Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy

The Reception and the Exclusion

Selusi Ambrogio

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350153578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

Why were Chinese and Indian ways of thinking excluded from European philosophy in early modern times? This is a study of what happened to the European understanding of China and India between the late 16th century and the first half of the 18th century. Investigating the description of these two Asian civilizations during a century and a half of histories of philosophy, this book accounts for the change of historiographical paradigms, from Neoplatonic philosophia perennis and Spinozistic atheism to German Eclecticism. Uncovering the reasons for inserting or excluding Chinese and Indian ways of thinking within the field of Philosophy in early modern times, it reveals the origin of the Eurocentric understanding of Philosophy as a Greek-European prerogative. By highlighting how this narrowing and exclusion of non-Western ways of thought was a result of conviction of superiority and religious prejudice, this book provides a new way of thinking about the place of Asian traditions among World philosophies.

1

India and China between ‘Prisca Theologia’ and Barbarity

‘En sort qu’en bien des cas le démon des origines fut peut-être seulement un avatar de cet autre satanique ennemi de la véritable histoire: la manie du jugement.’

Marc Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien, 7

1.0 Introduction

The origin of the genre ‘History of philosophy’ during the Italian Renaissance and its spread around Europe in the same years is usually a matter of agreement among Scholars. To be more precise, the place of birth of this philosophical field is considered to be the Florentine Neoplatonic School of Ficino (1433–99). For centuries, this Neoplatonic historical model of philosophy has been incredibly successful, being the leading one until the first half of the eighteenth century. It is also worth noting that this tradition did not begin in the Renaissance, but it dates back to the ancient Neoplatonic thinkers – i.e. Clement of Alexandria – passing on to Saint Augustine and Roger Bacon in the Middle Ages.¹

Ficino’s theory on the origin and diffusion of philosophy is usually named ‘prisca theologia’ or ‘philosophia perennis’. As Charles B. Schmitt explains tersely, both theories consider philosophy as more ancient than Greek civilization, since it was already practised among Chaldeans, Persians and ancient Egyptians.² ‘Prisca theologia’ puts the stress on an enigmatic and esoteric wisdom carried out by wise men such as Zoroaster, Mercurius Trismegistus and, among the Greeks, by the Platonic – and pre-Platonic – lineage with Orpheus, Aglaophamus, Pythagoras and Plato. This theory was mostly grounded on Hellenistic fabricated texts, which claimed an ancient spiritual wisdom common to ancient civilizations. This ancient wisdom itself was that of Noah and Moses, if not of Adam himself, thus it was transmitted within patriarchs’ divine lineage of wisdom. Following this theory, it was possible to trace this lineage back and rediscover all seeds of divine wisdom lost in the previous ages. The theory of the ‘philosophia perennis’, while sharing the same historical paradigm, does not entail the millenarian tone of the ‘prisca theologia’. The ‘philosophia perennis’ is more neutral and claims simply a fil rouge across the history of philosophy, which if investigated carefully reveals traces of scientific truth in all ages. In both paradigms the historiographical task was to investigate all forms of thought and to compare whatever concept could seem similar among ancient civilizations. Schmidt-Biggemann, one of the foremost scholars of perennialism, summarizes suggesting that: ‘Their theory consisted basically in the idea that Jewish-Christian theology and pious philosophy derived from participation in the same divine ideas, and that they revealed the same essential truths’.³ This sentence illustrated all the relevance and urgency of this study felt by modern historians. The aim was to grasp God’s archetypes, ideas, language and, in one word, wisdom, through the investigation of all ancient cultural expressions that could be acknowledged as related to His Splendour. However, it is necessary to point out that this ‘paradigm’ had numerous variations and that practically each historian proposed a specific interpretation. Therefore, we need to understand this paradigm not as a rigid school, but rather as a wide concept.

This Ficinian theory derived from the Neoplatonic Theologia platonica by Proclo, which claimed a common lineage of Orpheus and Plato. Gemistus Plethon began this lineage with the Oracula chaldaica (following Psello’s analysis) and the Chaldean and Egyptian traditions of wisdom (i.e. Trismegistus). In his Nómoi (Treatise of the Laws), Plethon⁴ suggested Zoroaster as the first lawgiver in history and among the first wise men of all times he listed Brahmans and Magi.⁵ Before Plethon, Saint Augustine, in his De civitate dei, provided a genealogy of the transmission of wisdom derived from Clement of Alexandria and he undertook an investigation based on biblical chronology. Afterwards, we need to mention Roger Bacon, who elaborated and enlarged Augustine’s genealogy in his Opus Maius. According to Schmidt-Biggemann: ‘Bacon fills the gaps Augustine left in wisdom’s genealogy by introducing Noah, his sons, and Abraham, who came from the town of Ur in Chaldea, as teachers of the Egyptians.’⁶ As we shall see, the issue about which biblical patriarch moved to Asia was central among the sixteenth- and the seventeenth-century historians, as for instance in Guillaume Postel. Whilst for the true ‘perennialist’ all sons of Noah would have been bearers of wisdom, later historians divided this diffusion in more or less pure genealogies. For instance, in Bacon, Ham, who mocked his father Noah when drunk and naked (Genesis 9.20-27) and therefore had his descent damned by Noah himself, was the Father of Zoroaster, who invented magical arts.⁷

