A New Portrait of a Daoist Sage: Jean-François Foucquet’s Interpretation of the <i>Dao</i>

In the translation history of late imperial China, the Jesuit enterprise played a significant role in translating Western scientific knowledge, a role they performed in tandem with proselytization. The Jesuit Figurists’ re-interpreting and re-writing of the ancient Chinese classics pivoted on symbols, figures, and Chinese characters. The father at the helm of this journey, Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730), embarked on his own Figurist path, navigating by the symbols, figures, and Chinese characters from the <i>Yijing</i>. His followers Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare (1666–1736) and Jean François Foucquet (1665–1741) continued on this track, each further developing his own interpretation of the <i>Dao</i>. Here I will present and explore Foucquet’s journey of the <i>Dao</i> and his presentation of the Christian God and Jesus Christ as Daoist sages by investigating his Chinese, French, and Latin manuscripts that discuss his reinterpretation of the <i>Dao</i> in the Chinese classics, especially the <i>Yijing</i> and <i>Daodejing</i>. In these manuscripts, Foucquet adopted typological exegesis and exhibited his inheritance of the Confucian-Christian-<i>Dao</i> synthesis from his senior Bouvet; he also identified the <i>Dao</i> as Deus and the Oneness of the Dao as the unity of the Holy Trinity. This micro-historical case study of Foucquet’s interpretation of the <i>Dao</i> shows how his navigating the strait between the Scylla and Charybdis of the emperor and the Holy See factored into his trajectory of interpreting the <i>Dao</i>; it also demonstrates that in response to being challenged by his own brothers in the Catholic Church, he cleaved to typological exegesis and Confucian-Christian-<i>Dao</i> synthesis. The significance of this paper lies in that the early understanding of the <i>Dao</i> was manipulated, especially among the Figurists, both as a tool for proselytization and as a bridge to link the East with the West.