Matteo Ricci’s Legacy

Abstract This chapter offers a reading of Matteo Ricci as a notable precedent for putting Thomas Aquinas into conversation with classical Confucian texts. It indicates how Ricci represents a potential alternative to the two dominant methods in comparative theology: the Lockean language of toleration (which tends to devalue distinctiveness) and the multiculturalist emphasis on difference (which tends to downplay commonality). By attending to how Ricci rewrites Stoic ethics on contingency and fortune, and invents “intellect” and “will” as moral categories in China, this chapter locates his achievement at the theological juncture of a Thomist–Ignatian synthesis. It concludes with a Thomist–Ignatian intellectual disposition for doing comparative religious ethics.