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A Friend Who Does Me No Good: Aphorism in Matteo Ricci’s On A Friend Who Does Me No Good: Aphorism in Matteo Ricci’s On
Friendship Friendship
Maximilian Chan Weiher
Macalester College
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A Friend Who Does Me No Good:
Aphorism in Matteo Ricci’s On Friendship
Maximilian Chan Weiher
Macalester College Asian Languages and Cultures Department
Dr. Rivi Handler-Spitz, advisor
May 1, 2023
Abstract
This paper argues that Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) designed his
aphoristic compilation, Jiaoyou Lun 交友論–On Friendship (1595)–to serve the
Jesuit mission of converting the Chinese to Catholicism and express the conflict
he may have felt exploiting friends to forward the Jesuit mission. Utilizing
friendships to allow for greater social influence was central to the Jesuit
proselytization strategy in China. However, Ricci’s moral education from youth
taught him to judge utilitarian friendships as immoral. The extant scholarship
regarding Ricci’s On Friendship fails to acknowledge the significance of the
aphoristic form to this work. To illuminate the value of aphorism to the Jesuit
mission and this book, I analyze a selection of the book’s one-hundred maxims.
My interpretation emphasizes the tone of authority and universality established
through the genre’s concision. This brevity can raise questions about the meaning
of the text and spark conversations, strengthening friendships among readers, and
arguably furthering the goals of the mission. Additionally, the text’s inconsistent
moral portrayal of utilitarian friendship may reveal Ricci’s ambivalence about his
own friendships with Chinese literati. Through close reading of On Friendship, I
posit that the aphorism's brevity and ambiguity may have allowed Ricci to express
his emotional unrest while still crafting a book that could be considered a tool of
proselytization.
2
Introduction
Matteo Ricci carried the Catholic church’s mission to the East. Tasked
with entering China and spreading the word of Christ, he integrated himself into
Chinese society, learning how to dress, speak, and act like the Chinese, all “for the
greater glory of God.” However, Ricci’s efforts in proselytizing did not mean that
he lived in China bluntly trying to force Chinese people to accept Catholicism.
Instead, through building friendly relationships and creating fascinating works of
literature, Ricci wove together the intellectual traditions of East and West with the
goal of influencing the Chinese. One such literary work was a gift, presented to a
blue-blooded friend. In 1595, Matteo Ricci composed a treatise on friendship,
titled Jiaoyou Lun 交友論–On Friendship–to offer the Prince Kang Yi of Jian an.
A compilation of one hundred aphorisms sourced from a variety of works from
his Jesuit education, On Friendship takes the form of a collection of pithy sayings
from the Western tradition.
The book presented by his European friend greatly pleased Prince Kang
Yi.
1
The elite social circles in which the prince moved learned of Ricci’s book and
developed a hunger to read its contents. Eventually, a friend of the Jesuits decided
to have the book published, so On Friendship became available to the Ming
literati. The prince read On Friendship alone as the first reader of the text, but as
the book entered elite circles, it became part of a more social intellectual culture.
1
Matteo Ricci, On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince, trans. Timothy
Billings (Columbia University Press, 2009), 9.
3
Instead of the solitary role Prince Kang Yi had as the text’s first reader, within
literati circles, the book could be discussed by friends.
This book was received enthusiastically by the Chinese literati, being
printed, revised and reprinted many times by both Jesuits in China and Chinese
friends;
2
the work bolstered Ricci’s social standing with the Chinese elite.
According to Ricci’s journals, the book that he presented to the prince as On
Friendship was not originally aphoristic. According to the journals that Ricci
wrote in the year before his death, Ricci planned to write the book known as On
Friendship as a dialogue between himself and Prince Kang Yi.
3
However, because
no known editions of On Friendship exist in the form of dialogue, it is likely that
Ricci decided to write in aphorism for On Friendship early in the drafting process.
From this change in form a question rises: why a compilation of aphorisms? Later
in life, Ricci would publish other works in dialogue form, and by no means was
his writing known for being aphoristic. Further, the majority of the authors from
whom Ricci sourced On Friendship’s content from were not known for being
aphoristic. Therefore, Matteo Ricci’s decision to write On Friendship as a
collection of aphorisms is a distinct and significant point of interest for the work.
This paper examines the significance of Ricci’s use of aphorism through a
close reading of a few of the aphorisms in On Friendship. More specifically, this
paper argues that the use of aphorism created an easy-to-read, highly concise
sampling of the Western intellectual tradition’s theory of friendship. The genre’s
3
Ricci, On Friendship, 10.
2
Ricci, On Friendship, 2.
4
concision established a tone of authority and universality, and also potentially
created conversations between readers through ambiguity, developing the Jesuits’
standing in Ming China, and therefore serving the Jesuit mission. Also, by writing
On Friendship as a compilation of aphorisms, Ricci portrayed the moral value of
utilitarian friendship inconsistently, perhaps exposing inner conflict regarding his
own friendship with members of the Chinese elite.
This paper begins with a brief historical overview of On Friendship and its
treatment in recent scholarship. Then it describes the relationship between the
aphoristic form and friendship. Next, it analyzes a few of Ricci’s aphorisms with
the goal of substantiating the claim that Matteo Ricci chose a compilation of
aphorisms for On Friendship so as to convey some of the deeply conflicted
emotions that he felt as a major player in the Jesuit China mission. Finally, it
analyzes an additional few of Ricci’s aphorisms to reveal how the choice of genre
aided the Jesuit mission.
Background to On Friendship
After receiving a Jesuit education in Rome and staying in Goa for four
years, Ricci was summoned to join the Jesuit mission in China. First arriving in
Macao, and eventually traveling into the mainland, he followed the Jesuit mission
to Nanchang 南昌. By this point in Ricci’s career in China, he and his confrères
had already learned Chinese, become near-experts in Chinese culture, and adopted
the dress of Confucian literati. In Nanchang, Ricci built a friendship with Prince
Kang Yi that resulted in Ricci’s writing On Friendship and giving it to the prince.
