Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-8cg97 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-20T08:34:59.484Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A cross-cultural archery analogy in Matteo Ricci's Tianzhu shiyi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2024

Paul K. Hosle Open the ORCID record for Paul K. Hosle [Opens in a new window]
Paul K. Hosle*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the sixth chapter of his Tianzhu shiyi (天主實義, “The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven”), Matteo Ricci offers a critique of the anti-intentionalistic thread that he detects in the Chinese philosophical tradition. In this brief essay, I offer an analysis of a noteworthy archery analogy that Ricci employs to describe the nature of ethical action as an intentional process with a conscious aim. I trace how Ricci skilfully combines Western and Chinese images and categories to craft this simile. Before that, I set the stage by offering some preliminary comments that contextualize Ricci's interest in the question of intentional vs. non-intentional conduct.

Keywords

Matteo RicciArcheryIntentionAnalogyChinese philosophyJesuits in China
Type
Article
Information
Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 87 , Issue 1 , February 2024 , pp. 201 - 207
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Allan, Sarah. 1997. The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, Irene (trans.). 2009. Mencius. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Camus, Rina Marie. 2017. “Comparison by metaphor: archery in Confucius and Aristotle”, Dao 16, 165–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camus, Rina Marie. 2019. “‘Athl-ethics’: virtue training in Mencius and Aristotle”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China 14/1, 152–70.Google Scholar
Canaris, Daniel. 2019. “The Tianzhu Shilu revisited: China's first window into Western scholasticism”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China 14/2, 201–25.Google Scholar
Canaris, Daniel. 2020. “Between reason and typology: strategies for evangelising China in the writings of Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) and Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607)”, Erudition and the Republic of Letters 5, 397–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canaris, Daniel. 2021. “Relaying the epistemic foundations of a transcultural natural theology: providing the existence of God in Valignano's Catechismus christianae fidei and Ruggieri's Tianzhu shilu”, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 44/1, 29–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canaris, Daniel. 2023. Michele Ruggieri's Tianzhu shilu (The True Record of the Lord of Heaven, 1584). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Cronin, Vincent. 1955. The Wise Man from the West. London: Butler and Tanner Ltd.Google Scholar
Ferrero, Michele. 2019. “Motivation to act in Confucianism and Christianity: in Matteo Ricci's The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu Shiyi 天主實義)”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China 14/2, 2019, 226–47.Google Scholar
Fontana, Michela. 2005. Matteo Ricci: Un gesuita alla corte dei Ming. Milano: Mondadori.Google Scholar
Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia. 2010. A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552–1610. Oxford: The University of Oxford Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legge, James. 1893. The Chinese Classics: with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes. Vol 1 containing Confucian Analects, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Raphals, Lisa. 2022. “Gendered skill: skill and knowledge in weaving and archery”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 49, 9–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ricci, Matteo. 2013. Le sens réel de « Seigneur du Ciel », edited, translated and annotated by Thierry Meynard, S.J. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.Google Scholar
Ricci, Matteo. 2014. 天主實義今注 [Tianzhu shiyi jinzhu], Commentary by Meynard, Thierry. Ed. Tan, Jie. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Ricci, Matteo. 2016. The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu Shiyi 天主實義), translated by Lancashire, Douglas and Peter Hu Kuo-chen, S.J.; revised edition by Thierry Meynard, S.J. Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources.Google Scholar
Slingerland, Edward. 2000. “Effortless action: the Chinese spiritual ideal of Wu-wei”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68/2, 293–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slingerland, Edward. 2003. Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slingerland, Edward. 2011. “Metaphor and meaning in Early China”, Dao 10, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slingerland, Edward. 2017. “Metaphor, blending, and cultural variation: a reply to Camus”, Dao 16, 431–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Huiyu. 2022. “Adjustments to the ‘Accommodation strategy’ of the Early Jesuit Mission in China: the case of Michele Ruggieri's Tianzhu shilu (1584) and its revised edition (ca. 1640)” Journal of Religious History 46/1, 82–96.Google Scholar
Watson, Burton (trans.). 2003. Zhuangzi: Basic Writings. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Yin, Peng. 2022. “Matteo Ricci's legacy for comparative theology”, Modern Theology 38, 548–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, Jiyuan. 2010. “The mean, the right, and archery”, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2, 6798–804.Google Scholar
Zhou, Zhenhe (ed.). 2013. 明清之際西方傳教士漢籍叢刊. 第1輯 [Mingqing zhiji xifang chuanjiaoshi hanji congkan], vol. 1. 南京 : 鳳凰出版社 [Nanjing: Fenghuang chubanshe].Google ScholarPubMed
Zhu, Xi. 2002. 朱子全書 [Zhuzi quanshu], vol. 14, edited by Zhu, Jieren, Yan, Zuozhi, Liu, Yongxiang. 上海 : 上海古籍出版社 : 合肥市 : 安徽敎育出版社 [Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe: Hefei shi: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe].Google Scholar
Ziporyn, Brook. 2014. “The importance of being god-less: the unintended universe and China's spiritual legacy”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 41, 686–708.Google Scholar