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The ‘Qifufu’(齊夫婦) Volume of Alfonso Vagnoni’s(高一志) Xixueqijia(西學齊家) - The ethics between husband and wife as a missionary strategy -

Park Ji Hyun 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Alfonso Vagnoni’s(高一志) Xixueqijia(西學齊家) is one of the texts that appeared as a result of the ‘accommodation’ position, which adhered to the strategy of cultural exchange through the fusion of Christianity and Confucianism, adopted by Jesuit missionaries in China in the 16~17th century. Xixueqijia introduced the European family ethics advocated by Christianity advocates, such as the ethics between husband and wife and the education of children. This Chinese volume may be seen to be connected to two other volumes, Xixuexiushen(西學修身) and Xixuezhiping (西學治平). The serial publication of these three volumes can be understood as an ‘accommodational’ reaction to the ‘Xiushenqijiazhiguopingtianxia’(修身齊家治國平天下) discourse that appears in Daxue(大學). At the root of this was the intention to summon Aristotle’s Politika, which also contains, in its discourse, the same concentric structure of individual -family-country. The aim of the article is to examine, through the analysis of the ‘Qifufu’(齊夫婦) volume of Xixueqijia, how attempts were made to establish some common ground regarding the ethics between husband and wife amongst the clashing of two worldviews. The ethics between husband and wife, as well as the issue of ancestor worship, represented the intersections where the Confucian worldview and the Christian worldview sharply clashed. The Christian notion of monogamy and the Confucian notion of the concubinage system stood at the center of conflict, and this issue acted as the greatest barrier in the acceptance of Christianity by Chinese officials. In China, it was believed that if monogamy(一夫一婦) ought to be maintained, it was because nature needed to coexist in harmony, as Yin and Yang must always maintain a balanced state. In other words, monogamy was not something ordained by God. The main difference between Vagnoni’s perspective of marriage and that of traditional Chinese discourse is that while he regarded marriage as something that must be maintained or overcome in order to pursue a value greater than the mere individual or family, the traditional Chinese perspective regarded it as something that happens naturally as one follows Dao(道). It can be said that this also demonstrates the difference between the perspective of ‘Xiushenqijiazhiguopingtianxia’in Daxue which sees Dao as existing unformally throughout the levels of individual-home-country and the perspective of Politika which considers that it is at the final level of the state that Dao can arrive at the greatest virtue.

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