Lecture given by Thierry Meynard, S.J., a professor of Western Philosophy and Latin Classics at Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China. 

The Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci was the first to engage a discussion between Christian philosophy and Chinese philosophy in Late Ming China. Some ten years after his death in 1610, other Jesuits and Chinese Christian started the huge enterprise of translating systematically the Aristotelian corpus through Renaissance commentaries into Chinese language. We shall first overview the historical context of this intellectual enterprise which produced from 1624 to 1640 ten innovative Chinese works. We shall next discuss how the questions of metaphysics, logic, natural and moral philosophy, and theology intersected with the Chinese conceptions on the cosmos, on human life, on ethics and on religion, opening a fascinating dialogue which still continues until today.

*Boxed Lunch Provided