From Leibniz via Hegel to Jaspers: Paradigm Shift of German Thinkers’ Conception of China

1 Paradigm I: Leibniz’s Knowledge of China: China as a Utopian Country

When opening the book of European history, it is apparent that the biggest discovery of European culture in the seventeenth century was its encounter with China. Even though knowledge about China was still fragmentary, it is nonetheless evident that Europeans were already aware that Chinese civilization was a major competitor for Western civilization. In April 1697, the book Novissima Sinica which was written by Leibniz was published (Leibniz, 1979). At the time, no one anticipated that this slim pamphlet would turn into the definitive book for Europeans to become acquainted with China. Leibniz (1646–1716) included China in the category of rationalism and studied the country that Europeans had only recently encountered for the first time from his own perspective. Due to his studies on China and his important status in the intellectual world of the time, China became an everyday topic of conversation for Europeans. In the last years of his life, from October 1715 until April 1716, Leibniz wrote the essay Discours sur la théologie naturelle des Chinois (Leibniz, 2002) on the request of N. Rémond. As a summary of his lifelong engagement with Chinese philosophy and scholarship, the essay exemplifies Leibniz’s research framework for the conception of foreign cultures. This core work remains as a systematic contribution about the worldview, philosophy, and religion of China.

Leibniz believed that a so-called “world culture” (Weltkultur) was emerging through a mutual complementing of Chinese and European culture. He strove not only to gain rich knowledge on China from books but also to acquire the most recent research material on Chinese politics, religion, and science through correspondence with Jesuits in China. Leibniz lived at a historical turning point during which the Eurocentric worldview was gradually replaced by the “age of discovery.” Chinese civilization was discovered following its introduction by missionaries, which indicated an understanding that the doctrines of non-Christian religions could serve as foundations for a civilized state. Many years before the publication of Novissima Sinica, Leibniz observed China with great interest and read almost all books on the country that were published in Europe at the time. In 1687, the book Confucius Sinarum philosophus, written by Belgian Jesuit Philippe Couplet (1624–1692), was published in Paris.^[1] It also included Latin translations of the three most important classic Confucian texts: Daxue (The Great Learning), Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean) and Lunyu (Analects). At the end of the same year, Leibniz already mentioned the book in one of his letters (Li & Poser, 2000, pp. 21–22). It should be noted here that Leibniz traveled to Rome in the summer of 1689 to collect historical material regarding the Welfen family of the city of Hanover. On this occasion he made the acquaintance of the Jesuit Philipp Grimaldi (1637–1712) who had come for a short visit to Europe from China. Since the year 1671, Grimaldi had been entrusted with an important administrative post, principal of the astronomical forum, by the Chinese emperor Kangxi. He was one of the most important representatives of the Jesuit order who wanted to facilitate exchange between Chinese and European thought. This journey to Italy prompted Leibniz to imagine China as the “Europe of the East.” He believed that the aim of the exchange between Europe and the East should not only lie in the import of spices and delicacies but also in scholarly exchange (Letter to Grimaldi from July 19, 1689, quoted in Leibniz, 2005, p. 117). Leibniz took this opportunity to ask Grimaldi 30 questions that all revolved around concrete scientific and technical matters, as he had come to believe, based on the books that he had read and by being in contact with the Jesuits, that the Chinese were advanced in these practical fields (cf. Robinet, 2000).

Through his correspondence with missionaries, especially with the French Jesuit Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730), Leibniz became aware that the binary system he discovered had many similarities with the Yijing (Book of Changes), since the origin and development of the cosmos could be explained through the composition of hexagrams described in the book as well as through the binary system. Joachim Bouvet, who had taught the emperor Kangxi mathematics and geometry, had striven to reconcile the controversies between Christianity and traditional Chinese culture through the conceptions of Figurism for a long time. This conception was influenced by Renaissance scholars’ study of Egyptian and Greek classics and hoped to find indications (figurace) of Christian religion in classical Chinese texts as well. In Bouvet’s view, classical Chinese texts did not only hold linguistic, historical, or intellectual meaning but also brought to bear indications or deeper meanings of the story in question. He believed, for instance, that the mystical emperor Fuxi, who established the eight diagrams, was not Chinese but a legislator of ancient times, and that he appeared under different names in different civilizations (cf. Mungello, 2000). When Leibniz heard about Bouvet’s “discovery,” he wrote in a letter to the Jesuit: “This secret and sacred characteristic would also give us the means to convey to the Chinese the most important truths of philosophy and natural theology to facilitate the path to revelation” (Letter to Bouvet from May 18, 1703, quoted in Widmaier, 1990, p. 185).

