China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought

China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought examines the ideas of China in the works of three major thinkers in the early European Enlightenment of the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries: Pierre Bayle, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and the Baron de Montesquieu. Unlike surveys which provide only cursory overviews of Enlightenment views of China, or individual studies of each thinker which tend to address their conceptions of China in individual chapters, this is the first book to provide in-depth comparative analyses of these seminal Enlightenment thinkers that specifically link their views on China to their political concerns. Against the backdrop especially of the Jesuit accounts of China which these philosophers read, Bayle, Leibniz, and Montesquieu interpreted imperial China in three radically divergent ways: as a tolerant, atheistic monarchy; as an exemplar of human and divine justice; and as an exceptional but nonetheless corrupt despotic state. The book thus shows how the development of political thought in the early Enlightenment was closely linked to the question of China as a positive or negative model for Europe, and argues that revisiting Bayle’s approach to China is a salutary corrective to the errors and presumptions in the thought of Leibniz and Montesquieu. The book also discusses how Chinese reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew on Enlightenment writers’ different views of China as they sought to envisage how China should be remodelled.

Simon Kow is an Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

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Simon Kow

JUg,eria JUg,eriaJUg,eria JUg,eria JUg,eriaJUg,eriaJUg,eria First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Simon Kow The right of Simon Kow to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Kow, Simon, 1974- author. Title: China in early enlightenment political thought / Simon Kow. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in social and political thought ; 116 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016008784| ISBN 9781138809277 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315750125 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: China--Politics and government--18th century. | Political science--History--18th century. | Enlightenment. | Bayle, Pierre, 1647-1706-- Knowledge--China. | Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716-- Knowledge--China. | Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1689- 1755--Knowledge--China. Classification: LCC JQ1510 .K68 2017 | DDC 320.95109/033--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016008784

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Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books Contents

Acknowledgements vi

1 Introduction 1 2 The Jesuits: A swinging door 15 3 Pierre Bayle: A tolerant, atheistic monarchy 41 4 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Natural theology and universal justice 79 5 Montesquieu and Chinese despotism 134 Conclusion: The early European Enlightenment in Chinese political thought 200

Index 211 Acknowledgements

This book was largely written during a full-year sabbatical leave. Thus, it could not have been written without the support of the University of King’s College, which granted me the most precious component of scholarship – time – as well as travel and research funding during the decade or so of research leading to this work and other publications. I am grateful to Patricia Chalmers and other staff at the University of King’s College Library for their diligence and efficiency in meeting my many requests for inter-library materials. Thanks go to all of my colleagues and students at King’s and at Dalhousie University for cultivating an environment which recognises and respects the humanities, an increasingly rare phenomenon in this commercialised and utili- tarian era. A summer workshop on East Asian studies at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii, was particularly helpful to me in assessing Enlightenment interpretations of China. I owe special thanks to two Enligh- tened Canadian Scots, Gordon McOuat and Neil Robertson, for reading and commenting on several of the chapters in draft form, despite the latter’s distaste for my often scathing remarks on Montesquieu (a sign of his good nature and tolerance). I am especially indebted to Douglas Berger – not only for his incisive comments on the entire draft from his perspective as a major scholar of Asian philosophy, but also for his friendship and moral support throughout the writing of this book. Versions of sections from this book were presented to the early modern reading group in Halifax, organised by Krista Kesselring and hosted by Cynthia Neville; to the Dalhousie Philosophy Colloquium, organised by Letitia Meynell; and the 2015 Atlantic Medieval and Early Modern Group annual conference at Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. I am grateful to these and other colleagues who attended my presentations and posed many thoughtful questions. My thanks also to Franklin Perkins, Robert Sparling, and the staff at Routledge Press – including Lucy McClune and especially Peter Sowden, my editor, for his encouragement and guidance – as well as to Moira Donovan for her invaluable assistance on preparing the index. Finally, the quasi-monastic solitude and discipline required to produce this work nevertheless depended on the society of others, including David Heckerl Acknowledgements vii and family members both immediate and extended. Above all, Sue-San King kept me grounded and well-cared for throughout this book project and when I needed most encouragement. This book is dedicated to her with love and to the memory of my late father, both outstanding examples of cultural intersectionality. This page intentionally left blank 1 Introduction

