Towards an Unusual speculum principis? Virtues in the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus’s Proemialis Declaratio

Abstract

The Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687) represents one of the first attempts to translate some fundamental texts of Confucianism into a European language, Latin. In doing this, the Jesuits—and Philippe Couplet in particular—paid attention to the right ways to present Confucius to a Western audience. This appears all the more clear in the Proemialis Declaratio, a long introduction to the work. This paper focuses on those value concepts (pietas, iustitia, and prudentia), which are important both to Confucian and Western Greco-Latin Cultures and which contribute to reading relevant passages of this introduction as a speculum principis, thereby enhancing the success of this work in the French court of Louis XIV.