5
Ricci’s choice of friendship as the subject for the book was not random. In
Ming China, friendship was a hot topic of conversation for the literati and the
elite. The popularity of the topic among the people he was trying to convert
motivated Ricci’s choice to write about friendship. By writing on a popular theme,
Ricci created a work that was bound to generate discussion and interest in himself
and the Jesuits. Friendship was a comparably hot topic in Renaissance Europe,
where Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) published his essay “Of Friendship” in
1580.
4
In the Ming dynasty, where success for educated men depended on their
performance in the highly selective civil service examinations, friends proved
useful not only as sources of study help, but also sources for finding alternatives
should a man fail to pass the exam.
5
Additionally, to the many educated men in
the Ming dynasty who were deeply invested in self-cultivation, friends could
serve as a means of inspiring reflection. With friends, an educated man was able
to have conversations about morality, ethics, and proper virtue. Through these
conversations, the high virtue of a literatus’ friends would rub off on the literatus,
he would be given an opportunity to reflect on his own values, and he would
eventually develop a deeper understanding of the self–a highly desirable outcome
in the Ming. This ties into the deep intellectual culture present in the Ming
dynasty, which resulted in meetings among elites to discuss all things learning and
5
Martin W. Huang, “Male-Male Sexual Bonding and Male Friendship in Late Imperial China,”
Journal of the History of Sexuality 22, no. 2 (2013): 3.
4
Seigneur de Michel Eyquem Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald
Frame (Stanford University Press, 1958), 38.
6
self-betterment.
6
As individuals went to these meetings more often, they naturally
came to meet others who they wanted to deepen their relationship. In this way, the
Ming dynasty’s intellectual culture helped to fuel the passion the literati had for
friendship.
Further, the increasingly commercial Ming economy allowed for increased
opportunities for social mobility, resulting in a China that was less hierarchical
than the China of the past. This resulted in a society that was supportive of
friendship between individuals of differing social classes.
7
Within the wulun 五
倫–the five cardinal human relationships in Confucianism–friendship was widely
considered to be the least important. This placed the relationship between friends
beneath those between father and son, ruler and minister, husband and wife, and
older and younger brother. Unlike the four other relationships in the wulun,
friendship is the only bond that is actively chosen by the participant in the
relationship. Friendship is also notably the least hierarchical.
8
Because of
friendship’s comparatively egalitarian nature, those who lived in the less
hierarchical Ming China naturally gravitated toward it.
Ultimately, the quality of Ming China that made it a time in Chinese
history when friendship flourished was not that the people who lived during the
time period were particularly friendly. Instead, because of the fiery intellectual
discussions regarding friendship and the willingness of Ming literati to take
8
Norman Kutcher, “The Fifth Relationship: Dangerous Friendships in the Confucian Context,”
The American Historical Review 105, no. 5 (2000): 1615.
7
Ana Carolina Hosne, “Friendship among Literati. Matteo Ricci SJ (1552–1610) in Late Ming
China,” The Journal of Transcultural Studies 5, no. 1 (July 1, 2014): 191.
6
Miaofen Lü, “Practice as Knowledge: Yang-Ming Learning and Chiang-Hui in
Sixteenth-Century China” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1997), 119.
7
friendship as a topic to write on, friendship in Ming China gained a level of moral
significance that it had not held before in China’s history. Because of the high
level of moral significance friendship held in the Ming dynasty, Matteo Ricci
likely chose to write about friendship to captivate the many elites who were
already obsessed with it.
On Friendship developed organically: the book started as a translation
exercise for Ricci, pulling from Andreas Eborensis’ 1569 Sententiae et exempla
(Wise Sayings and Illustrative Anecdotes) for content. With the help of hired
native Chinese speakers, Ricci translated a number of the sayings from the book.
9
The compilation of translated phrases evolved into a text taking the form of
dialogue, and then into the collection of Western aphorisms in classical Chinese
on friendship that is known today. The book’s content is nearly entirely secular;
only two of the maxims in On Friendship mention the Catholic god at all.
Certainly, the omission of Christian content is an extension of the essential Jesuit
strategy of accommodation which Ricci helped to develop in the Jesuit China
mission. Jesuits adapted Christianity to the culture of those they aimed to convert.
This makes On Friendship oblique in its function as a tool of proselytization.
Ultimately, the book became popular among the Chinese elite because of
the exotic nature of a compilation of Western maxims on friendship as well as the
remarkable similarity between Chinese and Western values concerning friendship
presented in the book. As it was originally presented to the prince and originally
printed, On Friendship only had seventy-six maxims. The third revision of On
9
Ricci, On Friendship, 8, 12.
8
Friendship is the earliest edition known to contain all one hundred maxims. This
edition was published in 1601 in Beijing.
10
The book’s popularity among scholars
was not limited to the Ming dynasty; today’s scholars also have analyzed the
significance of On Friendship in a variety of ways.
While lacking any discussion on the significance of aphorism in On
Friendship, today’s scholarship on the book varies greatly in analysis. For
example, Ana Carolina Hosne asserts that On Friendship is a site of common
ground between Western and Chinese intellectual traditions, allowing Ricci to
make first contact with his literati audience.
11
Liu Yu argues that while generally
lacking any form of “philosophical distinction” or “thematic structure,” On
Friendship succeeds in evangelizing by presenting Western ideas as compatible
with Confucianism as a cover for Catholicism.
12
Xu Dongfeng instead posits that
On Friendship fails as a tool for conversion because it forwards the compatibility
of pagan friendship and Confucian friendship rather than Catholic and Confucian
friendship.
13
While generally recognizing the significance of On Friendship to
Ricci’s ability to expand his social network, the extant body of scholarship
overlooks the significance of aphorism to On Friendship. This paper illuminates
the significance of literary form, starting with how the genre of aphorism is
especially apt for writing about friendship.