The setting is the imperial court of China in the late seventeenth century. A group of missionaries has travelled from Europe and managed to obtain an audience with the emperor himself, no mean accomplishment given that this will be the first encounter between representatives of the Catholic Church and the legendary Son of Heaven. They have orders from the Papal See to present the Christian religion and the church in the best possible light, with the aim of securing the emperor’s toleration or, they dare hope, his endorsement of and perhaps even conversion to Christianity. To succeed they will have to engage his interest and impress upon him the virtues of Christianity, while omitting mention of the conflict and bloodshed wracking the Christian world far to the west. They are ushered into his august presence, in the very heart of the Forbidden City at the centre of the middle kingdom. The emperor is surrounded by members of his inner council, and asks the missionaries what has prompted them to depart their homes and journey to such a remote kingdom. We have come, they reply, to teach the true religion based on the Gospels of Jesus Christ, the son of God who commanded all men to love one another. They describe the life and mission of Jesus Christ, and especially his promise of everlasting life to those who follow him. The imperial council takes especial note of their account of the unhappiness and dishonour to the church arising from pagan religion. The council poses a difficult question to the missionaries: What do you do with those who do not believe in your religion? Boldly, the Europeans reply that they are commanded by holy scripture and church doctrine to compel unbelievers into the house of God. The council is horrified. They advise the emperor to expel these foreigners, who clearly if they held sway in his dominions would commit violence against the Chinese people who refuse to accept their faith. Indeed, and most horrifi- cally, once they gained a foothold in China with their own followers, they would undoubtedly force the emperor to submit to their religion or otherwise face a crusade of European powers seeking to absorb his kingdom into Christendom. If the latter, the emperor would surely face the prospect of war with Europe, to be slaughtered in battle or captured and imprisoned for the rest of his life. After only two hours, the emperor – motivated by considerations of public 2 Introduction safety and justice – decides to banish the missionaries from China. The audience with the emperor has been a disaster for the church. This remarkable incident was the creation of exiled French philosopher Pierre Bayle, who used this imaginary encounter between Europeans and Chinese to illustrate the ‘horrible consequence’ of promoting a religion which must appear to the emperor as ‘ridiculous and diabolical’ (Bayle 2005, pp. 97–98). Why did China, and in particular the court of the emperor, strike Bayle as an appropriate imaginary setting to illustrate his argument against religious intolerance? More generally, what explains the presence of the idea of China in the works of Enlightenment thinkers such as Bayle? And what does the fascination with China indicate about the character and development of Enlightenment political thought? Bayle’s imaginary scenario reflects a number of aspects of European Enlightenment views of China. First, Enlightenment thinkers drew pre- dominantly upon the accounts of Jesuit missionaries, for it was the Jesuits who initiated the early modern encounter (roughly 1500–1800) with China and even gained access, albeit briefly, to the imperial court itself. Second, the early modern encounter was initially driven by religious motives with the goal of eventual conversion. Thus Enlightenment views of China were intertwined with questions of religion and its effect on society – a preoccupation of much Enlightenment thought. Third, the significance of China for Enlightenment thought was political as much as religious or philosophical. In other words, China presented to Enlightenment thinkers a vast remote land with a distinct civilisation and cultural and political traditions, and approaches to compre- hending the middle kingdom could not but be shaped (in many ways distorted) by political ideas and concerns internal to Europe. Finally, and most strikingly, no Enlightenment thinker actually visited China; none were able to observe its society, government, customs, and beliefs first-hand. In this sense, ‘the East’ was ‘read’ rather than witnessed by the Enlightenment. And yet China preoccupied the minds of key Enlightenment thinkers and, as this book will show, was an integral aspect of Enlightenment political thought. The question of China was inseparable from questions of European politics concerning how the states of Europe should be assessed and criticised, and how they should be affirmed, reformed, or even rejected. This book focuses on three early European Enlightenment thinkers who drew from Jesuit accounts to discuss China in light of their respective philo- sophical and political concerns: Pierre Bayle, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and the Baron de Montesquieu. Although their perspectives form but a small sample of the responses to China in the early Enlightenment, the works of Bayle, Leibniz, and Montesquieu reflect the diversity of European attitudes to China. Not all western observers of China assumed European superiority: while Montesquieu