The Confucian Metaphysical Concepts In The Perspective Of Missionaries

The history of the communication between the Chinese and the Western cultures has always been a hot subject in the academic world. Scholars try to find out the similarities and difference between these two civilizations and then to build a bridge between them. Actually, the true purpose of this study is to reflect on and then to promote the development Chinese culture. During the whole history above, the communication, which happened in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, was assumed by missionaries and it provides us with a historical mirror to discern questions related to cultural exchange: those missionaries did not only propagandize Christian teachings and beliefs, but they also introduced the whole Western thought into Chinese culture, including science and philosophy. During this process, these missionaries took part in the advancement of Chinese thought history. Among those missionaries, who had a good knowledge about China, Matteo Ricci was a representative one. He had carefully studied Chinese classics and then wrote a series of works in Chinese which had a deep influence on the whole Chinese society.This dissertation deals with the interpretation about three basic Confucian concepts—Tai Chi, Coincidence Principle, and Nature (Hsing) in Ricci's famous works T'ien chu Shih-I, trying to outline the holistic prospect and the main principal of Ricci's interpretation. It is confidently pointed out through the close reading that Ricci had made use of some kind of hermeneutic approaches, including "dialogue" and "paraphrases", to change the original meanings of those Confucian ideas. His intention was to transplant the Christian thought into Chinese ideas and eventually attracted enough Chinese people to believe in Christianity. Though this was an effective way, its result actually went beyond Ricci's expectation: "paraphrases" was a bidirectional process. When those Christian concepts replaced the meanings of Confucian ideas, they also had to change themselves to accommodate Chinese people's traditional belief. Thus, it would exist some so-called Confucian-Christian conceptions, which definitely deepened the significance of this cultural exchange as well. Besides, this thesis aimed to reveal the true sense and value of cultural communication. Of course, my ultimate purpose is to gain deeper understanding about this historical fact and get some clues of the features in the contact between Chinese and Western cultures.