13
Dongfeng Xu, Friendship and Hospitality: The Jesuit-Confucian Encounter in Late Ming China
(State University of New York Press, 2021), 88.
12
Yu Liu, “The Preparation for Proselytizing: Matteo Ricci’s Treatise ‘Jiao-You-Lun (On
Friendship),’” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 43, no. 3 (2010): 175.
11
Hosne, “Friendship among Literati. Matteo Ricci SJ (1552–1610) in Late Ming China,” 194.
10
Ricci, On Friendship, 140.
9
The Social Aphorism
The aphorism at first glance seems solitary. It is as concise as a literary
form can be. Each aphorism in On Friendship holds the rhetorical weight
necessary to stand by itself. Despite the aphorism’s pithy nature and apparent
autonomy, aphorisms seldom come without a herd of other aphorisms. As Andrew
Hui puts in his book A Theory of the Aphorism, each aphorism appears to be
complete in itself, but “also forms a node in a network, often a transnational one
with great longevity, capable of continuous expansion.”
14
As Hui explains,
aphorisms exist in compilations and collections like On Friendship. In
compilations, individual maxims reside in conversion with each other, forming
systems of related axioms with complementary or contradictory meanings. In this
way, the aphoristic genre is highly social, like social networks of friends.
15
In addition to the connection between the book’s aphoristic form and focus
on friendship, the sociability of the aphorism connects to the Jesuits’ primary
proselytization strategy. The Jesuits’ careers were built on forming connections
and networking. In China, the Jesuits dealt in friendship. By dressing and acting
as Confucian scholars–members of high society–they gained full access to the
elite that acquired huge, sprawling social networks. Without access to such elite
individuals as friends, the Jesuits would not have as many opportunities to convert
others. Further, they would also have lacked the connections necessary for finding
15
Hui, A Theory of the Aphorism, 7.
14
Andrew Hui, A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter (Princeton University Press,
2019), 3.
10
additional people to speak with and convert. Therefore, in China, developing large
networks of male friends became a prominent aspect of Jesuit life.
But making friends did not serve the Jesuits’ personal interests, nor did
they do it for personal gain: making friends and socializing all played into the
Jesuit motto, ad maiorem dei gloriam–“for the greater glory of God.” In Ming
China, Ricci and the Jesuits’ method of proselytization became a cycle of
participating in lengthy discussions on philosophy and other topics, attending
lavish banquet dinners, and drinking large amounts of tea and wine, all for the
goal of developing relationships.
16
If those at the very top of the social hierarchy
were able to influence the uneducated masses, the Jesuits’ logic led them to try
converting those at the top so their influence would trickle down and reach those
of lower status. Even for the devout European Jesuits, the opportunities provided
by developing friendships were so vast that during the Christian holiday of Lent
where the Catholics were expected to fast, they would still attend the luxurious
and extravagant dinner parties that allowed them to expand their precious social
network. They’d be sure to skip lunch the following day to make up for the
previous evening’s indulgences.
17
It was because of adaptations like these that
Ricci and the Jesuits were able to make many connections, and these habits also
show the degree of importance that forming friendships took within the China
mission’s proselytization strategy.
17
Laven, Mission to China, 86.
16
Mary Laven, Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East (London:
Faber and Faber, 2011), 84.
11
Like the individual people that form a social network, the individual
maxims in an aphoristic work have complex, internal relationships. The networks
of aphorisms generated from maxims that converse with one another parallel the
book’s content and the larger Jesuit approach to proselytizing. Therefore, the
sociability of the aphoristic form makes it specifically apt for writing about
friendship and it also mirrors the social component of the Jesuits’ strategy for
winning converts. Conversation between aphorisms is clearly an important
component of On Friendship, especially aphorisms with contradictory meanings.
The following section explores a selection of contradictory aphorisms on the topic
of utilitarian friendship.
On Friendship: Exposing the Emotional Interior
It would be natural when first examining a Jesuit work such as On
Friendship to consider how the work contributes to the mission’s proselytization
efforts. Equally important are aspects of the text that are more intimately related
to the author. In the case of On Friendship, because of the diversity of sources the
book’s aphorisms come from, there are many internal inconsistencies. These are
not a weakness, but instead a benefit. The inconsistency possible in On
Friendship because of the genre may have given Ricci an avenue to express
conflicted emotions on the topic of utilitarian friendship that he may otherwise not
have had.
In Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) Nicomachean Ethics which Ricci read during
his days at the Jesuit Roman College, he learned of Aristotle’s three types of
12
friends: friendships of utility, pleasure and virtue. Aristotle considered friendships
of utility as less valuable and less morally sound than friendships of virtue, since
utility-based friendships are more susceptible to influence from outside factors,
rather than a shared commitment to the other.
18
The utilitarian friend is one who
forms close bonds for reasons other than the company of those whom he
befriends. According to this definition, the friendships that Ricci developed with
Ming literati were highly utilitarian and therefore morally suspect. Ricci’s goal in
befriending individuals like Prince Kang Yi ultimately was the Jesuits’ gain. After
befriending high society members, they would take advantage of their broad
social network to further increase their social clout. To Ricci, friendship was
polyvalent. Friendship was both a tool to further the mission, and also something
that in his education ought not to be corrupted with utilitarian purposes.
Therefore, Ricci’s primary strategy of proselytization became something
that he had learned was immoral. It is likely that Ricci actually enjoyed the
company of the literati whom he was tasked with converting, but his interactions
would always be tainted by the ulterior motive that all of the Jesuits had–winning
converts. The moral education Ricci received in youth could have made building
utilitarian friendships as he did in China upsetting and confusing. This conflicted
emotional state may manifest itself in the inconsistent moral portrayal of
utilitarian relationships in On Friendship. In one aphorism from On Friendship,
Ricci draws upon from his moral education and criticizes utilitarian friendship:
18
Aristotle, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp (Cambridge University Press, 2014),
8.3.
