophical guidance.

Logic is the art of reasoning (if aught but the study of form, it would be the science of reasoning). That is why this definition is not broad enough: Logic is the study of everything subject to rules or Logic is the study of everything governed by rules. But 'governed' = 'subjected to' = 'ruled by', and so: Logic is the study of everything ruled by rules (in contrast to "ruled by caprice" rather than by rules; arbitrariness).

If words do not have essential meanings, then ...

Query: difference between sense and logic as being part of meaning in language.

The query presumes [but presumption is contraband in philosophy] that 'sense', 'logic' and 'meaning' are already defined (somehow, but I don't know how; we are forever fighting vagueness, indefiniteness, nebulousness, cloudiness in philosophy). Of course, 'logic' might = 'syntax'; and 'sense' might = 'use in the language'. (But Wittgenstein together called the semantic and syntactic elements of language 'logic', saying that he meant by 'grammar' = 'logic' = 'everything descriptive of the use of language'.)

If the meaning of a common name is not what all things called by that name have in common -- in other words, if words do not have essential meanings that are known by an unknown ["And that which we know surely we must be able to tell?" (Laches 190c)] "process of abstracting" -- then the only way to know how a word is being used in the language, i.e. the word's meaning, is to look at the particular use, in contrast to presuming that the word has a general meaning (or definition) independent of any particular use [context]. (Most words do not have "essential meanings" -- if we look at the facts in plain view, in contrast to our preconceived theory of meaning.)

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These things having been done

Query: Greek philosopher Socrates' beliefs in sign language.
Query: Socrates' view on sign language.

Using language signs to communicate with the deaf in contrast to Socrates' daimon ("divine sign"). Like savages (PI § 194) we hear some bit of language and think ... what was never meant. (All language is sign language -- what else would it be but: signs plus their use in the language (meaning) = language -- unless the word 'language' is used metaphorically, which for philosophy's purpose: a metaphor ("poetry") must be clearly restated in prose (i.e. non-metaphorically).)

"These things having been done" -- I remember from Latin class, but I can't remember why we were told this construction was important. (Magical words like poetic sounds -- "What does it mean?" What does music mean.)

Concepts and Misconcepts

Query: difference between misconception and conception of philosophy.

Are the words 'conception' and 'misconception' grammatical antitheses? Is it significant that there is no word 'misconcept' in our language to contrast with 'concept'? (What is its significance?) Elsewhere I defined 'concept' in logic of language as 'rules for using a word' (because as we normally use the word 'concept' its meaning is too vague (RFM vii § 45, p. 412); the nebulous amorphic is the unclear).

Could there be {incorrect rules for using a word} called a "misconcept"? in contrast to a the false description of the use of a word called a misconception? Is 'The word 'pain' is the name of a private object' (PI § 293) an example of a misconcept? But then what is the difference between a "misconcept" and a misconception? The extension would be different: all misconcepts are misconceptions, but not all misconceptions are false accounts of the use of words.

Misconceptions of Philosophy

Wittgenstein said that Plato misconceived philosophy because Plato misconceived (i.e. misunderstood, mis-pictured) the logic of our language (i.e. what gives meaning to our words), and because of this Plato asked philosophy to seek "real definitions of our concepts" (i.e. the reality behind our concept-formation that justifies common names. "What is the common nature named by this common name?" asks for the "real meaning of the concept".) Contrast that with Wittgenstein's understanding of the logic of our language and therefore his conception of philosophy as just describing our "conventional concepts" (i.e. the public conventions for using words, whatever those show themselves to be). A real definition in philosophy is always metaphysical speculation rather than a statement of fact.

Wittgenstein never wanted hypotheses in philosophy, but are they impossible (PI § 108)? Russell said that Wittgenstein had invented a philosophy with false consequences -- one that denies the possibility of Russell's philosophical project, which Russell says is philosophy's traditional goal, of "understanding the world as well as may be" -- i.e. that Wittgenstein's philosophy is a misconception of philosophy.

