Confucius & the Enlightenment’s Christian von Wolff

About the Book

This thesis is twofold: (1) the accepted wisdom that narrow-minded Pietism’s J. J. Lange, who expelled the enlightened Christian Wolff from Halle, was not as boneheaded as he appeared. Lange’s was a direct rebuttal of a one-sided view within the Aufklärung (enlightenment). And (2) the Confucius of Christian Wolff was every bit as venerable as the philosopher Confucius was, but Confucius was not the enlightenment theologian Wolff effectively made of Confucius. Wolff attacked revealed theology, which he didn’t understand, using Confucius, who he couldn’t articulate.

About the Author

Roy K. McCall was born, raised, and educated in Asia where he lived for three decades. His grandparents moved to China in 1917 and became lifelong admirers of Confucius. In 1995, Roy was invited by China’s Ministry of Education to teach at Nankai University. In 1998, he was the first instructor at Peking University School of Management to place a proprietary student text online free. Roy graduated from Davidson College and Harvard University.