Skírnir - 01.04.2003, Blaðsíða 94
GEIR SIGURÐSSON
SKÍRNIR
Li, Wenchao: Die christliche China-Mission im 17. Jahrhundert. Verstándnis, Un-
verstándnis, Mifiverstándnis. Studia Leibnitiana: Supplementa, Vol. 32. Stutt-
gart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000.
Mou Zongsan: Zhongguo zhexue de tezhi. Taibei: Taiwan Xuesheng Shuju, 1963.
Nietzsche, Friedrich: Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der
Zukunft. Kritische Studienausgabe 5. Berlín/New York: de Gruyter Verlag,
1988.
Standaert, Nicolas (ritst.): Handbook of Christianity in China. Volume One:
637-1800. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001.
Tu Weiming, Milan Hejtmanek, og Alan Wachman, (ritstj.): The Confucian World
Observed. A Contemporary Discussion of Confucian Humanism in East-
Asia. Honolulu: The East-West Center, 1992.
Whitehead, Alfred North: Modes ofThought. New York: Macmillan, 1938.
Summary
In recent decades, philosophical hermeneutics has brought our attention to the
immense complexities of the art of interpretation. We have come to realize that an
interpretation always proceeds from some particular point of view and can there-
fore never be “neutral” or strictly “objective”. As Hans-Georg Gadamer has con-
vincingly argued, our understanding proceeds from culturally determined “pre-
judgements” that provide us with a perspective from which to approach novel phe-
nomena. Thus, pre-judgements make understanding possible by associating the
unfamiliar with the already familiar. But being products of the culture to which we
belong, these pre-judgements can also be radically misleading when trying to
understand different cultures. In this paper, I first discuss how the first Western
interpreters of Chinese philosophy were led astray in such a manner by regarding
it as a kind of pre-revelatory Christianity. Special attention is given to the accounts
of Matteo Ricci and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, who, while both outstanding
intellectuals, both display an inability to justify their great admiration for Chinese
culture without appeal to the supreme values of their own culture. Leibniz, in this
regard, refers to classical Chinese thought as “pure Christianity” - hence my title.
I then discuss the nature of later and contemporary interpretations of Chinese phi-
losophy and argue that while certainly more cautious than before, these are still
marked by the questionable but understandable tendency to identify it with
important strands of Western thought and culture. Lastly, I turn to what I take to
be the main distinguishing characteristics of Chinese and Western thought and lan-
guages, point out some of the general problems for their comparison, and briefly
outline a comparative approach that I consider the most productive.