Matteo Ricci: Dis-assembling Neo-Confucianism

Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) had synthesised the metaphysical development of the Neo-Confucianist Song dynasty 宋朝 philosophers, in particular the ideas of Cheng Hao 程灏 (1032–1085) and Cheng Yi 程頤(1033–1107). It was Zhu who had compiled the Four Books of Confucianism.Footnote ⁷ His commentaries on those texts were considered the official ones that were prescribed for the civil service exams in China from 1313 until the start of the twentieth century. It could be argued that Zhu Xi directed the trajectory of Confucian thought in China, and that his own biases influenced how future generations understood and analysed the ideas of Confucius and Mencius.Footnote ⁸ Matteo Ricci began to understand this as he accommodated his dress, language and ideas to those of the Confucian mandarins who became his friends and who encouraged him to turn away from Buddhism and its robes, which he had first donned in China to blend in as unobtrusively as possible in the new culture he soon adopted as his own.Footnote ⁹

Matteo Ricci became known to all in the Middle-Kingdom (right down to the present) by the Chinese name of Li Madou 利瑪竇, a testimony to his importance, largely due to his ability to engage intellectually with the Confucian scholars of his day in their own language. Tianzhu shiyi, Ricci's Magnus Opus first published in 1603, illustrates Ricci's genius – arguing in Chinese to the Chinese about the origins of their own traditions. It reflects the complicated intellectual context Ricci, the missionary, was thrust into. Ricci's text was written for Confucians, not Christians, but his goal was to lead Confucians towards Christianity. Ricci's Tianzhu shiyi attempts to deconstruct Neo-Confucianism and to complement it with Christian ideas: to disassemble it and then reassemble it differently. This was accomplished by identifying traces of God in Confucian texts. Ricci directed his readers attention away from the Four Books 四書, compiled by Zhu, to the original Five Classics 五經of Confucianism, to rediscover Shangdi 上帝 (the Sovereign on High) and open him up to different possibilities.

Ricci suggested that the terms used to describe the “same” God are simply “different” in “Other” traditions.Footnote ¹⁰ Hence, “He who is called the Lord of Heaven [Tianzhu 天主] in my humble Country is He who is called Shangdi in Chinese”.Footnote ¹¹ This enunciates what Derrida calls différance, an idea intrinsic to deconstruction. The full meaning of an idea or the deconstruction of an idea is never present in any one word. A word is constantly “deferring” to “different” words, which combine traces of their “sameness”.Footnote ¹² This also echoes deconstruction's “passion” for the origin, and permitted Ricci to weave theistic strands from his own tradition into a Confucian discourse, which he presents as a dialogue between a Chinese scholar and a Western scholar - between the East and the West, between Confucianism and Christianity.

Ricci repeatedly weaves the concept of a creator God into his text, as this idea clearly distinguishes Christianity from Buddhism and Daoism, as well as the metaphysical underpinnings of Neo-Confucianism, especially its idea of the Supreme Ultimate 太極 (C.Taiji, K. t'aegŭk) and Principle 理 (C. li, K. i) that were considered to be behind the “spontaneous arising” of all things, which had already been influenced by Buddhism and Daoism.Footnote ¹³ Ricci asserts that the Confucian Shangdi is “the origin of the universe” [乾坤之原] and therefore, “the root of all creation” [造化之宗], or “the first [original] Father [原父]”.Footnote ¹⁴ It is this anthropomorphic re-conceptualisation of Shangdi that then allows Ricci to undermine Neo-Confucian metaphysics, as well as Buddhist “voidness” 空 and Daoist “nothingness” 無 throughout the text. It also introduces a theological aperture that will be filled by Christian supplementation.Footnote ¹⁵ Ricci retraces the “impurity” of Neo-Confucianism, noting that the earlier Confucian Classics did not discuss the Supreme Ultimate, an idea central to Neo-Confucianism, hence it had been adopted from another tradition that was subsequently criticised as heterodox.Footnote ¹⁶ Ricci is highlighting that orthodoxy itself has been supplemented with heterodox ideas – something he himself is hoping to do. Ricci was overturning orthodoxy, charging Zhu Xi with imbedding impurities from other traditions into the fundamental make-up of Confucianism. But as Steven Shakespeare notes, “Tradition exists because meaning is not pure”, while Derrida argues that, “traditionality is not orthodoxy”.Footnote ¹⁷