13
交友使獨知利己，不復顧益其友，是商賈之人耳，不可謂友也。
28: “Whoever makes friends thinking only of personal profit without also
considering the benefit of a friend is nothing more than a merchant, and cannot be
called a friend.”
19
In this aphorism, Ricci criticizes those who make friends for personal
benefit. Ricci even chooses to use a very politically charged character li 利: a
character that Ricci’s audience–the Prince and the Ming elite–would certainly
have known. Meaning profit, li is a word that appears early in the Mencius as
something to be criticized. In Mencius' first chapter, Mencius meets with a king
who asks if Mencius will profit the kingdom. Mencius does not take this choice of
words well, stating that righteousness 義 and benevolence 仁 are his goals, and
profit is what leads individuals away from proper virtue.
20
Mencius 孟子
(372–289 BC) was an inheritor of Confucian thought and is known for further
developing the moral teachings of Confucius. By the Ming dynasty, Mencius’
contributions to the Confucian canon were fully integrated into the civil service
examinations to be memorized by all students, so the Ming elite were deeply
familiar with Mencian thought. The Ming elite’s familiarity with Mencius meant
that Ricci’s use of the word li resulted in an aphorism strongly criticizing
utilitarian friendship.
20
Mencius, The Chinese Classics: Vol. 2: The Works of Mencius, ed. James Legge (Palala Press,
1861), 1A:1-3.
19
Ricci, On Friendship, 103.
14
Through a relevant cultural reference to Mencius, Ricci solidly asserts that
one who makes friends only for personal benefit cannot be considered a friend, as
he had learned in his youth. However, his stance on utilitarian friends is not
consistent. The aphorism immediately following reads:
友之物皆與共。
29: “The material goods of friends are all held in common.”
21
If one reads the character wu as “material goods”, then it is not
unreasonable to assert that the aphorism regarding material goods supports those
who make friends for material benefit, as–according to this aphorism–friends are
supposed to share all things. The following two aphorisms also present utilitarian
friendship in a positive light:
相須相佑，為結友之由。
3: “Mutual need and mutual support are the reasons to make friends.”
22
友人無所善我，與仇人無所害我等焉。
23: “A friend who does me no good is like an enemy who does me no harm.”
23
23
Ricci, On Friendship, 99.
22
Ricci, On Friendship, 91.
21
Ricci, On Friendship, 103. I will present an alternative reading of this aphorism later. See
footnote 34.
15
These three aphorisms put the benefit to the self at the center of friendship. The
aphorism regarding mutual need (3) even goes as far as to say that the entire
reason for making friends is to benefit the self. The character shan 善, translated
by Billings as “do good,” has a distinct moral implication in classical Chinese. In
the aphorism regarding friends who do no good (23), Ricci likely does not mean
that one’s friend is supposed to provide material benefit. “Moral betterment” is a
more accurate reading. While not necessarily utilitarian in a material sense, this
still supports a utilitarian view of friendship in terms of self-cultivation. The
utility of a friend in this aphorism (23) is of moral benefit, helping one attain
greater virtue. Together, these three aphorisms clash with the aphorism on profit
(28), in addition to Ricci’s moral education. Together, the three paint a picture of
Ricci the evangelist who understands how the friends he makes in China can
benefit the mission.
Clearly, On Friendship is not consistent in its view on utilitarian friends.
However, this should not be seen as a philosophical weakness of On Friendship.
Because On Friendship is a compilation of aphorisms from many different
sources, Ricci did not need to commit to a single interpretation of friendship.
There are inconsistencies because the sources from which he pulled content were
also inconsistent. However, because he does not cite his sources, readers have the
impression that all of the aphorisms represent his own views.
The Ricci in On Friendship comes across as very conflicted. He’s torn
between his mission as a Jesuit and his moral education. This internal, emotional
conflict manifests itself as the inconsistencies present in the book. From his
16
letters, we know that Ricci claimed the friendships he made were not morally
wrong, because he and the Jesuits were not searching for “honors” in exchange
for friendship.
24
However, the Ricci who gave prisms, maps, and other gifts to
Prince Kang Yi with the purpose of gaining influence is the same Ricci who
would write:
友之饋友而望報，非饋也，與市易者等耳。
9: “A friend who gives a gift to another friend and expects something in return
has made no gift at all, but is no different from a trader in the marketplace.”
25
It is clear from this inconsistency in stance on utilitarian friends that Ricci did not
appreciate transactionality in friendships, and yet, his career as a Jesuit was
entirely dependent on the benefits of building relationships. Surely, Ricci must
have experienced a degree of cognitive dissonance when making friends in China.
The genre of On Friendship provided an environment for Ricci to write a book as
conflicted as he potentially felt acting against the dictates of his moral education.
His cognitive dissonance may have created inconsistencies among aphorisms in
On Friendship, also making it a highly debatable book. If Ming literati had read a
hypothetical version of On Friendship that was entirely consistent, they might not
have had as much to discuss as they did with the highly inconsistent version of On
Friendship. Through the use of aphorism in On Friendship Ricci was able to
25
Ricci, On Friendship, 93.
24
R. Po-chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552-1610 (Oxford University
Press, 2010), 168.
17
express a collection of diverse feelings, just as the book is made up of a diverse
collection of aphorisms.
On Friendship: A Tool for Proselytization
In late-Ming China, collecting items was a very popular pastime.
26
In
spending time amassing and curating collections that would include items like
paintings or calligraphy, Ming literati were able to express their inner refinement
and taste through their displayed material goods. The elite would spend large
amounts of money and time establishing collections of items that they personally
found aesthetically pleasing, exotic, foreign, or unusual. However, the value of
the compiled items was not limited to the individual items’ aesthetic value. To
enjoy a collection in Ming China was a way for elites to enjoy their leisure time in
a refined manner. Collections in Ming China were not limited to items typically
thought of as art. Practically every object found in Ming elite culture was
something to collect. One Lu Shu-sheng 陸樹聲 (1509-1605) had a collection of
inkstones and found them so wonderful that he took on the name “Master of Ten
Inkstones,” as a means of expressing appreciation for his collection.
