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Translating Faith And Philosophy: The Engagement Of The Jesuit Strategy Of Accommodation In Chinese Syncretic And Anti-Heterodox Traditions And The Reception Of Chinese Ideas In Europe, Finn Kearney Feb 2021

Translating Faith And Philosophy: The Engagement Of The Jesuit Strategy Of Accommodation In Chinese Syncretic And Anti-Heterodox Traditions And The Reception Of Chinese Ideas In Europe, Finn Kearney

History Theses

This paper attempts to expand on the scholarship surrounding the Jesuit strategy of cultural accommodation in China by Father Matteo Ricci by examining the influence of Chinese intellectual traditions on its inception and development. It incorporates the works of Zhu Xi, Matteo Ricci, and Philippe Couplet among others to establish a connection between the native Chinese traditions of syncretism and anti-heterodox scholarship, the process of cultural exchange between the Jesuits and the Chinese literati, and the translation and transmission of Chinese ideas to Europe in the late 16th and 17th centuries. This paper also uses this common thread to explain …

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Carved Ivory Puzzle Balls, Erica M. Schaumberg Oct 2017

Carved Ivory Puzzle Balls, Erica M. Schaumberg

Wonders of Nature and Artifice

The Chinese Carved Ivory Puzzle Balls reference the interest in combing art and nature while designating curiosity in Chinese craftsmanship and imagery affecting a European market.The Chinese Ivory Carved Puzzle Balls have been beloved items in the Gettysburg College collection since they were donated in 1959 by Frank Kramer and John Hampshire. The Puzzle Balls, featuring nine balls were displayed in the Schmucker Hall Library. Alumni love the items and regularly ask about the collection in Special Collections as they represent an aspect of the college they continue to love. [excerpt]

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Blue-And-White Wonder: Ming Dynasty Porcelain Plate, Laura G. Waters Oct 2017

Blue-And-White Wonder: Ming Dynasty Porcelain Plate, Laura G. Waters

Wonders of Nature and Artifice

This authentic Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) plate is a prime example of early export porcelain, a luminous substance that enthralled European collectors. The generous gift of Joyce P. Bishop in honor of her daughter, Kimberly Bishop Connors, Ming Dynasty Blue-and-White Plate is on loan from the Reeves Collection at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. The plate itself is approximately 7.75 inches (20 cm) in diameter, and appears much deeper from the bottom than it does from the top. Gradually sloping forms are what make the dish so deceptively shallow. In fact, from the reverse, it appears closer in shape …

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How Modern India Looks At Its Premodernity, Ananya Vajpeyi Jul 2015

How Modern India Looks At Its Premodernity, Ananya Vajpeyi

Ananya Vajpeyi

No abstract provided.

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Mou Zongsan And His Nineteen Lectures On Chinese Philosophy, Stephen C. Angle Dec 2013

Mou Zongsan And His Nineteen Lectures On Chinese Philosophy, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

Mou Zongsan (1909-95) was a philosophical giant whose legacy looms large over Chinese-speaking regions of the world, and who is in the process of being discovered by non- Sinophone thinkers. Faced with many challenges to earlier Chinese self-understandings, Mou and his contemporaries undertook sustained, critical engagement with philosophical thought from outside their native traditions. In the twenty-first century, philosophers in the Western world are slowly beginning to follow suit. Some are motivated by worries about the narrowness or unsustainability of present Western trends; others are prompted by worries about the rise of China; and some are simply attracted to the …

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Mou Zongsan And His Nineteen Lectures On Chinese Philosophy, Stephen C. Angle Dec 2013

Mou Zongsan And His Nineteen Lectures On Chinese Philosophy, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