Based on this, Leibniz declared Chinese characters a rational, man-made writing system, which, just like mathematics, represented the order and relations in the world (Widmaier, 1983, p. 24). He believed that mathematics constituted eternal truth and the rational way towards Christianity. Just like Bouvet and the other proponents of figurism, Leibniz hoped to find confirmation for the existence of god in the Yijing and to derive a rational theology from it:

The new calculus that I invented … offers a wonderful representation of the Creation. My main aim is to gain a new affirmation of the Christian religion, regarding the sublime credendum of Creation, through an explanation that, in my opinion, will hold great significance for the philosophers of China, and maybe even for the emperor himself, who loves and understands the theory of numbers. (Letter to Bouvet from February 15, 1701, originally published in Widmaier, 1990, pp. 135–138, quoted here from Poser, 2000, p. 18)

This makes clear that Leibniz’s starting point lies in Christian theology. This paradigm was dismissed only when Jaspers developed the term “Axial Age” in the twentieth century.

Leibniz described Chinese Confucian philosophy as a natural theology (theologia naturalis), as he did not differentiate between Confucius himself and the neo-Confucianism of the Song—and Ming—period and believed that it held more similarities with natural theology rather than with ancient Greek philosophy. In Chinese culture, people were supposedly supported more by their own nature and knew of the existence of God in the cosmos through reciprocal relationships. Even though Chinese culture was lacking divine revelations, there was an awareness of God. This was the reason for Leibniz’s open and tolerant attitude towards China (cf. Li, 2000).

Are Confucian ethics a model for moral views that were established on the basis of rationality and which European politicians and intellectuals had aspired to for a long time? Leibniz held the opinion that China had approached the status of a “rationalized state” (Grimm, 1969, p. 42). He believed that Chinese culture had deeply valued practical techniques and the gathering of experience. Furthermore, it had Confucian philosophy at its disposal which he referred to as “natural theology.” This was why it complemented European culture which possessed technical theory and divine revelations. The numerous experiences and observations that the Chinese had collected for thousands of years could serve as a foundation for the “scientia generalis” that Leibniz planned to establish and also provide several additions to theory-centered European science. Leibniz emphasized that it was not ideal to instruct the Chinese in European science and technology unreservedly in all regards. When importing European knowledge to the Chinese one should also learn about Chinese knowledge, as “there is one proper way for transformation: after observing them, and thinking about ours, we mix the benefits and kindle light from light” (Letter to Grimaldi from March 21(?), 1692, quoted in Widmaier, 1990, pp. 15–16).^[2] He held the belief that China and Europe were located at the two outmost edges of the earth and that it was God’s will that each should adopt the merits of the other to balance one’s own deficits and attain a new harmony:

I believe that, due to a unique turn of fate, the highest culture and the highest technological civilization are today both assembled at the two outer edges of our continent, in Europe and in China …, which graces, like a Europe of the East, the other end of the earth. (Leibniz, 1979, p. 9)

The poem that Leibniz sent to Madeleine de Scudery on November 9, 1697 further highlights his broad point of view:

Qu’on soit Européen, Chinois, mondain en somme,

La magnanimité n’y regarde que l’homme.^[3] (Leibniz, 1923, p. 748; quoted here from Riley, 2000, p. 249)

Regarding the theoretical foundation of this pluralistic and mutually complementary culture, Leibniz wrote:

Indeed, all individual created substances are various expressions of the same universe, and of the same universal cause, that is God; but they have various expressions of perfection, like different reproductions or scenes of the same city from different points of view.^[4] (quoted in Perkins, 2000, pp. 276–277)

Leibniz’s notion of a pluralistic world cannot be separated from the concept of Monadology in his philosophy. In his view, the monad was not only an indivisible unit, but also a unit of dynamics. Each monad was independent, but objects constructed from them mutually affected each other and formed a harmonious unit which still contained variety.