27
In addition
to collecting objects, Ming elites would also collect books. Acquiring knowledge
and deepening one’s understanding of morality and philosophy was rooted in
Ming China’s deep intellectual culture centered on moral cultivation. Therefore,
the collection of books naturally fell at the center of connoisseur culture.
27
Li, “The Collector, the Connoisseur, and Late-Ming Sensibility,” 287.
26
Wai-Yee Li, “The Collector, the Connoisseur, and Late-Ming Sensibility,” T’oung Pao 81, no. 4
(January 1, 1995): 269–302.
18
Those deeply invested in the culture of connoisseurship in Ming China
often also wrote and consumed texts on collecting. These texts included books
that described the minute details of the proper way to examine and curate
collections according to particular rules of style and taste. These texts also
included individual accounts regarding the experience of collecting.
28
This
fascination bordering on obsession with collecting helps to contextualize On
Friendship. Ricci’s On Friendship takes the form of a collection. It is a
compilation of thoughts on friendship from Ricci’s education. In Ricci’s
introduction to On Friendship, he notes that he 輯成友道一帙, or “compiled this
Way of Friendship in one volume.”
29
He collected the thoughts of the Western
thinkers who influenced his own thinking on friendship, and presented it to an
audience who already deeply valued connoisseurship and collecting. In this way,
the patchwork form of On Friendship serves the purposes of the text. To a Ming
literatus, as On Friendship enters elite circles, there is already an established
culture of connoisseurship. Because of this, it is logical to assume that a Ming
literatus would be predisposed to take interest in Ricci’s On Friendship due to its
nature as a collection.
Interestingly, although some literati considered collecting a trivial
passtime, as evidenced by the title of Ming dynasty scholar Wen Zhenheng’s 文震
亨 book: 長物志 Treatise on Superfluous Things, the aphoristic form of On
Friendship contrasts the text’s possibly superfluous nature as a collection. Treatise
29
Ricci, On Friendship, 89.
28
Li, “The Collector, the Connoisseur, and Late-Ming Sensibility,” 276.
19
on Superfluous Things was a collection manual that described the proper way to
construct a garden or organize a room. The very title seems to imply that the
material culture of connoisseurship in early modern China is “superfluous.”
However, the words found in Ricci’s collection of western thought on
friendship are aphoristic, so they are anything but superfluous. As Andrew Hui
writes in A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter, “in the aphorism
nothing is superfluous, every word bears weight.”
30
Ricci’s On Friendship is able
to benefit from the strengths of both being a collection and of being aphoristic. By
being legible as a collection, On Friendship is familiar and interesting to the
prince and Ricci’s Ming elite audience. And, by being aphoristic, On Friendship
is able to convey meaning in the smallest textual units possible. The form’s
compact size echoes the collection of miniatures, or xiaopin 小品 popular in the
Ming.
31
Readers are able to enjoyably peruse On Friendship as they would a
collection of stones, but on a subsequent read, they may study individual
aphorisms more closely or even the individual characters within those aphorisms.
By writing On Friendship as a collection of aphorisms, Ricci nudges his
audience towards perusing On Friendship as one would any collection. The
aphorism’s pithy nature is what allows On Friendship to be legible as a collection,
with each maxim considerably deeper in meaning than the number of words or
characters may imply while still being a browsable text. The aphoristic form’s
brevity is at the center of the book’s power as a tool for proselytization. Not only
31
Li, “The Collector, the Connoisseur, and Late-Ming Sensibility,” 276.
30
Hui, A Theory of the Aphorism, 1.
20
by attracting fans of collecting, the genre’s concision also helps develop a tone of
authority.
Without the allowance for wordiness that other genres grant, in aphorism,
Ricci has no room for a nuanced argument. The aphorism is a statement of a
drawn conclusion, but the reader is not privy to the author’s thought process for
reaching that conclusion. In the structure of each aphorism, Ricci makes claim to
knowledge of how the world truly is, rather than writing a series of sentences
about how the world could possibly be. To write a series of hypothetical
conjectures would not be aphoristic. In this way, the book’s genre forces Ricci to
write declaratively, which ultimately serves his goal as a Jesuit attempting to
assert knowledge over those he is trying to convert. For example:
忍友之惡，便以他惡為己惡焉。
33: “If we tolerate the vices of a friend, then those vices become our own vices.”
32
Without the room to qualify or explain his reasoning in multiple sentences, in
aphorism Ricci has to write with authority. In this example, Ricci states exactly
what happens when one tolerates the vices of a friend. By definition, what Ricci
writes in his aphoristic book has to be succinct. Ricci writes exactly that when one
tolerates a friend’s vices, there is a single outcome: the friend’s vices become our
own. In this way, the aphorism’s concision is the root of the book’s tone of
authority. Authority helps the book act as a tool of proselytization because
32
Ricci, On Friendship, 105.
21
exerting intellectual dominance over the Chinese allowed Jesuits to more easily
win converts.
The formatting of the aphorisms as they were originally printed further
supports this tone. As Ricci writes in his introduction, the aphorisms presented in
On Friendship are compiled from his own learning in the West. Notably, in the
actual text of On Friendship, there are no sources provided for any of the written
aphorisms. Li Zhizao 李之藻 was one of the most important Chinese Christian
converts in the Ming dynasty, converted by Ricci himself. He collaborated with
the Jesuits, publishing books like his 1629 Tian Xue Chu Han 天学初函. The
version of On Friendship presented in Tian Xue Chu Han reflects the way that the
book was originally available to the Ming elite. In this version of On Friendship,
not only are the individual aphorisms not numbered as they are in Billings’
translation, but no sources are given. While Ricci concedes in the introduction
that he compiled the aphorisms from many different sources, his refusal to
acknowledge his sources creates a situation in which the reader could easily
ascribe the text’s words to Ricci himself. This ascription potentially incorrectly
places Ricci’s role as the synthesizer of content rather than the editor of the book’s
content, and also ups the authority that Ricci wields over the reader. If each
maxim lacks a source, the reader can easily misconstrue Ricci as a great sage of
the West, able to write genius original pithy sayings. Allowing for this kind of
misunderstanding increases Ricci’s authority, potentially making the Chinese elite
more willing to accept what he says about Catholicism.