Here 'misconception' might mean "This is not what philosophy has historically been", or "Philosophy is not able to do the things this project in philosophy demands of it", or "Philosophy is not so limited in what it can do as this account claims it is".

Query: significance of Socrates made by the Oracle at Delphi.

According to Plato, it is that in Apollo's words Socrates is "everyman", i.e. every man who doesn't think he knows what he doesn't know, who doesn't think himself wise when he is not, deceiving himself (Apology 23b). Xenophon's interpretation (Apology 14-17) of the oracle's words is very different.

My own conception is distinct, taking in both interpretations, because beyond not thinking himself wise when he is not, Socrates is wise in these ways: (1) he knows what the specific excellence proper and unique to man is, i.e. what the good is for man (namely rational moral virtue), and therefore how man should live his life; and (2) he has a method for discovering the truth and refuting error. These three things are all certainly worthy of the title "wisdom", and Socrates as "the wisest of men" for possessing them.

"Give ear and try to understand."

Some of Plato's students at the Academy published notes they had taken of his lectures. And one, namely Antiphanes, said "that just as, in a far northern city, words froze into ice as they were spoken, and were heard in the summer when they thawed, so the words spoken by Plato to his students in their youth were finally understood by them only in their old age". (Durant, Life of Greece (1939), xxi, p. 512-513; source (701n69): Plutarch's Moralia, 79)

That is what I think the synoptic Gospels are: early or earlyish attempts to understand the meaning of Jesus' words and deeds (his teachings as well as who Jesus himself was).

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The Learned Man from the Far West (Matteo Ricci in China)

The quotations that follow are mostly from Vincent Cronin's The Wise Man from the West: Matteo Ricci and his mission to China (1955). The name "Hsi-t'ai, which meant Far or Exalted Westerner" was given to Ricci by the Chinese (ibid. iii).

Origin of the name 'Confucius'

The translation into Latin of the Chinese Classics was first undertaken by the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610, born in Macerata, Le Marche, Italy) while in China. Ricci wanted to explain, and to help other missionaries explain, Christian thought to Chinese people in terms that were native to China rather than to Europe only (many European concepts either had no counterpart in Chinese or only partial counterpart, which is the difficulty we also have with translations from Classical Greek into English).

"The importance of naming things correctly"

[Having lived in China for ten years by then, in 1592] Ricci brought to completion a work on which he had been engaged since 1591: the translation into Latin of [China's] four classical books he used as a teaching manual [for other Catholic missionaries. The] work presented formidable difficulties. Equivalents had to be found for numerous concepts, some unknown to the European mind, others overlapping or narrower than the obvious Latin counterparts. The Chinese Master himself had emphasized the importance of naming things correctly as a prerequisite of true thinking.... Proper names had to be phoneticised for the first time (Ricci now originated the Western rendering of the Chinese K'ung Fu-tzu -- respectable master Kung -- transliterating it in Latin as Confucius).... This [was the] first translation of Chinese books into a European tongue ... (ibid. v)

Ricci's own name was also transliterated by the Chinese. So that "Ricci's first name in Chinese was Ma-tou [Matthew] and his surname Li, the nearest monosyllabic equivalent for Ricci, the "r" sound being unknown in China." (ibid. iii) Following Chinese custom his social superiors addressed him as "Li Ma-tou".

