Aristotle’s Problems in China: A Case Study on Feilu dahui

• In Event: The Jesuits in Asia: Encounters between Eastern and Western Science

Abstract

Among the Western natural philosophical works transmitted in late Ming and early Qing China, Feilu dahui (Questions and Answers on Philosophy), translated by the Jesuit Alfonso Vagnone (1568/69-1640) and later compiled by Bi Gongchen (?-1644), was a special and important one. Consisting of 271 questions and answers dealing with astronomical, meteorological, physical, psychological, biological, dietary, medical subjects, this book can be regarded as a small encyclopedia.

In this paper I will explore Vagnone’s text and compare it with its possible European sources. While I have not identified all such sources, my preliminary investigation indicates that Vagnone primarily drew on Aristotle’s Problems, most possibly in the version with commentaries by Ludovico Settala (1552-1633), namely, Commentariorvm in Aristotelis Problemata. My close examination of this text and Vagnone’s show that Aristotle’s Problems were set out as exploratory, tentative arguments that extended principles of Aristotelian natural philosophy to questions about the unknown, whereas Vagnone’s treatise (somewhat adapted or transformed with Chinese counterparts) was formulated as a didactic text aimed to teach and expound a set of answers to those questions as if they were demonstrated truths. This adaption followed Jesuit evangelistic strategy at that time, and was also something like other transformations of the Problems in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Author

• Chengsheng Sun, Chinese Academy of Sciences