From Sacred Doctrine to Confucian Moral Practice: Giulio Aleni’s Cross-Cultural Interpretation of “Goodness and Evil of Human Nature”

Abstract

This paper explores the cross-cultural interpretation of “the goodness and evil of human nature” by Jesuit missionary Giulio Aleni in the late Ming Dynasty, and it examines the intersections and complementarity between Catholicism and Confucianism in moral ethics based on Aleni’s integration. The study finds that Aleni, while basically adhering to the Catholic “original sin”, connected the “spirituality” endowed to humans at the beginning of God’s creation with the Confucian ontological concepts such as “ultimate good” (zhishan 至善); centering on “self-mastery” (zizhuan 自專), “sharpening” (dili 砥礪), and “overcoming nature” (kexing 克性), he actively guided the goodness–evil debate towards a Confucian practical morality, and sacred doctrines are served as an impetus of moral practices. The redemption, together with reward and punishment of God, further intensifies the ultimate concern and the way of transcendence. Aleni’s bridging and synthesizing of the two traditions is highly significant: concerning both sanctity and practicality of ethics can to some extent overcome the risks brought by the instrumentalization of ethics or the illusory issues of existence. This has important implications for the self-development and integration of Christian and Confucian morality.

Keywords

• Giulio Aleni
• human nature
• goodness and evil
• Neo-Confucianism
• moral practice