Chinese Model ---- Voltaire’s Tool of his Political Thoughts

As a saying goes, the Europe in 18^th century was a century of Voltaire, and was also the Europe of China. A heated flow of east impacted Europe with an unprecedented strength. Voltaire was one of the leading pioneers who discovered Chinese culture as a historian, searched Chinese national traditions as a philosopher, and began literature communication between China and France as a litterateur. Voltaire had mentioned China in more than 80 masterpieces and 200 letters before his death, which were involved in whole Chinese culture along the long history. He was an enthusiastic advocator of Chinese culture and laws, which were based on ethic or morality. In Voltaire’s perspective of view, when the whole Europe was trapped in decadent error, Chinese people were respecting pure and sacred morality, which showed natural humanity and order. Voltaire felt deeply about the difference between European and Chinese society, when we wandered in Ardennes Forest separately, they had already formed families with a huge amount of population.

In his praise, the emperor of China was the leader with kindness and ethic, he launched perfect laws as well as promoted ministers according to morality, and emperor was able to call upon people with pure ethic. This was Voltaire’s ideal society in his imagination. In Voltaire’s perspective, he advocated Confucianism and Confucius, who was praised in his work: he was the explainer of pure rationality, who didn’t show off but enlighten people’s wisdom; he was not a prophet but a wiser.

      Why did Voltaire praise Chinese political culture and society? As one of the famous enlightenment thinker, Voltaire regarded China’s model as a new ideological weapon for criticizing Europe, China’s huge difference from Western society was one of the reasons. He used China’s model to attack church feudalism; he praised Chinese glorious culture to break the prejudice of European culture supreme; his desire for ideal society was the strong criticism to France’s feudalism; his praise of China’s emperors was the hatred of France’s emperors, he desired an open-minded leader; his appreciation of imperial examination system and Confucianism showed his desire on intellectual managing country and philosophers’ realm.

      However, China’s model in Voltaire’s work was much different from actual situation; he idealized China. Actual history told us that cruel battles and social movements aiming at protecting dictatorship or hunting for power happened during emperor Kang Xi and Yong Zheng’s time, which were no better than Voltaire’s criticism to Byzantium’s internal battles. The imperial examination system in 18^th century’s China had already lost advantages before, but changed into farces of rich people’s deals. As for his praise of pure and ideal Confucianism, had already become the blocks holding back society’s development and negative factor depressing people’s humanity. All of these were actual situation that Voltaire did not see or understand. His description was not for a real China, French famous critic once commended that, other than they were China’s reality, they were more like China’s myth.

      Voltaire had some problems when he analyzed China’s model. First of all, he explained Chinese history in terms of European history, for example, he regarded peasant uprising as a matter of religious battle, and compared with Rome and Greece. Secondly, he had subjective misunderstanding: he had never been to China, so there was a cultural broken bridge between his description and the actual situation; there was another error caused by media’s information, just as Robin once said, French philosophers knew little about China, they established a Chinese myth based on travelers, businessmen, especially churchmen’s records. Thirdly, Voltaire’s description was served for his preference and aim, which could result in problems.

When we discuss what resulted in Voltaire’s misunderstandings of China, we can list a number of reasons, and his personal experience was one of them. Voltaire had never been to China, his feelings about this distant country were all from readings and hearings, which were limited and not precise by themselves. Some people attacked Voltaire’s China conception, but he did not advocate learning China thoroughly as some European emperors thought, what he really wanted to do was introducing valuable contents from China to remove Europe’s problems. He did not ignore Europe’s progress and was proud of it.

Voltaire’s attention to China’s model had specialized reasons and goals in the 18^th century’s Europe. Although his description of China had many misunderstandings, he provided an important way of thinking, which is to compare different cultures and political systems, and reflect them in a global perspective.