The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci’s teaching on the goodness of human nature in The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven represents the fruit of the first encounter between Catholicism and Confucianism. This lecture will consider the Thomistic and neo-Confucian sources in Ricci’s enunciation of the Catholic doctrine on the goodness of human nature in this Chinese catechism. It will illustrate that Ricci developed his teaching, which is fundamentally Thomistic, with the help of terminology borrowed from the Chinese philosophical tradition. His distinction between the good of nature and the good of virtue leads to prioritising the cultivation of human nature. Ricci’s teaching reflects the Early Modern Jesuits’ appreciation of human freedom. It also displays a Catholic reaction to the sixteenth-century neo-Confucian intellectual trend that ignored the importance of moral cultivation.

耶穌會傳教士利瑪竇在《天主真義》中對人性本善的教導，代表了天主教與儒家初遇的成果。 本講座將探討利瑪竇在這本中文要理問答中闡述天主教關於人性本善的教義中的托馬斯主義和新儒家來源，它將說明利瑪竇在藉用中國哲學傳統的術語的幫助下，發展了他的托馬斯主義的教學。他對性善與德性善的區分引導了對人性的修養的優先考慮。 利瑪竇的教導反映了近代早期耶穌會士對人類自由的欣賞。 它還顯示了天主教對 16 世紀忽視道德修養重要性的新儒家思想潮流的反應。