The Jesuit Reading of Confucius - (Jesuit Studies) by Thierry Meynard (Hardcover)

About the Book

Thierry Meynard examines how the Jesuits in China came to understand the Confucian tradition, and how they offered the first complete translation of the Lunyu in the West, in the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Confucius, the Philosopher of China, 1687).

Book Synopsis

The very name of Confucius is a constant reminder that the "foremost sage" in China was first known in the West through Latin works. The most influential of these was the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Confucius, the Philosopher of China), published in Paris in 1687. For more than two hundred years, Western intellectuals like Leibniz and Voltaire read and meditated on the sayings of Confucius from this Latin version.
Thierry Meynard examines the intellectual background of the Jesuits in China and their thought processes in coming to understand the Confucian tradition. He presents a trilingual edition of the Lunyu, including the Chinese text, the Latin translation of the Lunyu and its commentaries, and their rendition in modern English, with notes.

Review Quotes

"a highly useful contribution to the field of Sinology and the history of Christianity in China."
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Pennsylvania State University. In: Journal of Chinese Religions, Vol. 45, No. 1 (2017), pp. 104-105.

"This is a well-written work [...] of great use to those scholars who have an interest in the work of Jesuit missionaries in China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Confucian classics, or, more generally, in translation or Chinese studies."
Arianna Magnani, Ca' Foscari University of Venice. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Summer 2017), pp. 769-770.

"In his edition Meynard has added to the Latin original a fluent and elegant English translation as well as the Chinese of the quotations from Confucius. The result is an admirable contribution to a number of fields - the history of the Society and its missions, the history of the study of Chinese, and the reception of Confucius in the West."
Alastair Hamilton, The Warburg Institute. In: The Heythrop Journal, Vol. 58, No. 3 (May 2017), pp. 457-458.

About the Author

Thierry Meynard is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Sun Yat-sen University and research director of the Beijing Center for Chinese Studies. He has previously authored The Religious Philosophy of Liang Shuming (2011), Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (2011), and co-authored Jesuit Chreia in Late Ming China (2014).