The Chinese Classics

[The] four most important of the Chinese classics: the Great Learning, which laid down man's duty to seek perfection, know and will the good, correct his passions, order his family life aright and so contribute to national peace; the Doctrine of the Mean, which defined the principle of righteousness as "nothing too much", counterpart of cosmic order; the Mencius, apophthegms [maxims] of one of the Master's disciples; and the Analects, ethical phrases of Confucius, the first of which -- "Is it not pleasant to learn with constant perseverance and application?" -- in counterpoint with filial piety made up the anthem of Chinese civilization: conformity with the past ... (ibid. v)

Matteo Ricci's account of Confucianism

Confucius had been born in the sixth century before Christ, an impoverished minor aristocrat, orphaned at an early age. A philosopher rather than a religious teacher [Confucius' teaching was "horizontal" (in Cronin's metaphor), concerned only with ethics, setting aside piety -- i.e. his teaching was about the relationship of man to man rather than of man to Heaven], he spent his life training students for a political career. His teaching had been transmitted by disciples in the form of a confused, unscientific collection of maxims and discourses based on reason [in contrast to unverifiable myth], capable of various interpretations and twisted out of all recognition by later commentators ... (ibid. ii)

St Francis Xavier, Confucius, China and Japan

[Confucianism] supplied the native Japanese religion, Shintô or The Way of the Gods (eight million gods, in fact), with its ethics of loyalty and filial piety ... [Francis saw that] religious-minded Japanese looked to the Chinese as reverent pupils to their masters ... In religion Japan had always gone the road China had taken ... In China all power rested safely in one strong pair of hands, and could those hands be brought to make the sign of the cross the countless humbler hands might easily make it, too, without in the least having to repudiate the best lessons of Confucius. In that case the conversion of Japan would follow almost automatically.... [Francis'] plan was not purely quixotic, for three successors of St. Francis, Ricci, Schall and Verbiest, put it into operation with the most startling success. (James Brodrick, Saint Francis Xavier [1506-1552], abridged by the author (1957) [original 1952], xv, p. 266, 274)

[Francis wrote that the Jesuits went to China] with a great summons from God to the King [of China] and all his subjects that they adore only Him who created them and made the heavens and the earth, and Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world ["the Saviour of all peoples"], who redeemed them. (ibid. xvi, p. 295) My trust in God our Lord is that He will have pity on so vast an empire and mercifully open a way for His creatures made in His image to adore their Creator, and to believe in Jesus Christ, His Son and their Saviour. (ibid. xvi, p. 294)

Ricci catechism for China

Detailed study of the [Chinese] Classics prepared the way for Ricci's next work [which was] to compose a new catechism ... Appeal had been made [in the old catechism] to concepts which the Chinese could not accept as self-evident. Ricci decided to make his catechism lead on naturally from the first principles of the [Chinese] Classics, just as Christian apologetic in Europe utilized Plato and Aristotle. Christianity must justify its claim to be, not a local superstition, but a universal religion based firmly on natural wisdom. (Cronin, The Wise Man from the West, v)

Familiarity with the writings of Confucius, of Buddhism and Taoism [the three sects of Chinese religion (ibid. ii)], had convinced him that the best hope of spreading Christianity was to ally himself with Confucianism, which in almost all respects harmonized with Christian principles. Its lines, like those of a Chinese building, were horizontal: a system of right conduct between men, it had little to say of man's relations with God --

which following Cronin's metaphor would be vertical lines.

-- Ricci therefore presented Christianity as an essentially reasonable theology completing and perfecting those principles in Confucianism which conformed to natural reason. (ibid. vii)

Ricci had to convince the Chinese on the metaphysical level before he could convince them on a religious level; that is the meaning of "natural wisdom" in Cronin's "Christianity must justify its claim to be ... a universal religion based firmly on natural wisdom" (ibid. v).

The Earliest Religion of China

[In the earliest religion of China] A single, omnipotent, supreme Being was worshipped in the form of Heaven, together with various subsidiary protective spirits of stars, mountains, rivers, and the four corners of the world. Virtue pleased, vice displeased Heaven, which rewarded or punished men in this world according to their deeds. So reverent was religious awe that only the Emperor and high officials might perform sacrifice ... (ibid. ii) From a study of the Analects, he became convinced that Confucius had taught a reverence for Heaven, upon which all earthly things depend, and that this religion was untainted by idolatry. Yet while reverencing the traditional Chinese Heaven, Confucius initiated a change from supernatural to ethical thinking, --

Comment: in Platonic terms: from piety to justice (Gorgias 507b).

