Daniel Purdy
dlp14@psu.edu
Reading China during the Enlightenment
Few Germans in the early modern period travelled to China, yet there was a lively
intellectual discussion about Chinese philosophy, its system of government and its art. This
reception of China in northern Europe was guided by the many travelogues that were published
by Europeans travelling to Asia. If German, French and British intellectuals could not visit
China, they could certainly interpret the images and texts brought back by Europeans to
represent the Middle Kingdom. A second major strand of Europeans engaging with China was
the aristocratic enthusiasm for Chinese commodities, for porcelain and painting. Inevitably
these two approaches to China intersected with one another: the philosophical with the
material. Within two generations, the perceptions of China were enmeshed in European politics
as much as Asian.
The lively debate today over the official German exhibition in Beijing, "Kunst der
Aufklärung," adds greater urgency to the question of the Enlightenment's continuing
importance in global relations. We have gathered together a group of both young and very
advanced scholars who are all actively researching the German reception of China during the
eighteenth-century.
This conference will trace the development of German theoretical statements about
China's social order, starting with Leibniz's intense correspondence with Jesuits travelling to
China, and his visions of China as an ideal society ruled by an emperor trained in Confucian
ethics. We will consider how the Jesuit portrayals of Confucianism and the emperor shaped the
German concept of the Enlightened absolute ruler. To what extent did Leibniz and his disciple,
Christian Wolff, interpret Jesuit travelogues as a model for ethical politics in Central Europe?
We will then consider how the elite adoption of Chinoiserie style in the courts of Vienna,
Dresden and Potsdam departed significantly from the ethical politics Leibniz and Wolff saw in
China. How were material objects and paintings understood as embodying an ideal of social
harmony and beauty by the German court elite? How were precious Chinese commodities
integrated into the rituals of the Absolutist court?
These first enthusiasms for China would be critically rewritten by later generations of
intellectuals, who took a much more skeptical stance towards missionary accounts of China and
who were themselves quite critical of Absolutist politics in Germany. For later Enlightenment
Daniel Purdy
dlp14@psu.edu
writers, such as Johann Gottfried Herder, the Chinoiserie of German monarchs suggested that
China was a society where stiff formality was enforced by a harsh system of judicial punishment.
The development of anthropological and racial theories by Christoph Meiners, Immanuel Kant
and others further complicated the German image of China. By the end of the eighteenth
century, German intellectuals were faced with an ocean of travel literature. Rather than relying
on a handful of first-person travelogues as Leibniz and Wolff did, critics began to interpret and
critique the conflicting descriptions of China to synthesize them into universal histories that
placed China within a global narrative of historical development. Whereas Leibniz viewed
China and Europe as the two highest societies in human development, philosophers from
Voltaire to Hegel placed China at the start of an historical succession that ultimately led to
European dominance. Implicit within these historical narratives was a correspondence
between Chinese society and the European Ancien Regime, so that Hegel could readily critique
China as if it were equivalent to the German baroque court. The close connection between
Chinese crafts and aristocracy became a liability in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
This conference will trace the evolution of China as an imaginary place constructed by
the readerly responses to travelogues. How German writers cite, quote, edit and revise firsthand travel literature about Asia for their own, particularly European, concerns guides this
early German encounter with China.