Faced with Guo Kang's explanation, Princess Jeanne was speechless for a moment.
Little Jeanne wanted to speak several times, but Guo Kang was even able to come up with theological arguments to prove that Chinese characters originated directly from the Heavenly Father and were the original language that transcended the Tower of Babel. Therefore, it also has extraordinary spirituality and is the most suitable way to study knowledge.
This is not because Guo Kang suddenly realized something and improved his theological knowledge, but because of the same reason - this thing has long been demonstrated by the smartest scholars in Europe. He can simply copy a series of conclusions drawn by Europeans around the 18th century.
According to later generations' summary, during the Renaissance, what Europeans studied and admired was mainly China's material civilization, such as porcelain, silk and other utensils. By the 17th century, people began to pay attention to Chinese philosophy. By the Age of Enlightenment, the level of studying advanced Eastern civilization had risen to political and economic theories, and even Chinese religion.
At that time, Europeans’ research on the East could be focused on three issues:
First, there is the issue of the concept of talent. Is God an innate, universal idea?
Secondly, there is the issue of the origin of civilization. Is Chinese characters the original language?
Finally, there is the issue of ancient history and chronology. Are the records of ancient Chinese history credible? If so, what about the European record?
These three questions can cover almost all important aspects and even shake the religious and theoretical foundations of the entire Europe.
For example, the first point is the focus of research on John Locke, the originator of liberalism.
Locke collected a large amount of information and even wrote under the map of China every day. He conducted a lot of research on Chinese beliefs and finally concluded that in China, educated people mainly hold materialist and atheistic views.
At that time, missionaries led by the Jesuits tended to link Chinese beliefs with Catholicism to facilitate missionary work. But a group of scholars led by Locke were even more radical, believing that Confucius's teachings, especially the New Confucianism that began in the Song Dynasty, were obviously atheism or materialism.
Locke believed that the core of Confucian thought is "all things are one". Their God is not the European God, but a general name for the subtle laws that exist among all things in the world. Ancient philosophers such as Confucius founded this "sect," and the Chinese emperor was the high priest of the concept.
Thus, he was able to demonstrate that the concept of God is not universal. Locke used this as a basis to debate with those who supported the "divine right of kings": If China, a civilization as advanced as China, does not believe in God, then what reason is there to say that belief in God is innate? If God's faith itself is not innate, how can He be qualified to authorize human monarchs?
Locke's teachings were welcomed by the bourgeoisie and the new aristocracy. Of course, some people are simply more radical than him, believing that while other philosophies turn to divinity, Chinese philosophy has always focused on humans. Therefore, Europeans have always looked at human nature with the view of theism, while the Chinese have discovered divinity from the theory of human nature and believed that "I am God", resulting in a fundamental difference.
Their research results were still used hundreds of years later. It's just that later generations of Europeans themselves began to oppose rationality and enlightenment ideas, so they changed their direction and used this to attack China.
Of course, in addition to Confucius, Laozi is also one of the objects praised by Europeans. The word "laissez faire" was originally the French translation of the word "inaction" by Quesnay and his followers.
According to their thinking, it can even be said that Laozi and Confucius are the pioneers of liberalism, and Confucianism and Taoism are the source of the development of capitalism...
The latter two issues have equally huge impacts.
The concept of "primitive language" was once quite popular. It was Leibniz, another famous qingbuki, who perfected this concept.
Leibniz's ideas were influenced by the French "King Mathematician" and Jesuit priest Bai Jin. Bai Jin and others praised the "Book of Changes" and believed that the ancient knowledge contained in it initiated the development of human society. The Chinese characters used to express meaning in the Book of Changes are the divine "mother of all inventions" and the real key to all knowledge.
This idea is actually full of Catholic theological logic, but Leibniz and others firmly believed in it. They claim that Chinese characters are of a philosophical nature and should be introduced to turn European characters into such intellectual symbols. He conducted a series of studies. Although he failed, his study of the "Book of Changes" produced results, which provided inspiration for his binary algorithm. This strengthened everyone's confidence and made them more convinced that the I Ching is really useful.
But this kind of behavior also has great negative effects. According to the conclusion of later generations, Leibniz's dream has threatened the possibility of truth in European culture. Because according to their theory, those poor languages in Europe are too far away from real knowledge, and it is impossible to develop good philosophy, including natural philosophy.
But judging from the situation of later generations, the relationship between technological development and language has no relationship at all. Newton did not even dare to think that English could be used as an international academic language (Newton himself did not write books in English). And Leibniz would probably be angry if he knew it...
And if these two items still threaten "Western authority," the third point is simply to directly deny "Western history" itself. At that time, mainstream scholars were often very opposed to the "legal system" of "Ancient Egypt-Ancient Greece-Rome-Western Europe" proposed by the church, believing that "ancient Greece" and the church were both stumbling blocks to the development of philosophy and human enlightenment. Many people therefore opposed Aristotle and even denied the original ancient history, believing that they must be overthrown.
Newton wrote the "Revised Chronicles of the Ancient Kingdoms" and believed that the history before Persia was not credible. The chronology of the Greeks was obviously exaggerated and full of "poetic fictions." The accounts of Greece and Egypt were obviously made up.
Unfortunately, Newton was not very professional in this area. He often used myths to deny myths and Bible stories to deny Greek chronology. Therefore, the impact of this book is limited. Of course, he is not the only one who said that, even apart from Voltaire's extreme view that "all ancient European history was copied from China", there are also many doubters. Even Newton's old enemy Hooke believed that classical history was a large amount of fiction. , as a way to oppose the constraints of the church.
Since then, this problem has also troubled Europeans.
In later generations, faced with numerous achievements, few people doubted the possibility of success of European alphabetic writing. However, doubts about history have not stopped. By the 20th century, Spengler was still questioning that the origin of the so-called "West" could not be in Greece because it was a "non-literary culture." The basis for Europe's modern achievements could not come from here, it could only come from somewhere else. Furthermore, the three-stage theory of classical era-medieval-modern times is impossible to establish.
In the end, this question was even more tenacious than the previous two points.
Therefore, Guo Kang is not afraid of other people's suspicion at all. This set of theories has been subject to constant questioning and reflection by many European scholars over hundreds of years, many of whom are famous figures throughout the ages. It has been perfected, but it is not very famous because of its embarrassing situation. But it is definitely enough to deal with the current doubters.
There are 10 fan titles this month. According to the platform rules, an event will be held in the book review area to draw a lottery.
I forgot to mention it before, so I would like to remind you here. Interested book lovers can go to the book review section.
(End of chapter)