characterised the middle kingdom as embodying a mitigated form of Asian despotism in contrast to moderate European constitutions, Bayle and Leibniz were admirers of Chinese society and government. All three thinkers did tend to concur with the Jesuits on favouring Confucian doctrines Introduction 3 and institutions over Daoism and Buddhism, reflecting a common western inability throughout the early modern period to appreciate the latter and the extent to which Daoist and Buddhist ideas and influences were pervasive in the Chinese tradition and within Confucian thought at the time. But their approvals of Confucianism were on divergent and opposing bases. Against the Jesuits, Bayle largely presented Confucian thought and practice as con- stituting the bases for a rational, tolerant, and atheistic monarchy in China. Leibniz, an enthusiastic supporter of the Jesuit mission, saw in Confucian philosophy an ancient Chinese natural theology which was not only compatible with Christianity and Leibnizian metaphysics, but also the foundation for an ethically and politically superior state which embodied his conception of justice. Finally, against Jesuit and early Enlightenment idealisations of China, Mon- tesquieu regarded Confucianism as a despotic civil religion of manners which, despite its inferiority to the moderate civil religions found in Europe, was suited to and mitigated despotism in China. European Enlightenment views of China were not, moreover, simply instances of caricature, chauvinism, and misunderstanding. It is true that each theorist presented to varying degrees a distorted picture of China for purposes largely internal to European political life, particularly in relation to France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Bayle’s defence of toleration and of the viability of a decent society of atheists against the intolerance and religious bigotry of the ancien régime in France as well as other Catholic and Protestant states in Europe; Leibniz’s championing of China’s embodiment of justice against the ‘Hobbesian imperialism’ of Louis XIV’s France; and Montesquieu’s warning to France that absolutist government could slide towards despotism, which as even China showed could not be described as enlightened or virtuous. Yet as I will argue throughout chapters 3 to 5, for all of his shortcomings and instrumental uses of China for internal purposes, Bayle set a high standard for cross-cultural evaluation in Enlightenment thought, of which Leibniz’s engagement with China and especially Montesquieu’s critique of Chinese despotism fell short. Bayle was sceptical of the veracity of European accounts of China and the non-western world, which explains his sometimes fragmentary and inconsistent remarks on Chinese thought, society, and politics. He urged careful study of the languages and cultures before coming to firm conclusions about countries outside Europe, but also suggested that China constituted a counter-example to European intolerance, bigotry, fanaticism, factionalism, misgovernment, and imperialism: his perspective on China thus countered European assumptions of superiority to the non-western world and justifications for imperial domination and missionary conversion. Leibniz and Montesquieu, by contrast, tended to affirm European chauvinism. While Bayle’s contemporary and friend Leibniz admirably pursued a project of intellectual exchange between Europe and China, Leibniz nevertheless supported Jesuit goals of converting the Chinese and interpreted Chinese thought through the lens of his own metaphysical system. Hence while Europe might learn and benefit from China’s ethical and political teachings 4 Introduction and example, he was convinced that the metaphysical truths underlying Chinese natural theology were in fact congruent with his own philosophy. Therefore, Leibniz saw himself as best placed to reveal to the Chinese what was true in their beliefs and doctrines, while China and Europe thus brought together through this ‘commerce of light’ could then civilise the rest of the world. Montesquieu, in contrast, lacked the sophisticated (if ultimately one-sided) engagement with Chinese thought and culture present in Leibniz’s works. Although equally critical with Bayle of the Jesuit missions overseas and of religious intolerance within Europe, Montesquieu departed from Bayle and Leibniz in depicting Chinese absolutism as nothing more than a form of despotism. In support of his often acute and penetrating insights into constitu- tional government in Europe, Montesquieu interpreted China and other Asian states as irredeemably backwards and culturally stagnant: countries saddled with tyrannical rulers and despotic cultures which pervaded every level of society. Nevertheless, Montesquieu’s account of the non-western world lacked the imperialist rhetoric present in some of Leibniz’s writings, even if his view of China and Asia as despotic would influence later justifications of imperial subjugation and domination. In general, then, not all Enlightenment per- spectives on China can be characterised as either denigrating or justifying European imperialism, or as insufficiently cognisant of cultural difference, based just on these three early Enlightenment thinkers. But in the wake of the Jesuit accounts and from the late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, there is a general shift from sinophilia to sinophobia in Enlightenment thought. This complex picture of early Enlightenment political thought on China suggests a number of ways in which the thought of the Enlightenment ought to be revised or reinterpreted – a process which has already been underway for several decades in contemporary scholarship, to which we will now turn.

