Invitation to a Special Lecture on Buddhist Philosophy

Seoul National University’s Institute of Philosophy is pleased to host Professor Jakub Zamorski from Jagiellonian University in Poland for a lecture titled:

"A Clash of Epistemologies? A Buddhologist’s Look at the Chinese Encounter with Christianity in the 17th Century"

We warmly invite all interested participants to attend this engaging event.

• Date & Time: Tuesday, November 26, 2024, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
• Location: Room 403, Building 6, College of Humanities (Institute of Philosophy)
• Speaker: Dr. Jakub Zamorski (Jagiellonian University, Kraków)
• Lecture Title: A Clash of Epistemologies? A Buddhologist’s Look at the Chinese Encounter with Christianity in the 17th Century

Lecture Abstract

Some of the Catholic (mostly Jesuit) missionaries who introduced Christianity to China during the late Ming and early Qing periods were also engaged in the project of “Sinicizing” Aristotelian philosophy. A key aspect of this endeavour was the promotion of logical reasoning as a universal, non-confessional standard for evaluating beliefs and arguments. By employing correct reasoning, the missionaries aimed to expose the fallacies of local (primarily Buddhist) thought and demonstrate the truths of Christianity. In doing so, they provided a new, Chinese context for the epistemological distinction between philosophical reason and religious faith—an essential theme of early modern Western thought.

An important assumption behind these efforts was the belief that Chinese intellectual tradition lacked a systematic study of reasoning akin to Aristotelian logic and dialectics. However, the 17th-century Chinese Buddhist monks, who were among the fiercest intellectual opponents of Christianity, were not uniformly indifferent to such issues. Some of them were familiar with the so-called “science of reasons” (yinming 因明) – a discipline that was transmitted from India in the 7th century and partially revived in the late Ming. Its purpose was fairly similar to the one which Catholic missionaries assigned to Aristotelian logic: namely, it sought to “refute heterodox views and establish correct views” by applying objectively verifiable standards of valid reasoning and justified beliefs. Late-Ming Buddhist scholiasts had their own theory of knowledge, which emphasized the distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual cognition and prioritized direct insight into the true nature of the mind. They also employed concepts such as xin 信 (faith) and li 理 (rational principle[s]), but understood them differently from how they were used in Chinese Christian texts.

Building on these observations, in my talk I will attempt to reexamine the encounter between Buddhists and Christians in 17th-century China, not merely as a clash of two faiths, but as an interaction between two competing theories of correct knowledge-both of which had religious purposes yet claimed to represent universal standards of rationality. I will discuss whether, and how, Buddhist and Christian authors of the 17th century addressed this tension in their polemical and apologetic writings.

About the Speaker

Jakub Zamorski, PhD, assistant professor in the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He researches and publishes on early modern and modern Buddhist thought in East Asia (in particular China and Japan). He is the author of journal articles (e.g. Studies in Chinese Religions, Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, etc.), chapters in monographs, as well as entries in the Brill Encyclopedia of Buddhism and Routledge Research Encyclopedia of Chinese Studies, among others. His current research focuses on Buddhist approaches to argumentation and reasoning in late imperial China. He is a recipient of the Research Grant for Foreign Scholars in Chinese Studies awarded by the National Central Library in Taipei for the year 2024.