LEIBNIZ, JESUITS, I QING:Chinese Impact on Modem European Thought

Fred Gillette Sturm

　　〔提要〕：耶穌會與中國學者的接觸始於明末清初，成果豐碩，雙方都從這些交往中增長學識。德國哲學家萊布尼兹從清初的宋學儒家學者那裡，全盤接過《易經》的主要思想，可見這些交流對歐洲思想影響之大。有好幾位學者，尤其是尼達姆認為這種衝擊的結果就是向西方引進另一個可供選擇的了解自然程序的摸式；引進用內動的辯證論程序的相關概念來取代內在的，固定的先驗唯目論的概念或其否定；也引進算術二進制。這些札根於中國知識史達兩千多年的思想，湧入歐洲的思想領域，引發歐洲哲學、科學、政治發展的深刻革命，從十八世紀初開始，直至今日。
　　Joseph Needham, in the second volume of his monumental study Science and Civilization in China, expresses extreme interest in an apparent resemb]ance between certain Chinese philosophic positions, most notably the neo-Confucianism of the Cheng-Chu school, and the modern European movement known as Philosophy of sections. He mentions this at some length in three separate sections, the first concerning Tung Chung-Shu,⁽¹⁾the second regarding the appendices of the I-Ching,⁽²⁾and the third about Sung dynasty Neo-Confucianism.⁽³⁾ In each instance he refers to correspondence between the German philosopher Leibniz and certain Jesuits of the China mission at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century suggesting that the resemblance is more than coincidental, Leibniz serving as the intellectual bridge. In the first of these passages Needham writes:
　　The greatest of all Chinese thinkers, Chu Hsi in the 12th century (a. d.)developed a philosophy more akin to the philosophy of organism than to anything else in European thought. Behind him he had the full background of Chinese correlative coordinative thinking, and ahead of him he had - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Here it is not possible to do more than mention the great movement of our time towards a rectification of the mechanical Newtonian universe by a better understanding of the meaning of natural organization. ... With varying acceptability of statement, it runs through all modem investigations in the methodology and the world-picture of the natural sciences. ... Now if this thread is traced backwards, it leads through Hegel, Lotze, Schelling and Herder of Leibniz (as Whitehead constantly recognized), and then it seems to disappear. But is that not perhaps in part because Leibniz had studied the doctrines of the Neo-Confucianist school of Chu Hsi... ? And would it not be worth examining whether some thing of that originality which enabled him to make contributions radically new to European thought was Chinese in inspiration?⁽⁴⁾
　　He concludes the third passage with these words:
　　I propose for further examination the view that Europe owes to Chinese organic naturalism, based originally on a system of correlative thinking, brought already to brilliant statement in the Taoist philosophers of the 3rd century (bce), and systematized in the NeoConfucian thinkers of the 12th (ce), a deeply important stimulus, if it was no more, in the synthetic efforts which began in the 17th century to overcome the European antinomy between theological vitalism and mechanistic materialism. The great triumphs of early modern natural science were possible on the assumption ofa mechanistic universe ... but the time was to come when the growth of knowledge necessitated the adoption of a more organic philosophy. ... when it came, a line of philosophical thinkers was found to have prepared the way - from Whitehead back to Engels and Hegel, from Hegel to Leibniz - and then　perhaps ... the theoretical fundamentais of the most modern European natural science owe more to men such as Chuang Chou, Chou Tun-I, and Chu Hsi than the world has yet realized.⁽⁵⁾
　　Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz does occupy a very special place in the history of modern European philosophy. He is the first major German philosopher of the post-Renaissance period. AIthough be was a prolific author, his writings appeared in such a sporadic fashion and cover so vast a range of subject matter and interpreted that it has been impossible to categorize him neatly in histories of European philosophy. In tracing the mainstream of continental thought during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, Leibniz is usually interpretred as the exponent of a rationalistic position which served Kant well in the elaboration of criticai philosophy, and which continued to provide a framework for the development of post-Kantian idealism from Fichte through Hegel. In our century Leibniz has been “re-discovered”. He is hailed as the pioneer in the development of both symbolic logic and the binary system which forms the basis for modern computer programming. At the same time he is seen as a forerunner of the twin　concerns of the Vienna Circle movement, viz the establishment of a formai language into which the languages of the separate sciences can be translated and the establishment of an Encyclopedia of Unified Science. There has been a second “re-discovery” of Leibniz in this century by Whitehead and Needham who see him as the philosophic mind which made possible the breakthrough of the biological sciences during the 19th century, and which stands as the fountainhead of all modern vitalistic and organismic philosophies. It is no exaggeration to say that his has been one of the most germinai minds of modern intellectual history within the European heritage, and that directly or indirectly he has helped shape many of the directions which that history has taken. To what extent, if any, was he influenced by Chinese thought? Is there sufficient evidence to support the thesis that much that is new in modern European science and philosophy represents an appropriation of insights which are basically Chinese?
　　Leibniz was born in 1646, two years after the birth of the Ching dynasty. He died 70 years later in 1716. His lifetime encompasses on the Chinese scene the earliest period in the deveiopment of Ching learning, that stage which Liang Chi-chao’ in his book Intellectual Trends in the Ching Period, has called “the Formative Period”⁽⁶⁾. To put it simply this initial stage was characterized by the rejection of the long-dominant Lu-Wang variety of Neo-Confucianism and a brief resurgence of Cheng-Chu or Sung Neo-Confucianism just prior to the beginning of the Return-to Han Learning movement. Neither Leibniz, nor his informants, were directly in touch with the writings of such men as Ku Yen-wu, Yen Jo-ch’u, and Wang Fu-chin. Nevertheless the Jesuit missionaries in China at the time were highly interested in Sung dynasty Neo-Confucianism as it was being revived and re-interpreted, and Leibniz was closely in touch throughout his life with most of these men through direct correspondence and through the reading of their books and articles. As early as 1666, at the age of 20, Leibniz wrote his provocative De Arte Combinatoria, making mention of his acquaintance with Spizel’s De Re Litteraria Sinensium Commentarius. Just before he died in 1716 he penned his long letter to M. de Remond concerned exclusively with Chinese philosophical concepts. In the 50 years which intervene between these　two striking testimonies to Leibniz awareness of Chinese thought at the very beginning and at the end of his adult life, there is ample evidence of a continuity of concem for sinological study on his part. I shall review that evidence briefly before proceeding to the main thesis of this paper.