22
The book’s concision and lack of sources establish a tone of authority. In
constructing aphorisms that claim to know how the world truly is, Ricci makes a
claim to knowledge. This is a major strength of choosing aphorism as the form for
the book. Ricci is able to write highly concise maxims without explanation or
other justification for each aphorism because of the form. Using aphorism means
that the book expresses how the world truly is–according to Ricci–establishing
authority over the reader as the Jesuits attempted to establish intellectual authority
in China.
Similar to the tone of authority created from the book’s brevity, the genre’s
concision also creates a tone of universality. Ricci’s aphorisms tend not to
mention who the aphorism applies to. By forming an aphorism by using verbs and
without specifying the subject, Ricci crafts an aphorism that is universal. The
characters of the aphorism aren’t applicable to a specific person; rather they apply
generally to all people. In the context of Ricci’s mission as a Jesuit, this is a
valuable rhetorical technique. Rather than presenting Western thinking as only
applicable to Europeans, Ricci writes aphorisms that are meant to be applicable to
everyone. The Chinese of course, are included in this universal scope. The
aphorism on tolerating the vices of a friend (33) clarifies the universality inherent
to Ricci’s aphorisms:
23
忍友之惡，便以他惡為己惡焉。
33: “If we tolerate the vices of a friend, then those vices become our own vices.”
33
The aphorism begins with the character ren 忍, which means to tolerate. In the
first half of the aphorism, there is no mention of whose friends are the subject.
The second half of the aphorism follows suit, with the closest character to a
pronoun being ta 他, meaning him, or in this case his. Therefore, this word just
refers to the friend from the first half of the maxim.
By presenting his aphorisms as universal, Ricci bridges the gap between
Western and Chinese traditions. Rather than citing the teachings of the West as
only applicable to them, Ricci’s language asserts that it is applicable to the world.
Specificity is not something that the aphorism’s concise nature allows for.
Specifying who each maxim is applicable to would act counter to the aphorism’s
pithy nature. Therefore, the aphorism’s characteristic concision and broad
applicability help to further Ricci’s goals as a Jesuit.
In this way, a tone of authority and universality are products of the genre’s
concise nature. The genre’s concision did not only aid the Jesuit mission through
establishing tone, it also made the text indeterminate. The multiplicity of
meanings for each individual character make classical Chinese a versatile
language. However, this means that for a reader, a character with many meanings
may have to be contextualized by its surrounding characters. In a pithy form like
33
Ricci, On Friendship, 105. This is the same aphorism presented in footnote 32, but I have struck
through the words Billings added in his translation to make the sentence grammatical in English.
24
aphorism, the valuable context provided by other characters is highly limited. For
a single maxim that is able to stand alone, the only context available for a given
character is from the other characters within its own maxim. This makes certain
aphorisms that use polyvalent characters perfect for inspiring discussion. One
such aphorism is:
友之物皆與共。
29: “The material goods of friends are all held in common.”
34
Between friends all is common (my own translation).
Wu is one such polyvalent character that could have inspired discussion. In the
original, wu could have many other such as things, colors, people, or wanwu 萬
物–the myriad things.
35
Ricci utilized this ambiguity to forward his efforts in
proselytization. By using words that have many meanings, Ricci may have been
able to create conversations about his book and the individual words within. By
making the book often ambiguous in meaning, conversations surrounding the
book’s content likely often materialized.
On Friendship is very easy to read and pick up, but also hard to grasp.
This structure ensures that On Friendship is debatable. In this way the short,
digestible, yet thought-provoking nature of On Friendship makes it perfectly
constructed for the culture obsessed with curiosities and collection. In the same
35
Hanyu Da Cidian, s.v. “物.”
34
Ricci, On Friendship, 103.
25
manner that Ricci presented Western gifts like prisms, maps, and clavichords with
the purpose of sparking conversation, Ricci presents various intellectual
curiosities from the Western tradition that are just long enough to convey their
individual meaning, and short enough to read quickly. Aphorisms like the
aphorism on material goods (29), with polyvalent words like wu, embody this
concise yet stimulating strength of aphorism. This nature may have sparked
conversations. Spoken word discussions held by Chinese literati–called jianghui
講會–were popular forums meant for lengthy debates on writing, art, friendship,
and especially ethics. At these meetings, members discussed popular texts like On
Friendship.
The many students attracted by Wang Yangming’s 王陽明 (1472–1528)
teachings on the heart and mind participated in jianghui and learned through
discussion.
36
At these meetings, groups of elite men came together to debate and
benefited from the friends they made.
37
Not only were jianghui integral in the rise
of friendship during the Ming Dynasty, jianghui also may have been a location for
On Friendship to grow in popularity among elite men. At the time On Friendship
was circulated among elite circles, jianghui likely helped to further increase the
book’s recognition, therefore also increasing Ricci and the Jesuits’ influence.
Polyvalent characters like wu likely helped to inspire these conversations. The
characters are made ambiguous by the aphoristic form, strengthening the
connection between the book’s genre and Jesuit goals.
37
Lü, “Practice as Knowledge: Yang-Ming Learning and Chiang-Hui in Sixteenth-Century
China,” 119.
36
Xu, Friendship and Hospitality, 84.
26
Ricci’s choosing to use the character wu did not only serve the purpose of
fueling conversations. This maxim, borrowed from Erasmus (1466-1536) can
have a variety of meanings, many supporting Ricci’s proselytization efforts. The
original maxim from Erasmus in Latin reads, amicorum communia omnia,
translated to English as “friends hold all things in common.”
