From Text to Body: The Changing Image of “Chinese Teachers” in Eighteenth-Century German Literature

Summary

THE PERCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION of China in eighteenth-century German literature and philosophy is marked by a transformation that unfolded in parallel with a larger epistemic shift: in the course of the eighteenth century, the biblical text, hitherto the central point of reference in human thought and action, gave way to the body as an organizing principle. Since the last quarter of the eighteenth century, metaphors and images of human individuality and community have been molded on the physical, physiological, and psychological unity of human corporeality. Similarly, since then, representations of cultural alterity and cross-cultural contact have relied on images of Self and Other. For the greater part of the eighteenth century, however, writing alterity was a far more contested process. This essay proposes therefore to lay bare some of the transitions and transformations that occurred in the representations of China between 1716 and 1796. These representations presume a notion of Chinese moral or ethical superiority which often triggers the introduction of a teacher-like figure who becomes the legitimate critic of European fallacies, behaviors, and politics. In each instance, this figure condenses the underlying epistemological constellations of the time, that is, the tension between text and body.

Leibniz and Wolff

At the threshold between the Baroque and the early Enlightenment, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and Christian Wolff (1679– 1754) interpreted China as a culture modeled on ancient philosophy and historical texts.