　　The importance of the first work to come from his pen⁽⁷⁾ for the understanding of his later thought cannot be underestimated. In De Arte Combinatoria be proposed a method which would analyze complex terms into simple terms (a method which led him later on to the articulation of his peculiar concept of monad), anda system of symbols for representing these simpie terms which could serve as a universal language for the articulation of all human knowledge, and which can be the basis for a symbolic logic which would serve not only the ends of demonstration but of discovery as well. The idea of such a symbolic system came to him, he reports, thorough a consideration of the ideographic nature of Chinese written language. This meditation upon Chinese language and the symbolic expression of simple terms grew out of reading the Spizel volume in Chinese literature. It should be noted that Spizel provides as well a brief and superficial treatment of the I Ching, of the Yin/Yang principles, of the Five Elem ents, and of Chinese alchemy.
　　Two years later, in 1668, Leibniz made the following observation in a letter: “No matter how foolish and paradoxical the Chinese ordinarily appear to be in re medica, nevertheless, theirs is better than ours.” This is of little consequence, perhaps, and merely reflects a spirit of the times: the admiration for, and imitation of, things Chinese by European intellectuals, a stance which Chinese intellectuals shared vis-a-vis European mathematics and science (compare, for example, Ku Yen-wu’s statement written about the same time to the effect that Europeans utilized different techniques in astronomy than the traditional Chinese, but nonetheless proved to be more effective in this area). Still, it shows that Leibniz was involved in ah attempt to keep up-to -date with the latest news from China. Shortly after this, upon reading Fr. Athanasius Kircher’s book on Chinese architecture (China Monumentis Illustrata), he initiated correspondence with this Jesuit, and the 1670s mark a period of correspondence　with most of the leading figures in the China mission. In a letter written to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels in 1687 Leibniz mentions reading the volume Confucius Sinarum Philosophus published that year by the Jesuits Intorcetta and Couplet. It was two years later in 1689, that he made a trip to Rome to interview Fr. Philippe-Marie Grimaldi, home on a brief furlough. In this series of conversations Grimaldi convinced Leibniz that the Emperor K’ang-hsi was the closest approximation any human monarch had ever come to Plato’s ideal philosopher-king. Later, when Leibniz was trying to establish scientific academies throughout Europe and in Russia, he wrote to Grimaldi (20 December 1696) urging him to convince K’ang-hsi to found a Chinese scientific academy. Indeed, the decade of the 1690s is marked by a second spate of correspondence between Leibniz and the leaders of the Jesuit mission in China. Excerpts from the letters he received during this period of correspondence appear in the preface Leibniz wrote for　the volume Novissima Sinica, Historiam Nostri Temporis Illustratura which appeared in 1697, a second edition printed in 1699. Here Leibniz waxes eloquently as a Sinophile, referring to the emperor K’ang-hsi as “the monarch...who almost exceeds human heights of greatness... educated to virtue and wisdom... earning the right to rule”, and calling China “the Middle Kingdom of Asia” while Germany is “the Middle Kingdom of Europe”. While judging Europe to be ahead of China in theoretical philosophy he considered China further developed in moral philosophy.
　　As the 18th century began Leibniz found himself caught up in two quite different.aspects of Chinese studies. One of these was the I Ching and its retevance of binary arithmetic. The other was the Rites Controversy in which his Jesuit friends and correspondents became deeply embroiled.
　　Fr. Jean-Baptiste Regis translated the I Ching into Latin. Fr. Joaquim Bouvet senta copy to le Gobien with the note:
　　Although some believe that the I Ching, the oldest Chinese and perhaps the world’s oldest work, and the primary source from which this nation (an opinion ascribed to by all scholars) has derived its science and tradition, contains only an evil doctrine, full of superstition and without fundamental or basic principles; I am not of their opinion and I am even convinced that they delude themselves and that they do injustice to the ancient Chinese who appear to have had long ago a philosophy as sound and as sane, and I dare to add, perhaps sounder and more logical than ours today.
　　When le Gobien shared this with Leibniz he realized at once the great similarity between the system of binary arithmetic he had to develop in 1679 and the I Ching symbols of Yin, Yang, trigrams and hexagrams. A correspondence immediately arose between Leibniz and Bouvet regarding the I Ching and binary notation. In April 1701 Leibniz sent Bouvet a table of binary numbers. He received a reply in November in which Bouvet had worked out two alternative arrangements of the 64 hexagrams based on Shao Yung’s Circular Diagrams which could serve to symbolize binary progression. Within two years Leibniz published an extensive article on binary notation in the Memoires de 1’ Academie Royale des Sciences (1703) entitled “De Progressione Dyadica: Explication of Binary Arithmetic which is constituted solely of the characters 0 and 1, with remarks concerning their utility and concerning the way in which they reveal the meaning of the ancient Chinese figures of Fu Hsi”. The explication of the latter remark is done in terms of the Pa Kua, or “eight trigrams”. Leibniz correlation of trigrams, binary numbers, and dinary numbers is here given in chart form: