by William Carroll
Thomas Aquinas’s commitment to the importance of reason and its universal role in defining what it means to be human makes him an attractive thinker for contemporary Chinese scholars.
The number, depth, and rapidity of changes in Chinese society over the last decade may obscure an unusual change within the academy: a markedly increased interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.
Although it may seem strange to many in the West, contemporary Chinese scholars find Thomas’s thought not simply fascinating, but of enduring relevance. I have just spent one month at four Chinese universities, speaking of the ways in which Thomas’s understanding of the relationship among philosophy, theology, and the natural sciences can be used to disentangle contemporary confusion about the philosophical and theological implications of evolutionary biology and cosmology. In Shanghai, Beijing, and Wuhan, I found receptive, enthusiastic audiences.
Most Chinese graduate students who study Western philosophy specialize in either German philosophy, with an emphasis on Kant or Hegel, or in some form of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, especially the philosophy of mind. Still, I encountered those who were learning Greek and Latin in order to read Aristotle and Aquinas in their original languages. One evening in Beijing, I discussed passages in Aristotle’s Physics with students who were taking a graduate seminar on Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on Aristotle’s ‘On the Soul.’ One student from Fudan University in Shanghai wants to compare the ways in which certain Chinese thinkers search for metaphysical foundations of ethics with the way in which Thomas Aquinas does; another in Wuhan is examining the different senses of “science” in Thomas’s works. The number of those studying Thomas may be small, but, as Aristotle observed, a beginning is more than half.
- Wuhan’s Thomas Study Center ...
- Jesuits in China ...
- Thomas Aquinas, Classical Culture, and China ...
- Creation and Intercultural Dialogue ...
- A Philosophical Account of Creation ...
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