Ricci is then arguing that Shangdi carries with it traces of Tianzhu (and vice versa) which also shows us that Ricci's own view of Christianity had been transformed from his original Latin “orthodox” understanding. Ricci returns to teachings from the Book of Odes, the Book of Changes, the Book of Rites, and the Book of History, and reiterates that, “it is quite clear [. . .] that the Sovereign on High and the Lord of Heaven are different only in name”.Footnote ¹⁸ The “return” to uncover the “original” Shangdi can be identified by Ricci's emphasis on the Book of Odes, which he quotes several times to illustrate how the ancients revered and feared Shangdi, but also to establish that, in his opinion, they “served” him, much like Yahweh in the Old Testament. This is an important move by Ricci as it advances his position to criticise Zhu Xi for having re-interpreted the word “Sovereign” (帝) as “Heaven” (天), which he also equated with Principle 理.Footnote ¹⁹ Such an interpretation had serious theological consequences. Ricci is arguing that nowhere in the Classics can we find the “Supreme Ultimate” (or Principle) being served by man, and how Heaven signified a “figure of speech” to describe the formlessness of the Lord of Heaven, who - if he should be served - is a personal God, a point this paper revisits in Tasan's writings.Footnote ²⁰ In addition, Ricci quotes from “the announcement of Tang” in the Book of History 書經: “The great Sovereign on High has conferred even on the inferior people a moral sense.”Footnote ²¹ Here, Ricci has disengaged morality from the onto-cosmological realm of Neo-Confucian metaphysics and supplements Shangdi himself, with a différante self – Jesus – who Ricci insisted “was really the Lord of Heaven”.Footnote ²² His teachings are described as superior to those of all other sages, and so “the canonical writings of former times were supplemented”.Footnote ²³

Ricci reinterprets the most important Confucian concept of humanity 仁 (C. ren, K. in) as follows: “Love the Lord of Heaven [. . .] and love others [愛人] as yourself,” obviously based on the words of Jesus in the New Testament (Matt. 22:34–40; Mark 12:28–34; Luke 10:25–28).Footnote ²⁴ It is this complete externalisation of “humanity” that gestures beyond the morality of Confucianism, drawing on the teachings of Jesus, towards what I call Post-Confucianism, traces of which are to be found in Ricci's text. For example, he emphasises that “Bestowed on others, it [humanity] grows even more luxuriant”.Footnote ²⁵ Of course, Confucius in The Analects (15:23) stressed that it is what we do not do to others that distinguishes oneself. Ricci does not describe the Crucifixion or the Resurrection: for his Confucian readers it is initially this practical moral transformation that is presented in terms of a superior form of self-cultivation 修己 (C. Xiuji, K. sugi), which should lead a Confucian towards sagehood. In Ricci's Post-Confucian realm of moral perfection, sagehood is redirected towards God, who can be referred to as Shangdi and/or Tianzhu.

We can summarise Ricci's de-constructive strategy as follows:

1. 1) The representation of Shangdi as Tianzhu, a monotheistic creator God,

2. 2) who replaces Neo-Confucian metaphysical concepts,

3. 3) which he criticises as impurities imported from Buddhism and Daoism,

4. 4) while morality should be supplemented with the “practical” teachings of Jesus, thereby linking morality with God.

This now allows us to understand what ideas the early Catholics in Korea, especially Tasan, were reacting to as they converted to Christianity via Ricci's text.