-- a shift of emphasis from God to man and human relations, which ever since had dominated Chinese philosophy. ... Confucius was preaching that man's good was in himself and that he should seek the peace of mind which follows from virtue. Paradise could be realized on earth, here and now, if all men followed the way of cooperation and made no attempt to change their place in society. Man's duty to Heaven was satisfied by the Emperor's annual sacrifice; man's duty to his neighbor demanded wisdom, patience and unselfishness every moment of every day. Religion was reduced to the science of human relations. The creation of the world and who sustained it were questions which interested few early thinkers, and the myths they invented as explanations were generally discredited. Confucius too ignored these problems, believing that reason was powerless to establish the nature of God or the existence of life after death. (ibid. ii))

And so Ricci could present Christianity to the Chinese as completing Confucius' religion with a theology both horizontal and vertical.

The Christian missionaries described themselves as "religious who served the King of Heaven, and come from the farthest parts of the West ..." (ibid. ii), but they had to distinguish themselves from the Buddhists for the Chinese, explaining that they needed their own place of worship, because they did not worship idols but only the "King of Heaven". They referred to the Virgin Mary as "Lady Mother of the Lord of Heaven". (ibid. ii) Twenty years later, when he petitioned the Chinese Emperor for permission to remain in China (preferably in Peking), Ricci described the missionaries this way: "We have come to preach the law of the Lord of Heaven in the Middle Kingdom at the command of our superiors ..." (ibid. x)

The difficulty of a Christian mission in an ancient civilization and unconquered land

But "natural wisdom" = Metaphysics was not what opened the door to China's people for Ricci. Instead it was his knowledge of mathematics and of the sciences of geography and astronomy. (ibid. iii) In the letter of introduction to the Emperor in Peking, Ricci is described as "one with a sound knowledge of astronomy, geography, geometry and arithmetic" (ibid. ix). "Ricci had been taught geography by Christopher Clavius" (ibid. iii), whose work the Gregorian calendar, adopted in western Europe in 1582, largely was (ibid. xii).

But although among the gifts presented to the Chinese Emperor by intermediaries in 1601 -- which "were being offered, like prayer, to the invisible and unknown" because Ricci did not know which if any of the gifts would interest the Emperor (ibid. ix) -- were "a picture of the Lord of Heaven [and] two pictures of the Mother of the Lord of Heaven", the letter of introduction said nothing about the Christian religion.

[Ricci had learned that when discussing Christianity] to postpone questions of doctrine to a later meeting, for the Chinese were accustomed to retort, "Yes, doubtless that is true, but our beliefs are true also. Religions are many, but reason is one." [By 'reason' here is maths and natural science meant? or something else?]

Instead he excited admiration by enumerating good works practiced by Christians: hospitals for the sick and incurable, homes for foundlings and orphans, confraternities for helping the poor, widows, and prisoners; the censorship of books, which prevented the circulation of useless and harmful works; and above all the law forbidding kings, princes, the highest lords and poorest peasants to marry more than one wife, who could never be divorced, even though she never bore a son. [The Chinese response was] "That in itself is sufficient to prove the Far Westerner's kingdom noble and well governed." But although they praised monogamy [they were not drawn to practice it]. (ibid. x)

Further, it wasn't discussions of religion or theology or reason that earned Ricci access to the Imperial Palace ("Forbidden City") in Peking, but the need to maintain the clocks the missionaries had given as gifts to the Emperor, the gifts he was most pleased by. (ibid. x)

And so Matteo Ricci felt disappointed in what he had been able to accomplish in China despite the Christian missionaries twenty years of labor. (ibid. x)

The mission to China in contrast to Europe's conquests of other lands

In the savage countries of South America, Indonesia and Africa, Christianity had posed not only as a religion but as a great civilising force. It had spread as a result of physical conquest, and imposed on the people a Western way of life, considered a norm.

