Confucius’s Image in Christian Wolff’s "Oration de Sinarum philosophia practica"

Abstract

This article aims at exploring the influence of confuncianism on the early development of Christian Wolff’s practical philosophy. By interpreting confuncianism as a conceptual creation characteristic of the Jesuit missionary methodology in China, in first place I present the main lines of the process through which the figure of a “prince of the Chinese philosophers” —whom they called Confucius— was forged by Jesuites and, secondly, I examine the consequences of this jesuitical creation on the development of the Wolffian idea of practical philosophy. Both moments allow for an specification of the ethical and political thematics that acted as a background for Wolffian’s reception of Chinese thought, at the same time that they make it possible to understand Halle’s pietists’ coetaneous reading of Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica (1721) as a text of jesuitical inspiration. The article emphasises the need of assuming the weight of jesuitical mediation in order to gain insight into the Oratio’s polemic force and the systematic reorganisation of confuncian elements within Wolffian practical philosophy.