A CHINA NO PENSAMENTO DE JOSÉ DA COSTA NUNES高若瑟對中國的看法
António Aresta’s article examines how José da Costa Nunes—a Portuguese figure active in the East, particularly in Macao—conceived of China and interpreted its culture and history. Taking as its point of departure the intellectual and moral context of late 19th-century Macao—marked by political-insti...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
2013
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40041/2903 |
| Summary: | António Aresta’s article examines how José da Costa Nunes—a Portuguese figure active in the East, particularly in Macao—conceived of China and interpreted its culture and history. Taking as its point of departure the intellectual and moral context of late 19th-century Macao—marked by political-institutional instability, the erosion of knowledge, and social tensions exacerbated by epidemics and rumors—the author frames Costa Nunes’s reflections as a response to a broader crisis of values, not merely local but civilizational. Methodologically, Aresta undertakes a historical-interpretive and contextual reading of the writings and interventions attributable to the author, cross-referencing them with contemporary documents that allow the conditions under which his perspective was produced to be situated (notably correspondence, reports, and administrative acts). The conclusions suggest that José da Costa Nunes’s “vision of China” is not reducible to exoticism or a purely missionary judgment, but rather articulates an observation of the world with a moral and religious project, conceiving the reformulation of the social ethos as a means to confront cultural degradation. Thus, China emerges simultaneously as an object of knowledge and as a critical mirror of European and colonial difficulties, revealing continuities and tensions between doctrine, pragmatism, and expectations of the re-Christianization of public life. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |