John Locke and China

Ann TalbotUniversity of Bolton

John Locke • Born 1632 • Educated at Oxford• Worked with Boyle• Joined household of

Lord Shaftesbury• Exile 1683-1688• Died 1704

Major Works

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

• Two Treatises of Government (1689)

William of Orange

Retirement

Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

• "the missionaries of China, even the Jesuits themselves, the encomiasts of the Chinese, do all to a man agree and will convince us that the sect of the literati, or learned, keeping to the old religion of China, and the ruling party there, are all them atheist."

Locke's Sources• Simon de La Loubère, Du royaume du Siam (Amsterdam, 1691) • Jacques de Bourges, Relation du voyage de Monseigneur L’Evèque

de Beryte (Paris, 1666)

• François Timoleon de Choisy, Journal du voyage de Siam (Amsterdam, 1687)

• Navarrete, Fernandez Domingo, Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos y religiosos de la monarchia de China (Madrid, 1676)

• Historia Cultus Sinensium, (Cologne, 1700)

Locke's Books on China• Barros, João de, L’Asia: de fatti de’ Portoghesi nello scoprimento, &

conquista de’ mari, & terre di Oriente (Venice, 1561)

• Bouvet, Joachim, Portrait historique de l’Empereur de la Chine (Paris, 1697)

• Comte, Louis le, Nouveaux memoires sur l’etat present de la Chine (Paris, 1697

• Kircher, Athanasius, China monumentis qua sacra qua profanis ...illustrata (Amsterdam, 1667)

• Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, Novissima Sinica (Hanover 1699)

• Martino, Martini, Sinicae historiae decas prima (Munich, 1658) (Amsterdam, 1659)

Marco Polo

Kublai Khan

Black Death

A New World

The Challenge of China• Biblical chronology• Atheism and materialism• Morality and social order• Political and economic

organisation• Technology and

agriculture• Comparison with Rome

Thinking Matter

• "he who will give himself leave to consider freely and look into the dark and intricate part of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him fixedly for, or against the Soul’s Materiality."

Historia Cultus Sinensium

Xangti

Ancestors

Confucius

Prime Matter

• 'nothing but the material heaven or what in the stars or heavenly bodies is most refined and excellent.'

• 'The principles of the sect of the literati admit no true spirits.'

Locke's tomb