In contrast to Jesuit missionaries like Philipp Grimaldi and Joachim Bouvet, Leibniz was not only concerned with the propagation of Christianity in China, but was rather interested in the fortune and development of humanity on behalf of a promotion of culture. He referred repeatedly to the fact that Chinese tradition had never been interrupted whereas many European traditions had vanished due to continuous resettlement (Letters to Grimaldi from May 31, 1691, and July 19, 1689; quoted in Leibniz, 2005, pp. 116–121; 126–128). He wrote a proposition for Europeans in which he lauded Chinese morality and included an appeal for the Chinese government to send missionaries to Europe to save Christian morality. This shows his idealized view of China:

In any case, in the face of the immeasurably growing moral decay it seems to me that our local conditions are in a state that almost necessitates the sending of Chinese missionaries who could teach us the application and practice of a natural theology, just as we are sending people to them for the purpose of teaching them revelation theology. Therefore, I believe: If a wise man had been chosen as judge, not of the beauty of goddesses but of the excellence of peoples, he would give the golden apple to the Chinese, if it was not for our superiority in just that respect that certainly lies outside of human capacity, that is to say the divine gift of Christian religion. (Leibniz, 1979, p. 19)

Leibniz believed that the reason for the Chinese people’s high moral standards was that their knowledge of God in the classical works from prehistoric times was not different from that of Christianity. They were only missing the divine revelations. Objectively speaking, Leibniz emphasized the inherent value of different cultures. Regarding politics and everyday life, he considered rationalism as the guiding principle and was, therefore, tolerant towards other cultures and traditions. He thought of the Chinese emperor (Kangxi) as generous as he allowed the Jesuits to freely conduct mission work in China so that for a period of time Christianity occupied the same position as Buddhism and Taoism. In the interest of his country, the emperor diligently studied the natural sciences of the West and thus acted as a good role model for all Chinese intellectuals. The Chinese emperor implemented a prudent political line that the European emperors should learn from. In contrast to the tolerant religious policy of the Chinese emperor, many European emperors oppressed pagan religions. The French emperor Louis XIV., for example, revoked the amnesty that had been signed in Nantes, which resulted in the ban and suppression of the dissemination of Protestantism in France. This situation remained unchanged until the great French Revolution in 1789 (Moore, 1920, p. 335).

From our current perspective, Leibniz’s views on China do not seem remarkable. Yet from a historical standpoint, his tolerant attitude towards China was perceived by his contemporaries as possessing revolutionary qualities (cf. Sakai, 2000) as it reflected Europe’s emergence from the Middle Ages into a new era. In fact, according to Leibniz, the reason for this development was the disappointment of intellectuals with the European politics of the time. He believed that the Chinese possessed a high level of morality and virtues and respected each other. The Chinese emperor was wise, just, and benevolent. Essentially, all these beliefs were derived from Leibniz’s concerns for the future of Europe. In Leibniz’s view, the benevolent, just, and wise politician that Europeans had wanted for a long time had emerged in China. This observation was not accurate, but we can discern from it the ideal view of politics and good morals that Leibniz imagined. This idealized image of China remained unchanged until the appearance of another great philosopher, Johann Gottfried von Herder. Before Leibniz, no one had recognized the natural theology of the Chinese. Influenced by the high esteem under which the missionaries, especially the Jesuits, held the Chinese civilization, Leibniz idealized and romanticized the knowledge on China and also showed a tolerant attitude towards non-European cultures. Not soon after the publication of Novissima Sinica, the Jesuits’ approach towards Chinese culture was criticized by the school of divinity of Sorbonne University. European tolerance towards China, both in the field of theology and of culture, disappeared. Yet more fundamental change occurred following the economic upturn of the West. In the two subsequent centuries, the idealized image of China of the Jesuits and Leibniz gradually disappeared, and eventually European mainstream society largely forgot China.

2 Paradigm II: The Mediocre China: The Historical Background of Hegel’s Image of China in His Philosophical System of the Absolute Spirit