Conversion, Blood and Terror

The earliest group of Korean intellectuals who converted to Catholicism were all Neo-Confucian scholars from the elite yangban (aristocratic) class, many of them related by blood or marriage. Yi Sŭnghun 李承薰 (1756–1801) and Yi Pyŏk 李檗 (1754–1786) are considered the two most important figures of this fledgling Church, which chose to keep a close-knit community, understanding from its inception the clandestine nature of its religious activities. Two events forced this early church into total secrecy, threatening its very existence. First, the discovery of secret prayer meetings of several yangban scholars, including Tasan and his brothers, in the house of the chungin (middle-class) Kim Pŏmu 金範禹 (?-1786), led to the arrest of all the participants. While the yangban escaped harsh punishment, Kim Pŏmu was not as fortunate. He died, after being exiled, from the wounds inflicted through torture, becoming the first Catholic martyr in Korea.Footnote ²⁶ Catholicism was then proscribed by law, and the following year the importation of western books was also prohibited. Nevertheless, Tasan continued to be involved with the Church, clearly breaking the law. The second event, known as the Chinsan Incident, occurred when Yun Chich'ung's mother died in 1791.Footnote ²⁷ Adhering to the guidelines received from the Church authority in Beijing, Yun and his cousin Kwŏn Sang'yŏn 權尙然 (?-1791), whom Yun had converted, refused to hold the “legal” Confucian ancestor memorial rites, which were banned and considered idolatrous by the Catholic Church, and in fact, burned the memorial tablets, generating a great scandal.Footnote ²⁸ Soon, both Yun and his cousin were arrested and after torture, beheaded. Their heads were left exposed for several days to deter others from joining the religion, and obviously forcing others to withdraw, at least publicly, through fear of a similar fate. Tasan, like many others, renounced the religion after witnessing relations and friends brutally executed. One by one the original members of the Church were tortured, exiled, or executed.Footnote ²⁹

Though Tasan had distanced himself from the Catholics, many were not convinced that he had truly renounced the religion, which explains the recurring attacks and allegations against him. Tasan writes, that by the autumn of 1795, he was demoted, sent away from the capital and a position close to the King, to the remote town of Kŭmjŏng'yŏk. At the same time, Yi Sŭnghun was banished to Yesan (both in Ch'ungch'ŏng Province).Footnote ³⁰ In 1797, Tasan openly criticised Catholicism in a letter to the King. In it he suggests that he had only superficially understood Catholicism, that having just glanced at the texts, he had misunderstood its ideas, becoming “tangled up in promises of life after death”.Footnote ³¹ Furthermore, Tasan also suggests that he had considered these ideas (written by western missionaries) to be merely another form of Confucianism. Tasan's self-deprecating account of his ability to understand texts contrasts greatly with his reputation as an outstanding scholar who had impressed the king, who had come first in royal exams, and who had been promoted much faster than his seniors.Footnote ³² More significant, though, is that promises of life after death could never have been confused with any form of Confucianism by any credible Confucian scholar. On the contrary, Confucians had always criticised such ideas and associated them with Buddhism. Another scholar from this time, Pak Chiwŏn 朴趾源 (1737–1805), criticised Catholicism and Matteo Ricci in his famous Yŏlha Ilgi 熱河日記 (Yŏlha Journal), focusing his critique on Heaven and Hell and the similarity to Buddhism – not Confucianism.Footnote ³³ In addition, earlier scholars from the same Namin intellectual lineage as Tasan had all criticised Catholicism as something that was very different from, and therefore dangerous to, Confucianism. But again, they all noted its similarities with Buddhism concerning heaven and hell. Footnote ³⁴

Tasan was far from unclear about Catholicism. He had been a practising Catholic, baptised (into a new Christian faith), attended masses, and participated in the “pseudo ecclesiastical hierarchy” of the early Church in Korea, which had been legally banned by Confucian law.Footnote ³⁵ Not only was he reading and studying Catholic texts, he was preaching their message, repeatedly trying to convert other scholars, and as testified by fellow Namin, Yi Kigyŏng, constantly talking about Ricci's text.Footnote ³⁶ Tasan's letter, often presented as evidence of a withdrawal from a Church he himself had helped to evangelise, can also illustrate that he was clearly bluffing, feigning stupidity, and deliberately misrepresenting his important role within the Church, in an attempt to stay alive, and possibly, to save others. Tasan is clever to omit such details in what can be described as a superficial recantation. It further highlights how Tasan's authorial control had been compromised by his context – a context of fear and terror. Therefore, we must conclude that Tasan was forced to misrepresent the truth in order to appease the king, whose own reputation would have been impugned for having a practising Catholic in the midst of his Confucian court.

