The aim of the essay is to demonstrate that the contact of European philosophy with Chinese thought in the second half of the 17th and 18th century influenced the rise and development of secularism, which became a distinctive feature of the Western Enlightenment. The first part examines how knowing the history of China and Confucian ethics has questioned biblical chronology and undermined faith as a necessary condition of morality. These allegations were afterwards countered by reinterpreting Confucianism as crypto-monotheism. I will (...) argue this debate has contributed to the birth of secular philosophy of history, which put an end to the Enlightenment Sinophilism. Throughout those changes in the image of China, nothing but an image was discussed: as it would be presented on a basis of the thought of Wang Fuzhi and other representatives of Chinese kaozheng考證 movement, the encounter with the contemporaries of the Westerners would have opened a real dialogue. (shrink)

(2013). Malebranche and Chinese Philosophy: A Reconsideration. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 262-280. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.718869.

Henry More and Nicolas Malebranche, each in his own way, drew a distinction between two kinds of extension, the one indivisible and the other divisible. Spinoza also drew a comparable distinction, explaining that, insofar as extended substance was conceived intellectually, it would be grasped as indivisible, whereas, when it was instead depicted in the imagination, it would be seen as divisible. But, whereas for Spinoza these were just different views on one and the same extended substance, More and Malebranche's two (...) kinds of extension were supposed to be really distinct from one another. Consequently, neither of them could identify Spinoza's substance with both of his own non-identical kinds; and so they faced a choice over which one they would associate it with. The intriguing thing is that here they diverged. More felt that Spinoza's substance was actually divisible, and consequently material. Malebranche felt that it was actually indivisible, and consequently ideal and divine. In each case, they felt that the other kind of extension—whichever that might be—was simply absent from Spinoza's system. This article explores this divergence between More and Malebranche's interpretations of Spinoza's metaphysics, and it seeks an explanation for it in their own respective epistemologies. (shrink)

In both his life and poetry, The Ruined Cottage marked a decisive breakthrough for Wordsworth, which resulted from his daring adoption and sustained use of a monistic idea. Though hitherto mostly dismissed or construed as a derivative of Platonism, Stoicism, Christian mysticism, and/or other conventional English and European concepts and usually seen as part of his supposedly quietist retreat from radical politics, the philosophy of One Life which Wordsworth promoted was in reality a recognizably unconventional conceptual innovation, which indeed made (...) possible his poetic and political innovations in The Ruined Cottage and beyond. In the larger context of ideas that extends well beyond England and Europe and involves in particular the Chinese cosmological belief in tianren heyi or humanity’s unity with heaven, this essay explores Wordsworth’s innovative use of monism in The Ruined Cottage and argues for a significantly different understanding of Wordsworth and the related rise of English Romanticism. (shrink)