Political thought and the non-western world As with other academic fields, political thought is a wide and contested area of study, particularly amidst current calls for a more global approach to political thought. Anthony Black (2009) characterises political thought as ‘any form of reflection about the nature of human society and organisation, about leadership and the state; about how society and the state should be managed and run, and what possible alternative forms there are’. Such a broad characterisation captures the breadth of Enlightenment political theory, as political thought thus conceived includes ‘both philosophy and culture’ and is linked to ‘moral thought, of which it comprises a significant part’ (p. 26). Scholars disagree, among other things, over what ‘forms of reflection’ should be studied and how they should be studied. Traditionally, the study of the history of political thought had in many universities consisted of the study of canonical books by western philosophers, from Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics to early modern texts such as Hobbes’s Leviathan and Rousseau’s Social Contract to later classics including works by Mill and Marx (see Introduction 5 Strauss & Cropsey 1987 as representative of this approach). As Siep Stuurman (2000) argues, the canonical approach to political thought has come under severe criticism since the late twentieth century, though the study of the ‘great books’ in the history of political thought has proven remarkably resilient in university undergraduate curricula. He characterises two forms of criticism: the ‘democratic critique’ and the ‘methodological critique’.Thefirst denounces the focus on selected texts written by dead white European males, which are then presented fallaciously as universal truths (without attention to questions of class, gender, and race in the history of the west). The second targets the anachronistic and unhistorical consequences of interpreting canonical texts as if they addressed timeless questions, without proper regard to the contexts in which they were written. Thus both critiques see the canonical approach as a form of ‘Whig history’ tracing the development of the ‘concept of the autono- mous individual’ (p. 155). The so-called ‘Cambridge School’ of political thought sought to rectify the deficiencies in the study of the history of ideas through close attention particularly to the political and linguistic contexts in which texts were written (see Skinner 1969). In turn, the approaches of Quentin Skinner and other Cambridge scholars have been subject to criticism, for example, in defence of Leo Strauss as a historically sensitive scholar (Major 2005), or in terms of the interpretative pitfalls of focusing on historical context without attend- ing to the text in its own terms (Steinberger 2009). It is likely that the debate over the merits of textualist and contextualist approaches is far from over. This book will seek to balance text and context, particularly the ways in which theoretical arguments relate to the Enlightenment’s engagement with China. Adifferent response to the perceived bias of the traditional study of political thought in the west has been the development of comparative political thought. Apologists for this approach seek to rectify the Eurocentrism of the western canon by comparing western and non-western works of political philosophy from ancient times to the present. As Fred Dallmayr (2004) – a founding father of and leading figure in this field – argues, the events of September 11, 2001 and the continued growth of global markets underscore the urgency of the west to engage in cross-cultural exchange with non-western civilisations, particularly those in Asia. Underpinning comparative political theory is the familiar postmodernist critique of ‘modern Western egocentrism (stylised in Descartes’s ego cogito) and its corollary, Eurocentrism’ (p. 250), with reference to Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Taylor, and others. Dallmayr asserts that ‘comparative theorising in many ways re-opens the old battle between the ancients and the moderns, a battle which curiously intersects with the difference between East and West’ (p. 254). Thus his manifesto not only aligns comparative political theory with contemporary continental philosophical concerns, but also indicates the impetus arising from Edward Said’s Orientalism and the postcolonial theory in the wake of Said’swork (Said 2003; Thomas 2010). In other words, such calls for comparative poli- tical thought are simultaneously critiques of western modernity and western imperialism. 6 Introduction Comparative political theorists may acknowledge historical precedents to cross-cultural theory, but their overall tendency is to show the inadequacies of earlier attempts at comparative thought particularly in the early modern period. The editors of Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia declare that ‘cross-cultural encounter in the time of Western colonialism rarely took the form of…dialogues of mutual accommodation and respect’ (Shogimen & Nederman 2009, p. 8). Commentators criticise the tendency of Enlightenment thinkers to set down supposedly universal principles which are merely western, ethnocentric standards applied to the non-western world (Benhabib 1994; Tully 1995; Said 2003; Dallmayr 2004; Buchan 2009). At the heart of Enlightenment perspectives on the wider world was the conviction that ‘Europe (especially its western portion) represented the summit of civilisation, and the other continents represented various levels of savagery or barbarism’ (Buchan 2009, p. 70). To what extent does this characterisation hold for Enlightenment views of China (not to mention other parts of the world)? This book seeks to revise or at least qualify such sweeping dismissals. Jonathan Spence (1992) has written that ‘[w]hatever their limitations, it is not adequate to view the majority of… divergent views [of China] as solely reflecting the biases within Western culture or a patronising and exploitative attitude towards Eastern civilization’.In regard to Said’s Orientalist critique as applied to western perspectives on China, he continues, ‘[t]here have been so many twists and turns along the way to depicting China during the last four hundred years that no such broad generalisations can hold’ (p. 90). Indeed, a number of scholars have emphasised the complex dialogical relationship between Asian and western thought: not only patronising or colonial attitudes in the west but also Asian influences on western thinking and diverse Asian responses to western thought (for example, see Dirlik 1996, Wang 1997, and Varisco 2007).