In 1799 Ch'ae Chegong 蔡濟恭 (1720–1799), third State Councillor and an influential Namin figure at court, died. The following year the monarch, king Chŏngjo 正祖 (r.1776–1800) took ill and also died. Until then Tasan had survived as both Ch'ae Chegong and the King had been lenient towards the Catholics. Soon Tasan, his oldest friends and his brothers would enter into one of the most tumultuous periods of the entire Chosŏn dynasty, where those associated with Catholicism in any form lived in danger.Footnote ³⁷ Threatened by the growing Catholic religion, the government, armed with the political support of the Queen Dowager, began an extensive persecution of Catholics all over the country with the aim of eradicating Catholicism. Hundreds were arrested, and initially they were given a choice to renounce the religion, or die. Such coercive apostasies, where psychological and physical torture was used, can hardly be considered as evidence of a profound change in beliefs.Footnote ³⁸ Tasan describes this political persecution that again had little to do with religious concerns in Chŏnghŏn myojimyŏng 貞軒墓誌銘, (Memorial to Chŏng hŏn):

Before long, Tasan, his brothers Yakchong and Yakchŏn, Yi Sŭnghun, and other Namin leaders were all arrested, imprisoned and tortured. Yi Sŭnghun, who had previously apostatised, yet who clearly continued to practice, was executed along with Chŏng Yakchong on the same day.Footnote ⁴⁰ Initially Tasan was exiled to Changgi in Kyŏngsang Province, while his brother, Yakchŏn, was exiled to Sinjido in South Chŏlla Province.Footnote ⁴¹ During the winter of 1801, a letter (known as the Silk Letter帛書 Paeksŏ) written by Hwang Sayŏng 黃嗣永 (1775–1801) had fallen into the hands of the enemies of the Church. He was a close disciple of Tasan's executed brother Chŏng Yakchong, and was also married to the daughter of Tasan's eldest half-brother Chŏng Yakhyŏn. Hwang's letter had been intended for the Bishop in Beijing, written as a desperate plea for help amidst the evolving persecution of Catholics. Hwang had specifically mentioned Tasan (or Chŏng Yagyong as he was known then) along with Yi Sŭnghun, describing how they had publicly renounced the religion to escape death, but how inwardly they held on to it.Footnote ⁴² In addition, he revealed how, due to fear, many Christians had to stay hidden to assure that the religion was not fully exterminated.Footnote ⁴³ Hwang, at just twenty-six years old, was executed in a most brutal manner, known as nŭngji ch'ŏch'am 陵遲處斬: one's hands and feet were cut off, as well as one's head. Again, witnessing such inhumane barbarity would have been enough to make many hide their Catholic belief. Indeed, Ch'oe Sŏgu describes Tasan as “outwardly Confucian, but inwardly Christian”.Footnote ⁴⁴

As a result of the “Silk Letter” incident, Tasan and his brother were called back from exile and imprisoned again to face renewed charges against them (Tasan, 2003, 115).Footnote ⁴⁵ Don Baker describes how Tasan “denounced Catholic teachings [and] informed on former friends” but, it is important to emphasize that this happened only after he had been arrested with other Catholics and tortured–he had not come forward to inform of his own volition hoping to eradicate the Catholics or Catholicism.Footnote ⁴⁶ Several hundred people were executed, with several hundred more exiled, undoubtedly an inspiration to many to hide their beliefs. Tasan and his brother Yakchŏn both managed to escape death again, along with the hundreds of others who were exiled and coerced away from the religion with threat of execution. Tasan was banished to Kangjin, while his brother was sent to Hŭksan Island, both places in the southern part of Chŏlla Province. They would never meet again. The persecutions of 1801 were followed by further widespread persecutions in 1815 (The Ŭrhae Persecution) and again in 1827 (The Chŏnghae Persecution).Footnote ⁴⁷ The facts are that: Catholicism was outlawed, banned and completely illegal, as were all references to it and its texts, which were all supposedly collected and destroyed. Tasan was not at liberty to write openly about Catholic ideas–the executions of his brother and many friends had made that danger very clear. However, for Tasan, like Ricci, being a Christian would not have meant a rejection of “original” Confucianism and Kŭm Changdae insists that “Catholic Doctrine not only provided a bridge to a new understanding of the universe, it also became a spring-board for the development of his [Tasan's] Neo-Confucianism”.Footnote ⁴⁸