Mou Zongsan (1909-95) was a philosophical giant whose legacy looms large over Chinese-speaking regions of the world, and who is in the process of being discovered by non- Sinophone thinkers. Faced with many challenges to earlier Chinese self-understandings, Mou and his contemporaries undertook sustained, critical engagement with philosophical thought from outside their native traditions. In the twenty-first century, philosophers in the Western world are slowly beginning to follow suit. Some are motivated by worries about the narrowness or unsustainability of present Western trends; others are prompted by worries about the rise of China; and some are simply attracted to the …

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Maneuvering Modernity: Family Law As A Battle Field In Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945), Yun-Ru Chen Oct 2013

Maneuvering Modernity: Family Law As A Battle Field In Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945), Yun-Ru Chen

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Twenty five years after launching its own legal modernization in response to Western imperialism, Japan imposed a modern legal system upon its first colony, Taiwan. In accordance with the “respecting old custom” colonial policy, the Japanese created a system called Taiwanese customary law, a mixture of imperial Chinese laws, local customs and European legal concepts, and gradually implemented its newly adopted European-style Meiji Civil Code (1898). However, even since the late 1910s when the colonial policy changed into “full-flag assimilation,” family law remained an exception to the transplantation of Japanese laws. That did not, however, mean that family law was …

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Pure Land And The Social Order In Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation Of "Longshu’S Treatise On Pure Land", Trevor Davis Apr 2012

Pure Land And The Social Order In Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation Of "Longshu’S Treatise On Pure Land", Trevor Davis

Student Work

A 2012-2013 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Trevor Davis (Saybrook College '13) for his essay submitted to the History Department, “Pure Land and the Social Order in Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation of Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land.” (Valerie Hansen, Professor of History, advisor.)

Davis' essay makes a powerful argument about the Pure Land Buddhist Wang Rixiu's understanding of Southern Song (1127-1279) society. Although Pure Land Buddhism is often thought to be egalitarian - or at least to challenge traditional hierarchies - Trevor shows that for Wang Rixiu, an egalitarian Pure Land coexists …

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Review Of Makeham - New Confucianism, Stephen C. Angle Dec 2004

Review Of Makeham - New Confucianism, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

At the heart of New Confucianism: A Critical Examination is a question of definition: How should we understand the contested notion of “New Confucianism”? Is it a matter of genealogy, philosophical doctrine, political orientation, or personal experience? Does it matter in what terms individuals identified themselves or whether they saw themselves as part of a shared intellectual movement? Who, ultimately, gets to answer these questions? Of course there is much more in the essays than these questions — including, most notably, astute analyses of several philosophers’ ideas, thought-provoking reflection on some of the roles played by Buddhism in modern Chinese …

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Review Of Makeham - New Confucianism, Stephen C. Angle Dec 2004

Review Of Makeham - New Confucianism, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

At the heart of New Confucianism: A Critical Examination is a question of definition: How should we understand the contested notion of “New Confucianism”? Is it a matter of genealogy, philosophical doctrine, political orientation, or personal experience? Does it matter in what terms individuals identified themselves or whether they saw themselves as part of a shared intellectual movement? Who, ultimately, gets to answer these questions? Of course there is much more in the essays than these questions — including, most notably, astute analyses of several philosophers’ ideas, thought-provoking reflection on some of the roles played by Buddhism in modern Chinese …

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Should We All Be More English? Liang Qichao, Rudolf Von Jhering, And Rights, Stephen C. Angle Dec 1999

Should We All Be More English? Liang Qichao, Rudolf Von Jhering, And Rights, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

Rudolf von Jhering (1818-92) published Der Kampf ums Recht (The Struggle for Law) in 1872. He was already regarded as one of Germany’s most important legal philosophers, and Der Kampf helped to ensure a world-wide reputation. His argument that people should be less like the “adult children” of China and more like the English found audiences everywhere, including China, where Der Kampf was translated between 1900 and 1901. Jhering’s doctrines stimulated Liang Qichao (1873-1929), one of China’s leading thinkers, to publish “Lun Quanli Sixiang (On Rights Consciousness),” in 1902 as part of his manifesto On the New …

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