Redefining and defending the Enlightenment One response to postmodernist critiques of the Enlightenment is to deny the idea of a single ‘Enlightenment’. Some scholars have sought to bring out how Enlightenment ideas, though sharing certain common features across Europe, took on different forms in different national contexts (see Porter & Teich 1981). While such a national approach is no doubt useful for assessing the social and political contexts of Enlightenment ideas, it is nevertheless the case that Enlightenment dialogues on the significance of China took place between authors in different countries (not least between Jesuits and Enlightenment thinkers in Holland, France, and Germany, for example). More radical is the historical scholarship which argues against any unified idea of the Enlight- enment: as J.G.A. Pocock (1999) writes, the Enlightenment ‘occurred in too many forms to be comprised within a single definition and history…we do better to think of a family of Enlightenments, displaying both family resem- blances and family quarrels (some of them bitter and even bloody).’ A ‘single formula’, he states, ‘is, I think, more the expression of one’s loyalties than of Introduction 7 one’s historical insight’ (p. 9). Pocock would certainly be right in denying that there was a single, unified attitude towards China in eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought, but we can still identify a general shift from idealisation to denigration of China in the course of the eighteenth century. Recent scholars have sought to interpret ‘the’ Enlightenment to demonstrate its positive orientation to non-western peoples and societies. Perhaps the most controversial of the contemporary defenders of the Enlightenment as a relatively unified movement is Jonathan Israel, whose trilogy has been described by one critic as ‘the most ambitious and sweeping revisionist history of the Enlight- enment since Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932)’ (La Vopa 2009, p. 717). Israel (2001; 2006a; 2012), however, identifies a general narrative between two competing strains of Enlightenment thought in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries – the radical and moderate – and very clearly champions radical Enlightenment, in contrast to defenders of more traditionalist elements in Enlightenment thought (such as Haakonssen (1995) or Schmidt (2000)). Israel asserts the primacy of ideas in comprehending these rival strains, particularly the influence of Spinoza’s monist philosophy on the revolutionary social and political agenda of the radical Enlightenment in contrast to the incoherent compromises between reason and religion and/or traditional authority characteristic of moderate Enlightenment thought. Moreover, critiques of Enlightenment tendencies toward repression, sexism, racism, and imperialism are at most applicable to moderate Enlightenment, not radical Enlight- enment, thought (see Israel 2006b). Thus radical Enlightenment is for Israel the best intellectual defence against such dangers as moral relativism or religious fundamentalism. Most striking for our purposes is Israel’s interpretation of the radical Enlightenment as setting out a true moral universalism which is applicable beyond the borders of the European continent. ‘For if ’, Israel (2001) asserts, ‘the Enlightenment marks the most dramatic step towards secularisation and rationalisation in Europe’s history, it does so no less in the wider history not just of western civilisation but, arguably, of the entire world’ (p. vi). In response to the critique that such a perspective would reflect the imposition of European norms and values on the non-European world, and hence constitute a justifi- cation of western imperialism, he argues that radical Enlightenment principles are the best and most effective bulwark against imperialism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression. ‘The social values of the Radical Enlightenment’, Israel (2006a) writes, ‘have an absolute quality in terms of reason which places them above any possible alternative’, with the caveat that ‘there is no reason why one should search only in western philosophical traditions to find the intellectual roots of, or a cultural basis for, personal liberty, comprehensive toleration, equality sexual and racial, and a secular morality of equity – any less, indeed, than for grounding anti-slavery or anti-colonialism’ (p. 869). Israel cites Chinese reformers in the late nineteenth