The Influence of the Chinese Philosophical-Religious Tradition on the European Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th Centuries

In the 17th and early 18th centuries, within the global connections of the early modern period, intellectual contacts between Europe and China intensified. Especially important were the relations between France under King Louis XIV (1638–1715; reigned 1643–1715) and China under the Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722; reigned 1661–1722). These contacts took place primarily through Jesuit missionaries, who acted as scientific and cultural mediators between the two civilizations. Among them, Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730), a member of the French Jesuit missionary group at the Chinese imperial court, stands out.

The Jesuits as Mediators Between Civilizations

The Jesuits worked within the strategy of accommodatio, developed by Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). This approach was based on the idea that the Christian message could be presented through the conceptual structures of the local tradition. In the case of China, this meant dialogue with Confucian ethics, Daoist teaching, the state system, and cosmological thought, which emphasized harmony between the human being, society, and nature.

The Kangxi Emperor showed a pronounced interest in Western science, especially astronomy, mathematics, cartography, and mechanical devices. The Jesuits therefore served at court as scientific advisers, enabling a rare form of two-way intellectual exchange between Europe and China.

Within this broader context, an important turning point in relations between the Catholic Church and China was the so-called Chinese Rites Controversy (Controversia de ritibus Sinensibus), which took place in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The Jesuits allowed Chinese Christians to continue Confucian rites in honor of ancestors and Confucius, as well as their civil, religious, and cultural rituals, while the Dominicans and Franciscans strongly opposed this. The rivalry between them would merit deeper study. Pope Clement XI (1649–1721) prohibited these practices in 1704 and definitively in 1715 with the bull Constitutio apostolica “Ex illa die”, which caused disappointment at the court of the Kangxi Emperor. He understood the decision as a misunderstanding of Chinese cultural tradition and as a Eurocentric stance in the sense of a desired cultural and religious superiority of Catholic Europe. As a result, he restricted further Christian missionary activity in the empire, which had a significant effect on the subsequent development of intellectual and cultural contacts between China and Europe.

The Transmission of Chinese Philosophy to Europe

A key moment in the transmission of Chinese thought to Europe was the Latin work Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687), which for the first time systematically presented Confucian texts to the European intellectual sphere. Confucius was presented as a moral philosopher, and China as a civilization of rational ethical order.

In the 18th century, China became an important point of reference for the European Enlightenment, as it made possible comparisons with European political and religious structures.

Daoist Thought and the Yi jing 易经 (Classic of Changes) in the European Enlightenment

Alongside the Confucian tradition, Daoist classical texts also gradually entered Europe, especially the Daode jing 道德经 (Classic of the Way and Its Power), the Zhuangzi 庄子, and the Yi jing 易经 (Classic of Changes). Their influence on the European Enlightenment was less institutional and more philosophical and interpretive, often mediated through Jesuit translations, commentaries, and secondary explanations.

The Daode jing 道德经 (Classic of the Way and Its Power) and the European Reception of Minimal Metaphysics

The Daode jing 道德经 (Classic of the Way and Its Power) attracted European thinkers above all because of its unusual, paradoxical metaphysics, which emphasized non-coercive action (wu wei 無為), the spontaneity of nature, and the relativity of conceptual oppositions. Although the text was not immediately translated systematically, through indirect descriptions it influenced European interest in a “natural philosophy” that was not based on strict theological dogmas.

Enlightenment thinkers who were critical of European metaphysical rationalism and Catholic dogmatism recognized in Daoist thought an alternative to rigid systems of explaining the world, since the Daode jing 道德经 (Classic of the Way and Its Power) does not offer a hierarchical theological structure, but instead describes the world as a spontaneously ordered process.

The Zhuangzi 庄子 and Philosophical Relativism

The Zhuangzi 庄子 had an even more pronounced indirect influence on European philosophical thought, above all because of its radical relativization of perspective, language, and the distinctions between the “real” and the “illusory.” Its stories, for example the famous “butterfly dream,” were interpreted by European thinkers as early forms of epistemological relativism.

Although the Zhuangzi 庄子 was not translated directly in its entirety in the 18th century, fragments and descriptions of its ideas contributed to Enlightenment interest in the limits of human knowledge and to skepticism toward absolute metaphysical claims.

The Yi jing 易经 (Classic of Changes) and the European Fascination with the System of Change

Among all Chinese classical texts, the Yi jing 易经 (Classic of Changes) probably had the strongest intellectual influence on the European Enlightenment. Its structure, based on a system of 64 hexagrams and the idea of continual change, attracted European thinkers as an alternative model for understanding the laws of nature.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) recognized in the Yi jing 易经 (Classic of Changes) an analogy to his binary system (0 and 1), which he understood as evidence of the universal logical structure of the world. This example is one of the most important historical moments in which Chinese symbolic logic directly influenced European mathematical and philosophical thought, and later indirectly the development of computer programming language.

In Europe, the Yi jing 易经 (Classic of Changes) thus became a symbol of “cosmic mathematics,” in which the natural and moral order is expressed through patterns of change rather than through static laws.

Chinese Philosophy and the European Enlightenment

In a broader framework, Confucian, Daoist, and cosmological texts together contributed to shaping the European image of China as a rational civilization with a richly developed philosophical-religious foundation. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), François Quesnay (1694–1774), and Voltaire (1694–1778) used China as an intellectual point of reference for criticizing European feudalism and absolutism.

Daoist and cosmological traditions were often reinterpreted in Europe through European philosophical categories, which means that this was partly a “philosophical reconstruction of China.” The French Revolution (1789–1799) was therefore not a direct consequence of the influence of Chinese thought on the European world of the time, but rather the result of broader internal European processes in which Chinese philosophical-religious thought provided an important comparative framework for the Enlightenment critique of political authority.

Conclusion

Chinese philosophical-religious thought played an important role in the 17th and 18th centuries as an intellectual catalyst of the European Enlightenment. While the Confucian tradition influenced political and ethical thought above all, Daoist texts and the Yi jing 易经 (Classic of Changes) contributed especially to philosophical reflections on nature, the relativity of knowledge, and the dynamics of change. Together, they enabled European thinkers to expand the concept of rationality beyond classical Aristotelian and Christian frameworks and contributed to the formation of a more plural intellectual horizon of the Enlightenment.

Yuan Weiqi

Bibliography 

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