Returning to the Origin: Uncovering Shangdi

Many scholars reject the stance that Tasan completely and whole-heartedly withdrew from Catholicism, in consideration of the extenuating violence of his real-life circumstances. Ch'oe Sŏgu (1993, 79–80) argues that politico-historical force majeure pushed Tasan to incorporate Christian ideas indirectly into his texts.Footnote ⁴⁹ James B. Palais even considers Tasan's apparently political Sirhak texts, as “Chastened no doubt, by his [Tasan] close escape from execution” and so opens up his texts to other possible interpretations. Footnote ⁵⁰ Kŭm Changdae writes that, “in some ways the severe suppression of the Catholic faith during that era and the life-threatening situation may have forced Tasan to lead a double life in which he outwardly had to hide his religious belief”.Footnote ⁵¹ Park Seongnae (2004, p. 347) also draws attention to the possibility of “double-meanings” in Tasan's writings, and more significantly, that he may have “camouflaged” his real views by embedding them in the authority of the much earlier Confucian classics.Footnote ⁵² Seen in this light, Tasan's interest in “original” Confucianism, often called Susahak 洙泗學, may have been merely a ploy to detract from his religious affiliation with Catholicism - a ploy that worked to a large degree.Footnote ⁵³ Kim Shin-ja notes that susahak signified a return to the “original theory of Confucius”.Footnote ⁵⁴ However, Tasan's commentaries are full of references to “The Sovereign on High”, Shangdi, despite the fact that The Analects never mention this term a single time. This term was of great importance to the early Catholics in Korea, who, having read Ricci's text, considered Shangdi to be God.

In contrast, Don Baker has repeatedly argued that Tasan withdrew from Catholicism because philosophically he could not reconcile it with Confucianism.Footnote ⁵⁵ Baker's argument, however, does not explain the deeply theistic ideas in Tasan's commentaries on a Confucian tradition that was not theistic.Footnote ⁵⁶ Baker (emphasis added) concludes that “The God Chŏng Tasan believed in was not the Christian God. Tasan called God the ruler of the cosmos, not the creator [. . .] His God was solely a moral force. That was what made him a Confucian God”.Footnote ⁵⁷ Of course, the point Matteo Ricci had clearly articulated, as discussed above, was that different religions or traditions have different names for the same God – as do the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. More importantly, “belief” is not an issue for Confucianism, rather, it is a salient feature of Christianity.Footnote ⁵⁸ Donald S. Lopez, Jr., writes in his essay “Belief”, that “Christians have also described what came to be known as the ‘world religions’ from the perspective of belief”.Footnote ⁵⁹ Korean Neo-Confucians, however, were not discussing a god as a moral force, or a “belief” in a singular god, rather, they had been particularly interested in the metaphysical issues surrounding Principle (C. li, K. i) and Material force (C. qi, K. ki). Korean Neo-Confucians also focused on rites to inculcate patterns of behaviour. Again, the most important rites of the Chosŏn dynasty were not related to god, or an external moral force: they were the capping, marriage, mourning and ancestor memorial rites. The rites, based on the Zhuxi jiali 朱熹家禮 (Zhu Xi's Family Rites), were designed to instil a sense of communal or social morality, both synchronically and diachronically, and that is why they were enforced by law.Footnote ⁶⁰ Socially, the hierarchical Five Relationships 五倫 (C. wulun, K. oryun) as well as the Three Bonds 三綱 (C. sangang, K. samgang) that further organised a Confucian society through duty in hierarchical relationships, make no reference at all to God.Footnote ⁶¹ In addition, if God were solely “a moral force”, it would then not be “theistic”, it would at best reflect some form of pantheism, again, more akin to Neo-Confucian Principle.