century, especially Kang Youwei, as proponents of the position that ‘moral universalism based on equality, democracy, and personal liberty is ultimately both superior to, and 8 Introduction compatible with, cultural difference where ancient cultural traditions are suitably adjusted, reformed, adapted, and “modernised” in light of these universal values’ (p. 870). One might note, however, that such arguments for modernising these traditions arose in large part as a response to western economic imperialism in China (Spence 1982; De Bary & Bloom 2000; and see chapter 6). Western imperialism appears in this example to have spurred the non-western embrace of European Enlightenment ideas, which surely complicates an unambiguous championing of Enlightenment ideals as universal. Moreover, Israel seeks to demonstrate the superiority of the radical Enlight- enment’s orientation to China and other non-European countries despite, however, the often negative judgements of radical Enlightenment thought of the non-western world. As a whole, Israel (2006a) writes, the Enlightenment’s ‘general assessments of Islamic, Indian, and Chinese thought’ may have come up short, but ‘as so often in cases of attempts at cross-cultural evaluation the result was curiously self-centred and limited. Western philosophers strove valiantly to grasp the fundamentals of classical Chinese philosophy but ended up, in the main, merely mirroring their own prior obsessions’ (p. 640). Nevertheless, Israel (2012) ultimately vindicates radical Enlightenment views of China despite the fact that they were in many ways more dismissive than moderate Enlightenment accounts. China, as we shall discuss in depth, was embraced by early Enlightenment philosophers of both ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ persua- sions such as Bayle and Leibniz respectively; but later thinkers identified by Israel as radical – especially Diderot – followed the later Enlightenment’s sinophobic tendencies, though the ‘moderate Enlightenment’ philosophe Voltaire notably departed from these dismissals of Chinese civilisation. Against Voltaire, Diderot and Raynal may have ‘rejected the Chinese model’ but in their acknowledgement of the sharp division of opinions on China and Japan indicated the need for ‘extensive further research and more direct experience of the Chinese reality’. Thus, Israel concludes, ‘the Enlightenment’–and here the radical Enlightenment is meant –‘proved a sharper stimulus to thorough, systematic, and intensive study of other parts of the world than any other cultural flowering in human history’ (pp. 563–64). In this way, despite its serious shortcomings, (radical) Enlightenment thought on the non-European world is championed as the firmest foundation of cross-cultural philosophy. This claim, however, indirectly concedes the general inadequacy of Enlightenment accounts of China. But the question remains what such accounts reveal about and how they even shape Enlightenment political thought. Like Israel, Sankar Muthu (2003) identifies a strong anti-imperialist strand in Enlightenment thought. Instead of associating it with the categories of radical or moderate Enlightenment, Muthu focuses on the late Enlightenment thinkers Diderot, Kant, and Herder as proponents of anti-imperialist political philosophy. More than simply a form of moral universalism which recognises the dignity of non-European peoples, Muthu’s trio also conceived of human beings as cultural agents and of cultures as fundamentally diverse and incommensurable to an extent. In this form, the ‘universal and particular Introduction 9 categories’ of ‘humanity and cultural difference…in their political philosophies not only coexist, but deeply inform one another’ (p. 10). Kant and Herder, however, went further than Diderot in their deeply negative assessments of Chinese ethics and politics. Their appreciation of cultural pluralism alongside moral universalism did not appear to preclude assertions of European super- iority, even if this did not amount to support for imperialism – nor is it a robust basis for a critique of empire. Indeed, an analysis of early Enlightenment conceptions of China shows that positive or negative evaluations of China do not simply correspond to stances for or against empire, which applies to later thinkers as well. As Festa and Carey (2009) indicate, situating the Enlightenment in a ‘pro/anti binary’ relation to imperialism and colonialism is historically and theoretically inadequate.

