The China’s Image Of French Enlightenment Thinkers In The 18~th Century

The European “China Mania” in 18 th century raised the climax of European reconsideration to China since the release of “ Travels of Marco Polo” in the Middle Ages, and it was also the turning period of the China Image in the western view from beatification to vilification, admiration to abomination. In the late Ming and early Qing period, the Great Geographical Discovery Brought the European missionaries to China.In order to develop the missionary career in China, The missionaries had a long-term gathering and investigation of Chinese information in all aspects, and then they brought these valuable literature back to Europe, especially its culture center, France.From the beginning of the 18 th century to the Great French Revolution, in order to object to Theocentrism, the Enlightenment Thinkers reused the literature about missionaries’ China in the 16 th and 17 th century, to fight against the Authoritarian regime under the rule of Catholic church.However, there were two entirely different China Image in France. One was Voltaire’s Ideal Kingdom whose politics and morals tended to be perfect. The other was Montesquieu’ s accursed Authoritarian State where slavery and tyranny existed.Why the conclusions were so different by using the same information from the missionaries? Taking this question as the start point, the China Image of Voltaire and Montesquieu as the research object, this essay carries out a comparative analysis to the Sino-Western relation, the French history, the society background, and Voltaire and Montesquieu’ s personal experience, political views. It concludes that the intentional misunderstanding and reuse of other cultures is the common phenomenon in Chinese-Western culture communication, and French intentional misunderstanding of China is for driving the internal change.Voltaire’s intentional misunderstanding focused on using the non-Christian,secular and humanistic China against the European Theocentrism. While Montesquieu questioned the “China Myth” with the scholars’ research spirit, and gave a rational judgment on China on the basis of the missionaries’ literature itself. In fact, the real image of China is neither the Voltaire’s perfect Utopia, nor the Montesquieu’ s adverse and backward state. French Enlightenment Thinkers used and misunderstood the China Image to drive the change and development in France. After British Lord Macartney’s visit to China and the finish of French Bourgeois Revolution, China Image in the west turn from the Utopia to the stagnant and backward “The Others”,and China started to face the miserable fate of being invaded by Western Powers.