ARTICOLI / 17 / Filippo Mignini /
This paper aims to show that the goals and the failures of the Catholic mission in China between the 1579 and the 1742 depended from the kind of hermeneutics adopted by the different actors. Specifically, it reconstructs and describes with three emblematic examples Jesuit’s hermeneutics in China, with particular reference to Father Matteo Ricci. The mission begins with three hermeneutical acts, i.e., Ricci’s interpretation of his role as a foreign interlocutor, the Chinese religious culture and the basis of cultural mediation with the Chinese. Concerning this last point, Ricci is well aware of the fundamental importance that the Chinese attribute to the book as a communication tool. In his works written in Chinese, Ricci challenges himself with the interpretation of European and Chinese classics, and also with the correct interpretation of a cornerstone of the Chinese civilization, i.e., the primacy of experience and the knowledge based on it. This latter interpretation persuaded him to adopt a new method in his last work (Jiren Shipian), by which he regards as postulates of ethics some issues presented before in the Tianzhu Shiyi as a possible objects of metaphysical demonstration.