Overview Rather than directly engaging debates over the Enlightenment for or against empire, and over Enlightenment universalism, this book will bring out the early Enlightenment’s preoccupation with the idea of China as constitutive of many of its political concerns. In particular, the early Enlightenment political thinkers’ views of China will be linked to elements of their theories of government and to their treatments of questions concerning power, justice, sovereignty, absolutism, toleration, secularity, and empire. Thus the idea of China will be related to the history of political thought. My focus is on selected works of early Enlightenment political philosophy as one aspect of the Enlightenment’s complex relation to China (which also includes the social, cultural, or material history of the European encounter with China, not directly addressed here). Thus this book does not purport to be a comprehensive historical survey: instead, it interprets the works of select early Enlightenment political thinkers for whom China is arguably integral (and in some ways central) to their theories, though drawing upon historical scholarship in order to contextualise the interpretations. The importance of China to these writers is but one dimension of the Enlightenment encounter with the non-European world, and so my analysis is intended as one response to Dorinda Outram’s (2013) concern that ‘in spite of all the ways in which Enlightenment interpretation has changed over the past decades, Enlightenment scholars have yet to come to grips with the relation between the Enlightenment and the creation of a global world’ (p. 8). For Outram, few Enlightenment historians have linked cross-cultural contact in this period to Enlightenment ideas. My analysis will show the relevance of China to a number of central concerns in political theory; hence the book forms part of the study of the history of comparative political thought. Furthermore, the book seeks to illustrate both the weaknesses and strengths of Enlightenment views of China as they relate to politics. As with much of the Enlightenment encounter with the wider world, the political thinkers examined here imported European preoccupations into their assess- ments of China’s government, society, and cultures. While such perceptions 10 Introduction might be easily dismissed as biased and uninformed, and at best historical curiosities, it is not always apparent that contemporary views of China have managed to transcend earlier misconceptions. As the example of the Jesuits shows, even first-hand observers with an impressive knowledge of Chinese language, thought, and culture did not manage to overcome cultural bias in their accounts. It is by examining the Enlightenment engagement with China that we can locate the roots of entrenched and continuing attitudes towards China as a rising world power threatening western hegemony, as a backwards authoritarian despotism, as a salutary alternative to western liberalism, or as a conflicting combination of all of these things. At the same time, the significance of Enlightenment ideas of China may be more than negative and cautionary. First, as I have stressed above, the western accounts of China reveal aspects of European political thought which are not apparent in more traditional canonical approaches, nor in more contextualist interpretations which focus only on the European context of political theory. The idea of China described in Enlightenment political thought formed a crucial part of the context of their thinking. Second, rather than simply con- stituting lessons in the failure of moral or cultural universalism as a framework for encountering cultural diversity, the views of China particularly in the early Enlightenment (before 1750) are linked to often sophisticated reflections on cross-cultural interpretation. Even if we are not fully satisfied with these attempts to comprehend China, they demonstrate early modern efforts either to reconcile ethical universalism and cultural particularity, or to question the very idea of universal moral standards. Given that such issues are by no means settled, we can gain both negative and positive insights for con- temporary thought. Third, given the influences of European Enlightenment thought on China especially since the reformist and revolutionary movements in the late Qing and Republican eras, an examination of ideas of China in western political thought forms a useful backdrop to Chinese views of China in an era of significant western influence. Chapter 2 begins with a brief historical overview of the Jesuit encounter with China and turns to an examination of the chief political ideas contained within some of the published work arising from this encounter. It will begin with the impetus for the Jesuit mission and discuss its goals before presenting an outline of the Jesuits’ activities there. The remainder of the chapter will be devoted to the implications for political theory of the Jesuits’ views of China and strategy of accommodation between Christianity and Confucianism, particularly in works by Matteo Ricci, Joachim Bouvet, and Jean-Baptiste Du Halde. Thus the chapter will address both the Jesuits’ admiration (for the most part) of imperial Chinese government and society and the political implications of their wish to convert the Chinese by showing the compatibility between Christianity and Confucianism and/or Chinese imperial rule. The works examined in this chapter display the diversity among Jesuit missionaries and writers sympathetic to China: Ricci stressed accommodation between Christianity and Confucianism, while Bouvet stressed the virtue of the Introduction 11 Kangxi emperor and the Chinese imperial system; and Du Halde, I argue, tended to move between these two positions. This discussion will form the backdrop to early Enlightenment responses to Jesuit accounts, including views on accommodation and Chinese absolutism. Chapter 3 examines the importance of China to Pierre Bayle’s radical work – often seen as a foundation of Enlightenment thought – on toleration, atheism, and absolutism. It begins with an overview of Bayle’slifeandcontext, and his historical approach to politics. It then turns to his sceptical approach to history and to cross-cultural evaluation, especially relative to Japan and China. Bayle’s hostility to Jesuitical imperialism is outlined, followed by an account of Bayle’s