To advance the spread of Christianity, which was still in an early stage, the missionaries put great emphasis on the praise of Chinese civilization and ethics in their works, for example Matteo Ricci in his book De christiana Expedutuibe apud Sinas (Latin edition published in Augsburg in 1615), Louis-Daniel Le Comte (1655–1728) in Nouveaux memoires sur l’etat present de la Chine (1687–1692) and in the subsequently published Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, Ecrites des Missions Etrangeres Memoires de la Chine (Du Halde, 2005, Chinese translation), but they also reported negative aspects of China. Father Francois-Xavier d’Entrecolles (1662–1748), for example, described the abandoned infants in Beijing in his letters and the “pit for the burial of 10,000 people” in Jingdezhen, which showed that Chinese people lived in destitution (Du Halde, 2005, p. 219). Regarding the endeavors to familiarize European intellectual circles with Chinese history, the missionaries primarily translated the classical works that promoted Confucian ethics and teachings. The French Jesuit Joseph Anne Maria de Moyriac de Mailla (1669–1748), for example, composed a thirteen-volume Histoire generale de la Chine (Paris, 1777–1785) that was based on the Zizhitongjian gangmu (Outline and Details of the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Government) by the well-known Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi (1139–1200). As these works, which examined Chinese history over a long period of time in a literary style, were detached from the general knowledge that Europeans had of world history, this presentation by the Jesuit order of a society timelessly based on solid and unchanged Confucian ethics was perceived by progressive Europeans as the confirmation of China as a stagnating and primitive society, after the “progressive” values gradually became the decisive criterion for human history. After the promulgation of the decree “Ex illa die” of Clemens XI on March 19, 1715, the Chinese emperor Kangxi banned the dissemination of Christianity so that the cultural exchange between Rome and Beijing was interrupted. But before that, the intellectual circles in Europe, especially in France, had been closely familiar with Chinese culture and the Chinese social system. Based on their life experience in China over many years, the missionaries wrote numerous books about China to gain support from all social classes in their countries. It is possible that some of them were willing to devote their lives to science and research. As the Jesuit missionaries possessed rich knowledge regarding European theology and the humanities due to their education in the divinity schools and were also familiar with Chinese classics as a result of their long-term residence in China and their activities at the Chinese imperial court, the books and letters they wrote were more thorough and varied in comparison to the reports of tourists and trades people.

After the announcement of the ban of Christianity in China in 1715, the Jesuits stopped writing reports and letters concerning China, so that China gradually lost its reputation. In contrast to the highly educated Jesuits, the Europeans who came to China after them primarily reported on their trading operations in China. They were interested in business deals and in earning money. When their unfair demands were rejected by the Chinese government, they vehemently denigrated Chinese culture. Furthermore, while scholars such as Leibniz showed great interest in China in the period of enlightenment, European intellectual circles gradually turned their attention from China to India as a result of the colonial occupation of India in the nineteenth century.

Historically speaking, Europe’s admiration for China ceased after the French Revolution. The majority of historians were unable to fairly judge the influence that China had on Europe from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. They believed that the extraordinary admiration of China at the time was purely utopian and was unrelated to the real China. The reason for the changing image of China in Europe did not only lie in the transformation of European social structures but also in the deterioration of Chinese politics and economy itself that caused Europeans to believe that they could no longer profit from Chinese ethics, politics, and thinking. As early as 1776, the British economist Adam Smith (1723–1790) published his famous book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in which he argued that even though China had been considered one of the richest nations of the world for a long time it was now stagnating. When analyzing the causes for the long-standing stagnation of Chinese society, Smith offered his views on the basis of modern economics: stagnation caused by agriculture and agricultural stagnation; an undervaluation of artisanry, foreign trade and commerce; and lastly, the fact that Chinese wealth had reached the level of development permitted within the Chinese legal system (cf. Smith, 1904, Book IV and V).

Due to the major advancement of European civilization since the 1760s, especially the transformation of a capitalism based on skilled crafts and trades to a capitalist factory system using machinery, Europeans exhibited a sense of superiority. They were of the opinion that they did not only excel in the natural sciences and trade but also in the field of ethics which Leibniz believed had been perfected by the Chinese. It was true, however, that during the nineteenth-century Qing dynasty China had a surplus of labor power, low productive power, an inefficient administrative system, corruption among civil servants and Chinese art was on the decline.

The enlightenment thinkers such as Leibniz praised Chinese culture and criticized the deficits of European society by using rationalism and natural theology as his starting points. Until the emergence of modern rationalism, in particular after the death of Kant, rationalism began to explore the concept of self-consciousness and to understand that it was rooted in self-consciousness. Therefore, intellectual development was seen as a process from “nature” over “natural consciousness” and “consciousness” to the “mind” (Geist). The philosophers of this time believed that the knowledge of enlightenment thinkers concerning China remained in the initial period of “nature.” Hegel stated: “Thus the natural state is rather the state of injustice, of violence, of the unconstrained natural drive, inhumane acts and sentiments” (Hegel, 1970b, p. 59). As the insights on rationalism and the mind deepened, the earlier praise of the enlightenment thinkers for Chinese culture was inevitably criticized by the following philosophers such as Herder and Hegel.