The God one encounters in Tasan's writings is a personal, monotheistic, creator deity, quite different to the one that Baker argues Tasan believed in. In any case, Tasan was carefully dis-assembling Confucian texts, not Christian ones: that was illegal. This important point is usually overlooked by researchers who use the “lack” of obvious Christian motifs and terms, such as Tianzhu (Ch'ŏnju in Korean), to validate their assumption that Tasan had totally rejected the religion. Kim Shin-ja acknowledges that “Tasan did not clearly mention Catholicism in his works. One recognises, however, in many places that he held the view of Catholicism in his theory”.Footnote ⁶² I would further add that these terms make their mark on Tasan's text by their absence. Geoffrey Bennington highlights that, “the place of a certain signifier can be silhouetted in a text without figuring in it explicitly” and “the local absence of such and such a signifier [. . .] would not disturb the reading”.Footnote ⁶³ In Tasan's writings, controlled by his precarious circumstances, we find traces of Christian ideas that remain silhouetted despite their apparent absence. Indeed, Christian ideas are recurrent in Tasan's continual usage of Matteo Ricci's ideas which are woven into his “theistic” commentaries, yet never referenced, again reflecting fear.

Tasan's “dis-assembling” of Neo-Confucianism and revision of the earlier Confucian texts soon starts to resemble the strategy of Matteo Ricci. In the Chungyong kangŭibo Footnote ⁶⁴ 中庸講義補 [Supplement to Lectures on the Doctrine of the Mean], Tasan queries the link between the “Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate” 太極之圖 (C. Taiji zhitu, K. T'aegŭkto) and original Confucian ideas, noting that, “it was written over a thousand years after Zisi [the grandson of Confucius]”.Footnote ⁶⁵ In another text, Maengja yoŭi (孟子要義) [The Essentials of The Mencius], Tasan notes that “the circle in this diagram which represents the Supreme Ultimate does not appear anywhere in the [Five] Classics of ancient Confucianism”.Footnote ⁶⁶ Both these texts were written around 1814 and both “dis-assemble” the Neo-Confucian substructure of Song Confucianism. Mark Setton points out how Tasan “challenged the authority of Song Confucianism”^, Footnote ⁶⁷ but so too did Ricci in the text Tasan had repeatedly read, studied and loaned to others – it was not something original to Tasan's writings. Tasan also rejected the primary role of the most fundamental Neo-Confucian concept central to Zhu Xi metaphysics, Principle, which has no sense of perception or personality.Footnote ⁶⁸ Tasan rejected an impersonal force guiding the universe and has relegated Principle to the level of an “attribute,” a sort of law of nature, not a “substance”.Footnote ⁶⁹ However, this explanation of Principle as an attribute clearly reflects the influence of Scholastic philosophy and was outlined by Ricci and was critical to his dis-assemblage.Footnote ⁷⁰ Tasan, like Ricci, had de-stabilised the Neo-Confucian universe and would have to counter this unbalance with something different.

Who is God?

It is Shangdi, pronounced Sangje in Korean, who re-stabilises Tasan's re-conceptualised ontotheological-cosmology, disentangling it from Principle, the Supreme Ultimate, yin and yang, as well as the five elements. It is Sangje who makes Tasan's theistic commentaries theistic, because it is a God who created mankind and all things, yet who remains beyond them. Tasan's Ch'unch'u kojing 春秋考徵 [Evidential Analysis of the Spring and Summer Annals], written circa 1812, describes Sangje as follows:

Tasan presents God as the creator, using the term for creation 造化 (K. chohwa) repeatedly used by Matteo Ricci to describe God, Shangdi, Tianzhu, as a creator. This term is also highlighted in the modern Korean translation of Ricci's text, as it supplements the original Confucian Shangdi, who was never considered a creator.Footnote ⁷² Therefore, Tasan's idea of a “creator” God has been cross-fertilised by Christian belief, not by Confucian ritual. In addition, Tasan's description reflects the ideas he had preached to others–in an attempt to convert them to Catholicism–not a new form of Confucianism.

In the Sangsŏ kohun 尙書古訓 (Ancient Instructions of the Classic of History) written in 1834, not long before Tasan died, he wrote (emphasis added):

Again différance is at play via the multiple traces of the “origin” which has been obfuscated by the different trajectories of different traditions, caught up by the instability of naming, which always defers to other names. God, too, then is caught up in the play of différance, and though it may be described using many terms, there can only be one “original” Sangje - just as Ricci (par. 3) reinforced and emphasised that the same singular “Lord” is known in different plural ways.