defence of comprehensive toleration in relation to the refer- ences to China in the Commentaire Philosophique. Thus in contrast to the Jesuits’ desire for domination, the Chinese emperor and state are presented as counter-examples of pagan toleration. The next section turns to China as an atheistic, not pagan, society. It discusses the idea of a society of rational atheists throughout Bayle’s writings, and his view of China as empirical con- firmation of such a possibility – a rebuke to Christian Europe, embroiled as it was in religious and political strife. Yet Bayle’s treatment of China as atheistic was far from straightforward, as he wavered on the precise content of China’s atheistic doctrines, Confucian and Buddhist: the subject of heated scholarly controversy, given ongoing debates today over Bayle’s religious beliefs or lack thereof and his complex relation to Spinoza’s thought and atheism. The chapter closes with a consideration of Bayle’s rational absolutism and suggests a deep congruence between his advocacy of absolute sovereignty regulated by reason and his scattered remarks on Chinese government. Scholars have persuasively shown how Leibniz sought to uncover metaphy- sical connections between European and Chinese civilisations. Chapter 4 builds on that work to further demonstrate that the connections were also deeply political. It links his numerous writings on China to a number of his political essays and tracts and argues that Leibniz’s metaphysical and cosmopolitan conception of justice was for him exemplified in China particularly in the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662–1722) – in contrast to Louis XIV’s France. Although Leibniz’s enthusiasm for China was arguably the most philo- sophically sophisticated of Enlightenment responses to China, the chapter also explores the limits of Leibniz’s sinophilia – especially his championing of classical Confucianism over modern, Daoist, and Buddhist strains of Chinese thought – and focuses on the implications of these limits for his conception of Chinese politics and society. It begins with the remarks on China in his youthful project addressed to Louis XIV to invade Egypt, suggesting an imperialist strain in Leibniz’s thought which continued in his mature works (despite his later bitter criticism of the Sun King). The chapter turns to Leibniz’s complex relation to the Jesuit mission, and his desire to shape the mission to his own purposes and interests. An extensive discussion follows of Chinese natural theology as Leibniz conceived it: his account was an earnest and thoughtful examination of Chinese philosophical concepts, but consistently 12 Introduction framed by his own philosophical concerns and biases. The final two sections explore the ways in which China and the Kangxi emperor in particular exem- plified Leibniz’s conception of justice as wise charity, both in the domestic and international contexts, especially in contrast to Hobbesian absolutism and the regime of Louis XIV. China could, in this light, help to reunify European Christendom along the lines of the Holy Roman Empire. Leibniz’s vision of justice was at odds with contractualist theories and early liberal conceptions of the constitutional state – including Montesquieu’s – which prevailed in western political thought. The work of the Baron de Montesquieu is examined in chapter 5 as it particularly demonstrates the importance of China to his critique of absolutism in seventeenth- and eighteenth- century France. The description by Du Halde and conversations with Arcadio Hoange – a Chinese living in Paris – confirmed in his mind the fundamentally despotic character of Chinese society and government and hence the validity of his typology of regimes as republics, monarchies, or despotic states. Montesquieu’s interest in the diversity of political constitutions led him to a negative account of China, marking a shift away from earlier idealisations of China and towards the championing of European political moderation – including the promotion of aristocratic institutions in government – over Asian (and Asian- style) absolutism and despotism. After a discussion of cultural diversity in relation to the concept of ‘the spirit of the laws’, the chapter turns to Asian despotism and Chinese absolutism as Montesquieu saw them. Detailed examinations follow of the use of severe punishments, the corruption of luxury, military enfeeblement, the effects of climate and geography, and finally the Confucian ‘religion of manners’ in Montesquieu’s analysis of China in his mature political works. His account of China was almost unremittingly negative in light of European constitutionalism, as opposed to the earlier idealisations of China by Bayle and Leibniz. The book closes with a brief sketch of how early Enlightenment views of China influenced or resonated with aspects of modern Chinese political thought in the reformist and republican eras. Post-Enlightenment theorists in the west and Chinese reformers emphasised China’s lack of technological and scientific progress and impotence before western imperialist powers. Some Chinese reformers and revolutionaries sought to fuse western and Chinese ideas and institutions, reminiscent of Leibniz’s project of cultural exchange, while others severely criticised or even abandoned Chinese traditions utilising arguments drawn directly from or similar to those of Montesquieu. Yet even those Chinese political theorists most consciously indebted to Enlightenment thought sought to adapt western ideas to the Chinese context and thus departed significantly from aspects of western thought. I close with a sugges- tion that a revisiting of Baylean ideas might form a useful contribution to the development of new ways of thinking about China in relation to the con- temporary global context. By the end of the twentieth century, China would ‘catch up’ with the western world through an embrace of western capitalism and technology alongside a renewed assertion of its unique cultural traditions. Introduction 13 While early Enlightenment views of Chinese government and society were often crude and distorted, they reflected western political ideas in this period and may help us think through the complex process of cross-cultural interpreta- tion as we come to grips with China’s return to prominence as a significant global power.

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