Before Hegel, the French enlightenment thinker Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1775) portrayed rationalism as the decisive force behind the process of social and historical development in his 1748 book L’esprit des lois. Furthermore, he emphasized the influence of geological factors such as climate, soil, and people’s habitat on the social development of humanity. Hegel refers to his work as a “fine book” and thought that in the book “constitution, religion, everything that can be found in a state, makes up a totality” (Hegel, 1970c, p. 304). In addition, the German philosopher Herder also included China in his research and theoretical framework of historical philosophy and the cultural history of humanity. He was of the opinion that oriental culture, in comparison to European civilization that continuously progressed forwards, remained in stasis both temporally and spatially. As soon as the “terrible despotism” was established in the static Chinese empire, it bound politics and the minds of the people to guarantee its eternal existence. For instance, Herder points out:

The empire is an embalmed mummy, painted with hieroglyphics and wrapped in silk; its inner cycle is like the life of hibernating animals. This is the cause of the separation, the spying on, and prevention of everything foreign: this is the root of the pride of a nation that only compares itself to itself and neither knows nor loves the foreign. (Herder, 1985, p. 129)

An analysis of Herder’s writing reveals a largely negative impression of the Chinese people, ethics, culture, and language. The reasons for this were not only the negative influence of the Jesuit publications but also his moral ideals regarding the cultural history of humanity. In Herder’s view, Confucius was a yoke that had been imposed on the Chinese and China’s social system.

Through this, the people, like many other nations on the globe, was brought to a halt in the middle of its education, quasi in boyhood, as this driving mechanism of moral education impeded the free progression of the mind forever and no second Confucius was to be found in the despotic empire. (Herder, 1985, p. 133)

Later, Hegel likened the intellectual world of the East, in comparison to the West, to boyhood, youth, and the age of a person (Hegel, 1970b, p. 33ff.), which originated from the same source as Herder’s views.

3 Paradigm III: Besides Greece, India and China are also Birth Places of Philosophy: The Historical Background of Jaspers’ Image of China

In the period of his so-called inner emigration, Jaspers increasingly engaged with Asian philosophy. This school of thought had developed as early as 1900 in Europe, as the sentimentalists, due to the cultural crisis at the turn of the century, attempted to do without Western culture which they perceived as steadily declining, and instead to study the oriental philosophy of India and China. In the process, Jaspers came to the conclusion that besides Greece, there had been original philosophy in India and China. In this regard, he was also influenced by the events in the years following World War I, when European intellectuals started to have doubts about their own culture after the war. In their view, European culture which had previously been overly praised by European intellectuals was exceedingly approaching its downfall. It was at just this moment that Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) described the changing mood of the people during this period in his book The Decline of the West (1918–1922) with pointed criticism. He objected to the basic rules for the periodization of history (Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Age) and to the disinterest of the West towards non-European cultures. He further suggested that European intellectuals should focus their sight on the East. He believed that Western culture was not only facing a crisis but its downfall (Spengler, 2003, p. 21ff). Therefore, the study of oriental philosophy would be a useful attempt for the intellectuals to save the West and to expand their perspective. According to Spengler, the West had overlooked knowledge about itself for a long time, and after the development of the new science of R. Descartes (1596–1650), the consciousness of the people separated from the outside world, so that European philosophy had become a fossilized system and the people had undergone a subject-object-split. He believed that the true consciousness of history and the people was inevitably not the consciousness of an object but of the living history and of living human beings. For this reason, he called his point of view the “Copernican revolution” which signified the downfall of the traditional civilization of the West. Before Jaspers, almost all philosophers over a period of two and a half centuries had developed along the lines that had been put into place by Descartes.