38
This means that in
the context of Ricci’s aphorism, wu can be taken to mean almost anything. Wu
could mean values, implying that the morals of friends should accord. Wu could
mean people, meaning that one friend ought to share the people or connections
specific to them. A notion of shared networks of people and friends is similar to
how Ricci aimed to expand his social network through mutual friends to influence
the greatest number of people. Wu could even be taken to mean inner self,
implying that friends should freely share their feelings or that friends’ selves are
to be held in common. This idea references the Aristotelian friend, who is so
intimate that he can be considered a second self. Taking wu as inner self supports
this reading, as two friends holding a self in common implies regarding the friend
as oneself. The Ming elite participating in jianghui could have deeply examined
the character wu in this aphorism because of its many meanings. In a wordier text,
the surrounding information may contextualize a polyvalent character such as wu,
but because Ricci wrote in aphorism, the ambiguity of wu is maximized, creating
a highly interpretable and debatable text. This debate could have raised public
38
Kathy Eden, Friends Hold All Things in Common: Tradition, Intellectual Property, and the
Adages of Erasmus (Yale University Press, 2008), 405.
27
awareness of Ricci and the Jesuits, therefore furthering the mission’s objective of
winning converts.
The book’s tone of authority and universality are created by its concision.
This concise nature also is the root of the book’s debatability and power to create
conversations. Clearly, the brevity of the book’s genre makes it more powerful as
a tool of proselytization. Therefore, it is important to note the few aphorisms in
On Friendship are not perfectly concise, and the ideas that they convey. The
below example is one such uncharacteristically verbose aphorism that centers on
the intimacy of the Aristotelian friend:
上帝給人雙目、雙耳、雙手、雙足，欲兩友相助，方為事有成矣。
56: “The Lord on High gave people two eyes, two ears, two hands, and two feet
so that two friends could help each other. Only in this way can deeds be brought
successfully to completion.”
39
In this aphorism Ricci conveys a similar understanding of the economy of
language to the aphorism on friends’ vices. However, Ricci is uncharacteristically
verbose in the final section of the aphorism. Translated as “Only in this way can
deeds be brought successfully to completion” in Billings, the six characters at the
end of the aphorism convey an idea that could have been expressed just three: 方
成事. As established in the previous section, the concise nature of aphorism as a
39
Ricci, On Friendship, 113.
28
genre allows the text to be consumed more quickly. Therefore, the few exceptions
to this convention of concision are particularly notable.
The aphorism on people’s body parts (56) is notable for its length. Ricci
not only writes the final part of the aphorism using an unnecessarily long two
pairs of verb and object: 為事有成, he also begins the aphorism with many
examples of the kinds of human body parts that come in pairs. Ricci certainly
could have made the comparison between body parts and friends by just
comparing a single body part to two friends. Granted, like all aphorisms in the
book, this maxim comes from Ricci’s education rather than his own mind.
However, because Ricci’s roles in On Friendship were that of editor and
translator, he tweaked and changed the language of the texts he used. In this
example, Ricci combined the sayings of Cassiodorus and Plutarch into a single
pithy saying.
40
Ricci used texts that were not aphoristic and fit the philosophy present in
those texts into aphoristic molds. Because of this, it was well within Ricci’s power
to condense the language of the originals in order to better achieve a more concise
product. However, Ricci did not do this, which perhaps implies a degree of
importance attached to this aphorism. By breaking the expected pattern of
concision implied by the text’s genre, Ricci can emphasize a specific maxim. This
aphorism and the sixteenth are the only two aphorisms in On Friendship that
mention the Lord on High. The Catholic God was a foreign concept to China, and
40
Xu, Friendship and Hospitality, 70. I was unable to locate any reference to Cassiodorus or
Plutarch in Sententiae et Exempla itself.
29
one that required thorough explanation to be seen as legitimate by the Ming elite.
In this way, Ricci’s dedication of precious page space to a more verbose aphorism
is fitting considering that the aphorism’s content concerns the Lord on
High–Ricci’s name in Chinese for the Catholic God at the time.
This aphorism combines recorded sayings of Cassiodorus and Plutarch,
but adds a religious reference, attributing the relationships between human beings
to a divine source. In the aphorism, Ricci notes that human beings are meant to
exist in pairs of friends, just as human beings have pairs of eyes, ears, hands, and
feet. All of the pairs of body parts in this maxim are described with the character
shuang 雙–an unidentical matched pair. The pair of friends mentioned near the
end of the aphorism however cannot be described using this character: instead it is
described using the character used for describing a couple–liang 兩. The
distinction between these two characters is minute, yet necessary in classical
Chinese. A shuang of eyes, ears, hands or feet are not only a pair, but a matched
pair. This means that they are explicitly different. A left shoe is unable to fit on
the right foot, because each shoe is made differently. In classical Chinese, humans
are not described in this way. Therefore, the character used for describing two
humans is liang rather than shuang. In the context of this aphorism, this is an
important distinction because the aphorism’s content asserts that the existence of
paired body parts on human bodies implies that human beings are also supposed
to exist in pairs. The linguistic limitation of only being able to describe two
people using the character liang means that Ricci could not have maintained the
aphorisms’ parallel structure established in the first half of the aphorism.
30
However, this distinction between characters does not weaken Ricci’s
writing. The aphorism on paired body parts (56) notes four weighted, matched
pairs of body parts. The fifth pair in the aphorism is a pair of friends, an
unweighted relationship. This compilation of four pairs of weighted body parts
followed by an unweighted, non hierarchical pair of friends echoes the role of
friendship as the fifth and only unweighted relationship in the wulun. The
identicality in weight and hierarchical position is implied by the character liang
兩. This character also helps to suggest another sense of identicality in friendship
through a major theme present throughout On Friendship.