Jonathan Chamberlain in Chinese Gods notes that Shangdi [Sangje] in the Chinese tradition was, “a shadowy, rarely-referred-to figure,” who was, “divorced from the affairs of men”.Footnote ⁷⁴ In Maengja yoŭi, Tasan quotes five excerpts from the Book of Odes to illustrate the personal relationship between Sangje and man, a strategy used by Matteo Ricci (par. 105).Footnote ⁷⁵ Tasan, like Ricci, uses the odes for the exact same purpose, to show that Sangje has a relationship with man. However, Tasan has incorporated them into his commentary on Mencius's text, a text which places little importance on Sangje, an idea it barely refers to at all. In fact, Tasan weaves Sangje into a discussion on the first section on Chinsim 盡心 (Mencius 13:1) which never refers to Sangje. Tasan re-orientates his commentary and reassembles his tradition to make Sangje a focal point. For Tasan, this possibility comes from understanding God's relation with mankind, that he is their ruler and observes them from on high. He describes Sangje as “the ruler of Heaven,” 天之主宰爲上帝, or in other words, Tianzhu 天主, another name for God - a Christian possibility for a Post-Confucian theology.Footnote ⁷⁶

The concept of Sangje supplements Tasan's commentaries on the Four Books, which represents an anachronistic approach. Confucius, as mentioned above, never used the term Sangje once in The Analects. The term appears once in the Great Learning, and again, only once, in the Doctrine of the Mean. Footnote ⁷⁷ The term has only three mentions in The Mencius, by far the longest of the Four Books, yet it has a prominent “supplementary” role in Tasan's Maengja yoŭi, positively engaging with the “Other” un-covered trajectory that Matteo Ricci dis-enclosed.Footnote ⁷⁸ In fact, Chamberlain rightly notes that Confucius had advised to keep ideas concerning the spirit-world, “at a distance”.Footnote ⁷⁹ Actually, it was this very teaching, explicit in Confucius (The Analects 11:11), that permitted Matteo Ricci to “supplement” Confucianism with Post-Confucian theological teachings on God, drawn from the Catholic tradition, something we now witness in Tasan who draws God into his world, close to humanity.

Kim Yŏngil notes this aspect of Tasan's concept of humanity as a virtue that is practiced, noting that “loving others” depends on virtuous humanistic (仁) practice.Footnote ⁸⁰ Ricci argued this very point, and so for example, righteousness can only exist after “righteous behaviour”.Footnote ⁸¹ Tasan, too, emphasises that virtues can only be called so “after they have been put into action”, through free will.Footnote ⁸² This approach to moral cultivation is a salient feature of Christianity, expressed though caritas, preached by Jesus himself, and highlighted in the early Catholic texts written by Yi Pyŏk, Tasan's early mentor, and in the Catholic texts written by Tasan's own brothers.Footnote ⁸³ This exemplifies the Golden Rule in the Gospels (Matt. 7:12), “Do to others what you would like them to do to you”, suggesting that how one treated others, was how one treated God, and so serving God, meant serving others, which also posited a new trajectory for self-cultivation and sagehood. This idea could not contrast anymore starkly with the passivity of the Confucian Golden Rule from The Analects: “Do not do unto others what you do not want them to do to you”.Footnote ⁸⁴ Again, Tasan's morality is Post-Confucian and supplemented by Christian motifs that he clearly knew. Song Young-bae underlines how Tasan's morality is “similar to the philosophical configuration of Tianzhu shiyi”, which also rejects Neo-Confucian metaphysics.Footnote ⁸⁵

Earlier we outlined the four stages of Matteo Ricci's de-construction. In Tasan's work one can also identify a four-fold strategy:

1. 1) The representation of Shangdi/Sangje as a monotheistic creator God

2. 2) who replaces Neo-Confucian metaphysical concepts,

3. 3) which he criticises as impurities imported from Buddhism and Daoism,

4. 4) while supplementing morality with the “practical” teachings, which echo those of Jesus, thereby linking morality with God.

Jesus hovers as an absent signifier inside Tasan's texts. His teachings have been silhouetted via a supplementation of Confucian humanity and the centrality of Sangje in this post-Confucian, moral guiding discourse. This, too, reflects Derrida's idea of a deconstructive strategy where: