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Actually, Gopnik needn't have looked so far afield. Leibniz lived just before Hume, and he was well versed in Chinese buddhist philosophy.
by atlantic 11y ago
Actually, Gopnik needn't have looked so far afield. Leibniz lived just before Hume, and he was well versed in Chinese buddhist philosophy.
- hcs 11y agoGopnick does mention European contact with Chinese philosophy and theology in the paper that hownottowrite linked, however this is dismissed as a contact point for Buddhism: "European scholars in the Chinese court focused on the elite Confucian and Taoist traditions." It is my understanding that Leibniz was mostly exposed to the Confucian tradition, his correspondences with Joachim Bouvet on this topic are mentioned in the paper.
- chippy 11y agoYeah, she writes a sentence about this theme. That actually instead of thinking person A could only learn about topic X if they were in situation S - that historians are now thinking that, like today, information and ideas were exchanged across the continents much more fluidly. Trade, knowledge, farmers, ideas, technology - we've been exchanging ideas since we have been able to move about. I find the idea really exciting in a way - almost as if Internet is completely human and a natural extension of what people have been doing since cave times - communicating!