MATTEO RICCI'S TIANZHU SHIYI (THE TRUE MEANING OF THE LORD OF HEAVEN) AND ITS REFUTATION OF ONTOLOGICAL MONISM

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) is considered the founder of the Jesuit mission in China. The accommodation policy initiated by Ricci allowed the Jesuits to be accepted by the literati of the Ming dynasty, initiating an intercultural dialogue between Christianity and Confucianism. Ricci's most important philosophical work was the Tianzhu Shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), published in 1603. In this book, Ricci shows the most important elements of Christianity, looking for connections with Confucian ethics and, at the same time, refuting several Buddhist and Neo-Confucian philosophical aspects incompatible with Christian faith. One of the most criticized philosophical ideas was ontological monism, present in the most influential philosophical doctrine in China in Ricci's time: Neo-Confucianism. In this paper, some fragments of the Tianzhu Shiyi are analyzed and the most important elements of the Cheng-Zhu school of NeoConfucianism are introduced, in order to understand the philosophical accommodation of the Jesuits in China.