Tag: Enlightenment and China
-
Critique of Arnaud Bertrand’s “The Civilization that Never needed God”
Bertrand’s narrative attributes Europe’s secular turn largely to a linear transmission from Zhou dynasty ideas through Jesuits to Voltaire, framing it as the “single decision that most shaped China’s destiny” and by extension, the world’s. However, republicanism’s origins lie in a grand eclectic tradition, including Pre-Socratic sages, Stoicism, Cicero’s republic, and Petrarch’s revival of letters,…
The American Minervan 