Ficino⁸ elaborated all these Hellenistic, late Byzantine and Medieval influences into a global theory, obviously having Plato as a theoretical culmination, but with the aim of recovering the hidden unique source at the basis of the original theology.⁹ According to Ficino, this research was the best accomplishment of the mutual penetration of philosophy and faith. In this project, besides Plethon, he was supported by an authoritative and widely followed father of the Church: Clement of Alexandria. In his Stromata, specifically in the first book, we find a definite denial of the originality of Greek thought and an accurate demonstration of its Egyptian and Jewish origin. Clement asserted the existence of an ancient wisdom coming from God. Obviously, he did not know many pieces of work of the ‘eastern’ tradition – as they were often Hellenistic fakes – thus he was not able to provide a real ‘migration theory’ of philosophy or simply a history of philosophy, as afterwards it was elaborated by the Platonic Renaissance philosophers and in the two following centuries. The main ‘migration theories’ and histories of philosophy were, since their modern spread, related to these paradigms of the ‘prisca theologia’ and the ‘philosophia perennis’. Therefore, within this paradigm, philosophy was quite a wide concept, it corresponded with sapientia (wisdom).

Both these historical theories were expressions of a pure syncretic view, which tolerates dissent and tries to reconcile disagreements on every theoretical question. The opposed theory is exclusivism, which claims only one theory to be true and the others to be false. The exclusivist theory has always been represented among historians – or proto-historians – of philosophy. The best instance of this theoretical view is Diogenes Laërtius himself, who ascribed philosophy merely to the Greek thinkers, as a specific and new attitude arisen for the first time in this land. His Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is certainly the most refined and rich collection of philosophers written in ancient times. For this reason Diogenes’ Lives was widely quoted by both syncretist and exclusivist historians of philosophy, although syncretists did not follow his first negative chapter on barbaric philosophy.¹⁰

As we said, almost all the first instances of ‘history of philosophy’ followed this perennialist historiographical model. These histories or proto-histories of philosophy usually provided more or less wide chapters on those barbarian civilizations. Among the ancient civilizations, whose thinkers were listed as ‘prisci theologi’, the most important were Chaldean, Persian, Egyptian and, obviously, Jewish.¹¹ Chaldea was the spreading source of the divine wisdom, usually being acknowledged as the country of patriarchs and the place of deluge. Persians were connected with the mythical figure of Zoroaster, who was considered the most important barbaric thinker. Egypt was not merely the place where sciences were cultivated at first and where religion reached a high level of sophistication, but also the bridge between ancient eastern culture and classical Greece. Obviously, Jews, historically connected with both Chaldeans and Egyptians, represented the first pure religious philosophy and the concrete origin of monotheism. According to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century philosophers, Jews and Greeks were the main direct sources of Christian philosophy: the former of religious thought derived from God – i.e. the Holy Covenant – and the latter of the philosophical method. However, these perennialist thinkers argued that Greeks were not properly ‘prisci theologi’, since they had elaborated and refined concepts and techniques derived from the aforementioned ancient East civilizations. In almost all these Platonic Renaissance histories, Chaldeans, Persians – i.e. Zoroaster – and Egyptians were steadily inserted, but many historians also added further civilizations. For instance, in the most complete historical lists we can also find Thracians, Scythians and even Indians as the farthest civilization reached by the aforementioned divine wisdom.

De Perenni philosophia¹² by Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) is universally acknowledged to be the first complete achievement of Ficinian histo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preliminary Note on Some Terms and Quotes
• List of Abbreviations
• General Introduction
• 1 India and China between ‘Prisca Theologia’ and Barbarity
• 2 ‘Atheistic Asia’: Positive and Negative Standpoints
• 3 The Complete Exclusion of Asians from Philosophy
• Conclusion: The Tight Shoes of Philosophy
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright