MATTEO RICCI AND GLOBAL CIVILIZATION
Abstract
This essay will examine the contributions of the Jesuit
missionary Matteo Ricci. His evaluation of Confucian ethics and the
related religious thought of the ancient Chinese tradition is not the
result of a work of mere “intellectual meditation”, but the obvious
outcome of an authentic Christian experience, which enabled him to
receive all that was positive in the culture that he met. There is in
Ricci the clear knowledge that the Christian faith gives a vision of
the human experience and of history that does not go against human
cultures, but assumes all of them in a real encounter between all the
peoples. The Christian faith, in fact, generates a total vision of the
truth, in which science, culture and politics are not separated, but
unified in a Weltanschauung (vision of the world). In this way the
encounter and the dialogue that Ricci established with the Chinese
culture turned out effective, in as much as compromises were not
attempted, nor convictions were abandoned. Neither did he pursue
the road of syncretism, but it is in true dialogue that an encounter
was attempted, a dialogue that is also a new interpretation and a
new assumption of the essential elements present in the ancient
Chinese religious tradition and in the original Confucian thought.
An understanding of Ricci’s approach can serve as an example of
authentic intercultural dialogue.
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