No distinction was made between the essentials of Christianity and Western trappings, so that everything from the hymns sung in church to the moulding of an altar reredos followed European patterns.

[But in contrast, in] China ... Christianity was for the first time in history confronted with a civilisation older [than] the Graeco-Roman ... Christianity could not conquer here merely be force of arms ... [But instead] she must recognize and tolerate all that was best in the older civilisation, and introduce only her essential message: her revelation and theology. If she attempted to impose unessentials -- philosophic, literary, artistic or ritual, or to cut Chinese civilisation to Western patterns, she would remain an exotic tied to [Western] methodology and customs which would make her message unacceptable to the Chinese mind. The Church ... in order to show herself truly universal ... must jettison all local and national prejudice, even her age-old habits of mind, and take on a cargo of Eastern wisdom compatible with her message, without deviating one point from her essential course. (ibid. x)

Comment: Wisdom is the antithesis of Philosophy

Cronin writes: "... confronted with a civilisation older and at least as great as the Graeco-Roman". What does he mean by 'great'? Not that China invented philosophy, advanced maths, natural science, democracy, and not that China established a multi-national empire. In what way was China as "great" as Greece or Rome? It was certainly far greater in "wisdom", i.e. philosophical complacency. No philosopher ever claimed to have no need of instruction, as China did, regarding itself as already in all ways wise: "[In their first presentation of themselves as "religious who served the King of Heaven", Ricci made no mention of the missionaries'] intention to preach Christianity ... such an claim would be taken as an unpardonable insult. The Chinese believed they possessed a monopoly of the world's wisdom, all foreigners being considered illiterate barbarians" (ibid. ii). Centuries of self-sufficiency had taught China peace, and it was believed self-sufficiency in wisdom. The country had no reason to make, and its rulers no interest in making, conquests of foreign lands or markets -- or ideas (ibid. xii).

Ricci's Catechism - choosing the apt terms

[Ricci worked nine years preparing his Catechism before publishing it 1603.] He had proceeded warily, knowing that he was casting the mould of Oriental Christianity, selecting Chinese terms which, once in general use, could not easily be replaced. He had circulated the manuscript among his [Chinese] friends, taking their advice about style and noticing the arguments which proved most effective.

Appealing in every case to principles acceptable to most Chinese or to their ancient and authoritative texts, in matter, approach and style ... the book probed beneath all the nonessential differences, obvious and subtle, between East and West, to proclaim their unity as men made by the same God. As a climate of thought in which Christianity would be most likely to flourish, it advocated a return to the purity of ancient [Chinese] religious thought ... No appeal could have been better attuned to a people in love with the past. The graduates came to view the new doctrine not as an abhorrent novelty but as the crowning of all their noblest traditions ... (ibid. xi)

Ricci's hope for the Christian Mission

Among the reasons Ricci had for hoping that the Christian mission to China he began would survive his death was that, "reason being prized above all in China, Christianity, a reasonable religion, appealed at an intellectual as well as a supernatural level" (as "a universal religion based firmly on natural wisdom"), and the Chinese "were open to the conviction that Western metaphysics and theology, no less than mathematics and astronomy, were superior to their own"; another was "the free circulation of books permitted a vast literary apostolate"; and further, that based on "a study of their ancient beliefs, [Ricci believed that the Chinese] were essentially a pious people who had evolved a philosophy conforming, at almost every point, to natural reason", and that "the system of Confucius provided an admirable ally against the idolatrous sects"; and finally, that, following Ricci's own method, "by adapting themselves to Chinese psychology and etiquette, missionaries would undoubtedly accepted as learned and holy men". (ibid. xiv)

The Western Conquest of China (The later mission)