Referring to the famous quote by Hegel that “European philosophy stands above everything,” Jaspers wrote: “We are moving from the dusk of European philosophy to the dawn of world philosophy” (Jaspers, 1977, p. 122). Chinese philosophy, together with Indian and Greek philosophy, formed a world philosophy. In contrast, Hegel wrote: “All history moves towards Christ and springs from him. The emergence of the son of God is the axis of world history” (quoted in Jaspers, 1976, p. 90). About the philosophy of Confucius, Hegel wrote haughtily: “Based on his original works, one can conclude that it would have been better for the reputation of Confucius had he not been translated” (Hegel, 1971b, p. 42). However, after Jaspers studied Confucius he wrote to Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) on September 24, 1957: “I was very impressed by Confucius. Not only did I want to protect him against trivialization on the part of most sinologists, I also found him productive for our own work” (quoted in Köhler & Saner, 1993, p. 261). Hegel was convinced that Europe should be seen as the center of the world order and therefore he divided philosophical development by region: “World history moves from East to West, as Europe is plainly the end of world history, and Asia its beginning” (Hegel, 1971a, p. 134). It was unimaginable for him that there was philosophy in India and China, too, as he believed that these countries only had illusions and superstition. Jaspers disagreed with Hegel’s view of the birth of Jesus as the axis of world history and, therefore, established the new term “Axial Age.” This term offers us a completely new perspective from which we can re-examine human history and the value of different cultures. Furthermore, it offers assessment criteria for the more thorough study of the history of cultures of other nations. In this way, Jaspers freed the minds of the people from the orthodox theories of Hegel and Weber in which Western philosophy holds a position of excessive importance.

4 Conclusions

Hegel describes the dialectics of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis as the fundamental structuring moment of reality. A thesis cannot represent reality on a high level as it does not contain an object (antithesis). Without object, a thesis has no meaning. Therefore, a synthesis is constructed that contains both a thesis and an antithesis. Every step in this process is indispensable for the comprehension of the result. Furthermore, every later period is already included in the earlier period so that none can be substituted by the other. Only when all periods have been experienced, the truth of dialectics can be reached. Indeed, the real cannot be differentiated from the false as easily as we have imagined. Hegel believed that one had to understand that all fragmented matters were false, and that one should not think of such one-sided and limited matters as a whole and instead reverse and correct earlier mistakes and continuously move forward. From a historical perspective, the existence of these three paradigms about the knowledge on China is rational and they all underwent a development process during which they constantly completed themselves.

Even though we criticize the inadequacy of the research findings of Leibniz, Hegel, and Jaspers regarding Chinese culture and philosophy today, we cannot deny the different “paradigms” they have established in the process of studying China. The establishment of the paradigms is owed to their systematic study of China and the methodology of their philosophical standpoints. For us today it is perhaps very easy to point out the mistakes that these three great philosophers made in their interpretation of classic Chinese works. Nevertheless, until now there has been no one that could surpass them regarding the knowledge-production on China and its influence on the time period. As a matter of fact, Hegel recognized his own limitations. In the preface of his book Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel wrote:

To understand what is, is the task of philosophy, as what is, is reason. Regarding the individual, everyone is already a son of his time, and thus philosophy is its time in the form of thought. It is just as foolish to believe any philosophy could transcend its contemporary world, as it would be to believe any individual could jump ahead of his time, could jump beyond Rhodos. (Hegel, 1970a, p. 26)

The views of German philosophers on China were also products of their time. We cannot evaluate great philosophers such as Leibniz, Hegel, and Jaspers based on our own bias. Furthermore, we have no reason for not thoroughly and precisely examining these thoughts and theories due to our own affection for traditional Chinese culture. Hegel did indeed paint a biased image of China, yet he attempted to incorporate a country very far from European civilization into his philosophical field of view under the given historical conditions. This attempt alone holds enough value for us to be studied thoroughly. The paradigm regarding the knowledge on China established by Hegel based on his historical notion of rationalism exerted great influence. At a later time, Karl Marx developed his views on China on this foundation. He endorsed the view of a stagnating Chinese civilization by using the economic research materials of the time more concretely than Hegel. He suggested: “The authority of the Manchu dynasty has been broken into pieces by British arms; the superstitious trust in the immortality of the Celestial Empire fell apart” (Marx, 1985a, p. 244).

In a different article, Marx voiced the opinion that the most important factor to prevent or delay the quick development of trade with China was not the obstacles put into place by the Chinese government, but “the economic structure of Chinese society that is based on the merging of small agriculture with domestic industry” (Marx, 1985b, p. 254).

