: "Which of the two is more credible, Moses or China?"
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2022276188224544939
Given that this topic 
of secularism in China, unexpectedly, seems to stir passions (even though I've unsurprisingly seen many pretty ignorant takes), let me add a small something.
The man who probably best summed up this topic - ever - was Pascal, the legendary 17th Century French thinker (you've surely heard of Pascal's wager, or Pascal's theorem).
In his Pensées ("Thoughts"), he summarized it with this very short but incredibly profound question: "Which of the two is more credible, Moses or China?" That's it. I should almost finish my post here because, when you think about it, all is said.
But let me develop further. Not through my words, lest I again be accused of "pseudointellectualism" like some unfairly did with respect to my article, but through the words of François Jullien, one of the most respected intellectuals on Chinese classical culture in the world today (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A)
Jullien wrote an entire book in 2022 on Pascal's question - entitled "Moïse ou la Chine" - in which he explains its incredible depth. Unfortunately I don't think there's an English translation of the book but if you can read it, please do: it's a masterpiece.
What Jullien explains - the central thesis of his book - is this: what Pascal's question reveals is that the most fundamental divergence between civilizations in human history is the fact that the idea of God, which structured the entirety of Western thought (and that of Islam too of course), simply did not deploy itself in China.
How so? Jullien (or Pascal) is not saying China is atheist in the Western sense (which would still be defined by reference to God, as negation). He's saying the entire conceptual architecture that makes "God" a meaningful category - Being, transcendence, creation, revelation, the ontological question - simply didn't arise in China (except maybe briefly in the early Shang dynasty as I explain in my article). It's not absence: it's non-deployment.
As such, Jullien reads Pascal's "Moses vs China" juxtaposition as representing two equally powerful but entirely different ways of organizing human experience. As he explains, China developed an equally sophisticated ethical and metaphysical framework as that of Western civilization but oriented instead around things like process, the "reciprocal caution" between Heaven and the emperor, ancestor worship and an introspective moral vigilance that never required a transcendent deity.
And, no, contrary to what so many bad takes have been saying in the comments around my post, the concept of "Heaven" in China has absolutely nothing to do with any notion of God as we understand it in the Abrahamic tradition. You're confused by the usage of the same word "Heaven" but it's just a fundamentally different concept.
Actually this very question of the meaning of Heaven/Tiān (天) gave rise to one of the biggest debates in the history of the Catholic church, known as the Chinese Rites Controversy, that consumed the Vatican for over a century.
The debate centered on whether Tiān could be equated with the Christian God (but it ultimately applies to the Abrahamic definition of God as a whole). The answer was ultimately no - and for good reason: it is not a personal deity who creates, judges, and reveals. Tiān is an immanent regulatory principle - closer to what we might call the natural order of things - with which the emperor must align through moral conduct and ritual propriety. There is no covenant, no revelation, no "I AM."
To project the God of Abraham onto Tiān is a fundamental category error.
Last point, and probably the most interesting one of all. Pascal wrote the "Moses or China?" question in his Pensées but, crucially, ended up crossing it out of his manuscript. Both scholars of Pascal and François Jullien treat this as deeply significant.
Why? The explanation, according to Jullien, is that Pascal sensed that this single question could unravel his entire intellectual edifice. Pascal - a Catholic, the author of Pascal's wager - had constructed his defense of Christianity on one non-negotiable premise: that the Bible is the universal truth of mankind. But the moment you ask 'Moses or China?' as a genuine question, you've already conceded the point: you've placed THE Biblical patriarch and a secular civilization on equal footing, implicitly acknowledging that an equally credible way of organizing human experience exists - one that never needed God at all.
The question, once honestly posed, already contains its own answer, and Pascal was just too uncomfortable with the implications.
Conclusion of it all: yes I titled my article "The civilization that never needed God." As we say in French: je persiste et signe! - I stand by it.
of secularism in China, unexpectedly, seems to stir passions (even though I've unsurprisingly seen many pretty ignorant takes), let me add a small something.
The man who probably best summed up this topic - ever - was Pascal, the legendary 17th Century French thinker (you've surely heard of Pascal's wager, or Pascal's theorem).
In his Pensées ("Thoughts"), he summarized it with this very short but incredibly profound question: "Which of the two is more credible, Moses or China?" That's it. I should almost finish my post here because, when you think about it, all is said.
But let me develop further. Not through my words, lest I again be accused of "pseudointellectualism" like some unfairly did with respect to my article, but through the words of François Jullien, one of the most respected intellectuals on Chinese classical culture in the world today (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A)
Jullien wrote an entire book in 2022 on Pascal's question - entitled "Moïse ou la Chine" - in which he explains its incredible depth. Unfortunately I don't think there's an English translation of the book but if you can read it, please do: it's a masterpiece.
What Jullien explains - the central thesis of his book - is this: what Pascal's question reveals is that the most fundamental divergence between civilizations in human history is the fact that the idea of God, which structured the entirety of Western thought (and that of Islam too of course), simply did not deploy itself in China.
How so? Jullien (or Pascal) is not saying China is atheist in the Western sense (which would still be defined by reference to God, as negation). He's saying the entire conceptual architecture that makes "God" a meaningful category - Being, transcendence, creation, revelation, the ontological question - simply didn't arise in China (except maybe briefly in the early Shang dynasty as I explain in my article). It's not absence: it's non-deployment.
As such, Jullien reads Pascal's "Moses vs China" juxtaposition as representing two equally powerful but entirely different ways of organizing human experience. As he explains, China developed an equally sophisticated ethical and metaphysical framework as that of Western civilization but oriented instead around things like process, the "reciprocal caution" between Heaven and the emperor, ancestor worship and an introspective moral vigilance that never required a transcendent deity.
And, no, contrary to what so many bad takes have been saying in the comments around my post, the concept of "Heaven" in China has absolutely nothing to do with any notion of God as we understand it in the Abrahamic tradition. You're confused by the usage of the same word "Heaven" but it's just a fundamentally different concept.
Actually this very question of the meaning of Heaven/Tiān (天) gave rise to one of the biggest debates in the history of the Catholic church, known as the Chinese Rites Controversy, that consumed the Vatican for over a century.
The debate centered on whether Tiān could be equated with the Christian God (but it ultimately applies to the Abrahamic definition of God as a whole). The answer was ultimately no - and for good reason: it is not a personal deity who creates, judges, and reveals. Tiān is an immanent regulatory principle - closer to what we might call the natural order of things - with which the emperor must align through moral conduct and ritual propriety. There is no covenant, no revelation, no "I AM."
To project the God of Abraham onto Tiān is a fundamental category error.
Last point, and probably the most interesting one of all. Pascal wrote the "Moses or China?" question in his Pensées but, crucially, ended up crossing it out of his manuscript. Both scholars of Pascal and François Jullien treat this as deeply significant.
Why? The explanation, according to Jullien, is that Pascal sensed that this single question could unravel his entire intellectual edifice. Pascal - a Catholic, the author of Pascal's wager - had constructed his defense of Christianity on one non-negotiable premise: that the Bible is the universal truth of mankind. But the moment you ask 'Moses or China?' as a genuine question, you've already conceded the point: you've placed THE Biblical patriarch and a secular civilization on equal footing, implicitly acknowledging that an equally credible way of organizing human experience exists - one that never needed God at all.
The question, once honestly posed, already contains its own answer, and Pascal was just too uncomfortable with the implications.
Conclusion of it all: yes I titled my article "The civilization that never needed God." As we say in French: je persiste et signe! - I stand by it.
posted by Satish Sharma at
00:55
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home