But Ricci's last point of hope wasn't to be realized until too late, because as --

-- the China mission grew, Franciscans and Dominicans entered the country. Their method of evangelising was direct, uncompromising and took little account of the different psychology of the people to whom it was addressed ... When they discovered that converts made by the Jesuits were allowed to honour Confucius and the tablets of the dead, they protested that a tainted form of Christianity had been introduced to China. [The Jesuits compared these Chinese customs, which "were older far than the Church herself", to the affection and gratitude shown by the European custom of laying flowers at the graves of loved-ones, "part of an inflexible moral system" [of piety]. But Pope Clement XI supported the new missionaries against the Jesuits' view.]

Once [due to the disrespect of the new missionaries] the sympathy of the Emperor and high mandarins was lost -- as Ricci had foreseen -- the authority attaching to Christianity declined. [In 1717] the foreign religion was formally prohibited in China [, bringing to an end almost two centuries of missionary work]. In 1773 ... the Society of Jesus was suppressed.

When the Jesuits returned in 1842 it was to a different reality, because the "privilege formerly won for Christianity [in China] by the virtue and wisdom of its missionaries had now been obtained by [the] superior rifles and long-range guns" of Britain, France and America.

The early decades of the early twentieth century brought changes more sweeping than any in the past two thousand years. The system of examinations based on Confucianism was abolished; books were written no longer in mandarin but in Peking dialect ... [Now] China welcomed Western technical achievements -- railways, guns, power-houses, machinery -- but to Christianity, which fired that civilisation, [China] remained largely indifferent.

In 1939 Rome agreed to tolerate the Chinese honoring Confucius and the tablets of the dead; "the Church reaffirmed Ricci's belief that Christianity must welcome the best elements in Eastern thought. But Rome's decree had less importance than it would have had in 1704, for mass education and the breaking-up of families ... had weakened Confucianism. [Although] China counted 2,500 native clergy and three million Catholics ... the second figure represented considerably less than one per cent of the population. [For the rest the] Church was dismissed as simply another instrument of Western imperialism."

Chinese students at European and American universities found belief in progress, religious agnosticism and a scarcely veiled contempt for Christianity. Returning to their own country, crowded with zealous missionaries, they asked, "Do you propose to convert China and then wait for China to reconvert the West?" (ibid. Epilogue [xv])

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Is God "known by the things He has made"?

[The Buddhist priest] believed in a universe made up of contradictory principles: man was both good and bad; the year both warm and cold; God therefore must combine in himself similar opposites. (Cronin, The Wise Man from the West vii)

If the creator is known by the things he has made (i.e. the totality of all He has created; cf. the clockmaker is not known by his clock, although maybe his mind as a clockmaker is known that way), and nature is both creative and destructive, kind and cruel, (as is man), shouldn't we say therefore that God is as the Buddhist says?

That would be the God of Nature, but can we do with this God? He is like "the God of the philosophers and scholars", the God of metaphysics; He is the deists' God. "Man is the microcosm": if God is known by the things he has made, then he is knowable by knowing man: like man God is both good and evil, creative and destructive, kind and cruel, light and dark (i.e. ignorant and knowing), functional and dysfunctional. Such a God might be regarded with awe (and fear) as the forces of nature itself are, but not loved (Was Poseidon loved?) Only good can be loved; evil cannot be loved.

An idle picture of metaphysics -- the pretension to know (understand) what one does not understand. This is the danger of metaphysical pictures. Idle imagination (filling in the blank spaces of our picture of the world picture with speculation, and then mistaking its speculation for knowledge) is the devil ("Satan: the deceiver")'s playground.

"If God is known by the things He has made ..." But Christians believe that He is not: John says: No one has ever seen God -- i.e. no one knows (can comprehend) ("My thoughts are as high above yours" etc.) God's nature: all we know, i.e. believe because of Jesus, is that God is love. The things He has made do not tell us that.

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