This “Asiatic mode of production” indicated by Marx had great influence on the sinologist K. A. Wittfogel (1896–1988). The starting point of his research was the argument that China suffered from a natural water scarcity in agriculture. To satisfy the great demand for water, a large amount of labor and financial power had to be mobilized through a central organization of government. In this way, a large bureaucratic apparatus developed that was responsible for the management of the water supply of the whole country. Wittfogel called this particular Chinese social formation a “hydraulic society.” Furthermore, he believed that there were only two institutions in this “hydraulic society,” the bureaucratic apparatus and small-scale agriculture ensuring subsistence. This subsistence-oriented mode of production, also referred to as Asiatic mode of production, was executed through a particular administrative form called “Oriental Despotism.” The public servants employed in this field formed a new social class and controlled all areas of society. Wittfogel suggested that China had reached a high level in many fields, for example in the learned trades and agriculture. Yet unfortunately, social development was prevented by a bureaucratic autocracy. Additionally, oriental society did not change its mode of production in the face of its agricultural and political crisis but extended the regulations that caused the crisis. Chinese history as well as the history of other oriental countries evolved in a circular motion around a center whereas Western society had undergone a spiral development (cf. Wittfogel, 1931, 1962).

On the basis of the “hypothesis about the stagnation of Chinese civilization” established by Hegel and Marx, the American sinologist J. K. Fairbank (1907–1991) proposed his so-called impact-response-model theory. Fairbank believed that every time Chinese culture established a tradition it was not only overly stable but also determinedly stood its ground against the corrosive influence of Western civilization. The so-called development and reform of China’s history was in fact merely a rearrangement of the internal structures of the country, and it was lacking an internal force to destroy the traditional paradigm. Only after a strike by a great external force, China was forced to react to the West and to subsequently break the chains of tradition. The impact of the West on the modernization process of China was supposedly also apparent in the fact that it had managed to separate different systems such as the economy, society, and politics from Chinese traditions so that they could be rationalized and modernized (cf. Teng & Fairbank, 1979).

From a historical perspective, Jaspers’ insights into Chinese thought are much more valuable than those of Leibniz. Leibniz recognized the special value of China after the Jesuits and other philosophers had highly praised Chinese culture. Jaspers on the other hand discovered the importance of Chinese thought after Herder, Hegel, and Marx had heavily criticized Chinese civilization. He included Confucius as one of the “paradigmatic individuals” of history who had made human history like Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus. For Leibniz and Hegel, the study of China, this distant and foreign land, was neither an original intention from which they started nor a goal that they wanted to reach. To explain this problem, I will quote the French philosopher François Jullien:

One knows philosophy as embedded in its questions, and the same questions are periodically fossilized in its tradition. To try and find an operational margin in philosophy, or in other words to try and recover a theoretical initiative, I have chosen to move away from the homeland of philosophy—Greece—and go through China: a strategic detour for the purpose of challenging the preconceived notions buried in European reason and to resurface among our unthought thoughts. (Jullien, 2005, p. 45)

Julia Ching has pointed out in an academic article regarding the view of Leibniz and Wolf on China:

We should understand their endeavors as a usage of China to promote the philosophical and ideological system they believed in. They drew on China as an example to see their own reflection more clearly. (Leibniz, 1993; Qin, 1993, p. 9)

For Leibniz and Hegel, the reason for reaching out to and thoroughly studying China was the expectation of a new perspective, a perspective of the Other, which would help them to better understand and examine their own culture and thinking and to discover the essence of Western thought. This China, which was referred to as the Other, was certainly not the real China. To a large degree, it was created by the thinkers and was closely related to the reality of the West. According to Wing–cheuk Chang’s in-depth research, Leibniz did not grasp the true meaning of Confucian philosophy, especially regarding the Neo-Confucianism of the Song- and Ming-period. This proves that Leibniz’s thinking was not substantially influenced by “real” Confucianism. Leibniz’s tolerant attitude towards China only meant that he wanted to judge Chinese culture based on his own values (cf. Chang, 2000). This paradigm remained unchanged until the emergence of Jaspers’ paradigm. Jaspers did not view the categories offered by European humanities as the starting point but allowed his thought to enter into a dialog to better understand the other two birthplaces of philosophy, China and India. Today we are familiar with the term “Axial Age” that was introduced by Jaspers, because he radically transcended the perspective of a Eurocentric world civilization.

Today we can also apply the idea of an “Axial Age” to the current moment. Just as the great thinkers once established schools of thought in all the major places of the earth, making possible by clearly demarcated communities, today it is necessary that people from the East and the West will establish a new “Axial Age” for the purpose of a global community; an age, in which people, not nations, will decide the fate of humanity (cf. Kubin, 2004, p. 1).