The Aristotelian friend–a friend so intimate that they could be considered
a second self–is also implied by liang. This idea is so prominent in On Friendship
that the very first aphorism in the book addresses it:
吾友非他，即我之半，乃第二我也:故當視友如己焉。
1: “My friend is not an other, but half of myself, and thus a second me—I must
therefore regard my friend as myself.”
41
From the perspective of the Jesuits, this is a highly applicable concept for
proselytizing. As explained previously, accommodation was key to the mission in
China. By adapting Catholicism into a form compatible with Confucianism, Ricci
and the Jesuits claimed that the two doctrines were not entirely separate. In fact,
much of this method of accommodation relied on presenting Catholicism as a part
41
Ricci, On Friendship, 113.
31
of the Confucian canon that had simply been lost to time; the Jesuits claimed only
to want to help the Chinese rediscover this missing aspect of their own heritage.
42
Reconciling the differences between Confucianism and Catholicism was central to
Ricci’s proselytization strategy. This method of cultural adaptation is central to
Ricci’s proselytization effort, becoming most relevant in his pivotal work: The
True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven 天主實義. The book argues for the
similarities between Confucianism and Christianity in the form of a dialogue
between a Western scholar and Chinese scholar.
Therefore, the concept of fusion and sameness is important to examine in
On Friendship. On a smaller scale, the idea of the friend as a second self was
highly appealing because a relationship as intimate as the one described in the
first aphorism in On Friendship would imply sameness on multiple levels
between friends. If a Chinese literatus and a Jesuit missionary form a bond as
described in this aphorism, the pair become one. In other words, they become
“one soul in two bodies.”
43
If this becomes the case for a Jesuit and Chinese
literatus, then the pair’s beliefs and values also must become one. How could the
pair’s beliefs not fully come into agreement? In this way, for a Chinese literatus to
be interested in being friends with a Catholic, selves and therefore beliefs fuse,
just as the Jesuits attempted to fuse Catholicism into Confucianism.
43
David Konstan, “One Soul in Two Bodies: Distributed Cognition and Ancient Greek
Friendship,” in Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity, ed. Douglas Cairns and Miranda
Anderson (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 209.
42
Yu Liu, “The Intricacies of Accommodation: The Proselytizing Strategy of Matteo Ricci,”
Journal of World History 19, no. 4 (2008): 470.
32
In the aphorism on pairs of body parts, Ricci’s use of the character liang
subtly implies the fusion of souls. Rather than a matched pair of equal opposites
like a pair of hands or feet, Ricci’s aphorism uses liang, lacking the matched
nature of shuang. This phrasing accentuates the similarities between the two
friends. The language in this aphorism implies that friends are similar enough to
be considered the same, returning to the significance of the friend as a second self.
The significance of the word liang to the fusion of selves is evident in the
etymology of the character. The oldest extant authority on Chinese characters: the
Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 is the world’s earliest surviving dictionary.
44
Today, it
still serves as a model for Chinese dictionaries, proving its value to linguistics.
Each character in Shuowen jiezi falls into one of six categories, called the liu shu
六書–or six writings. Liang belongs is a hui yi 會意–
“grasp-meaning”–character.
45
As a hui yi character, liang’s two component parts
both convey meaning. This signifies that all parts of liang are relevant to examine.
According to Shuowen jiezi, the upper half of the liang is yi 一, meaning
“one”. The lower half of the character is also pronounced liang 㒳, defined as
ping fen 平分, meaning “equally divided.”
46
With the individual parts of its
structure defined, the significance of liang is clear. The notion of a single thing, or
soul, divided equally between friends inheres in the very structure of the character
liang 兩. The character itself implies the fusion of souls and beliefs that Ricci
would hope for two friends.
46
Shuowen Jiezi, s.v. “兩.”
45
Thern, Shuowen Chieh-tzu, 10.
44
Kenneth Thern, Postface of the Shuowen Chieh-tzu. (Department of East Asian Languages and
Literature, University of Wisconsin, 1966), 1.
33
In this way, the character liang is indicative of the Jesuit strategy of
accommodation on multiple levels; it implies the fusion of friends’ souls and their
beliefs, which extends to asserting the compatibility between Catholicism and
Confucianism that was central to the China mission. If friends between cultures
can be identical in nature, then their belief systems must be compatible. This
significance of word choice helps to illuminate the importance of aphorism to On
Friendship. By writing in aphoristic form Ricci was able to succinctly and subtly
insert some of the ideas central to the China mission. Unlike in The True Meaning
of the Lord of Heaven, he would not have to explain his ideas, nor would he have
the page space to do so. In aphorism, Ricci can try expressing the fusion of souls
and beliefs covertly in Chinese to the very people he wanted to convert.
Conclusion
The choice to write On Friendship as a compilation of aphorisms had
many benefits to Matteo Ricci. The use of aphorism allowed for an easy to read
book that could inspire lengthy discussion, developing the Jesuits’ standing in
Ming China and furthering the goal of the mission to win converts. By writing On
Friendship as a compilation of aphorisms, Ricci was also not confined to writing
an entirely consistent work. On Friendship’s genre served as a way for Ricci to
express a potentially complex emotional state as a person doing exactly what his
moral education had taught him not to do.
This paper is not without limitation. Currently, it does not discuss the role
of friendship within the history of Catholicism or within the Jesuit order. Because
34
this paper’s argument deeply connects to Ricci’s own moral education and
personal philosophy, having a deeper understanding of the texts and history that
informed his psychology would be greatly beneficial to this paper’s argument.
Ricci certainly would not have thought his actions were utilitarian as evidenced
by the letters he sent to other Jesuits.
47
In his mind, every action in China helped
him to altruistically save the many Chinese souls that would otherwise be
damned. With a deeper understanding of the role of friendship in relation to
Catholicism or the Jesuit order, this paper could more clearly argue that Ricci’s
moral education and actions came into conflict, expressed in On Friendship.
With that information, this paper could more definitively prove that in On
Friendship, Ricci was able to produce something for the greater glory of God, and
also to articulate his own difficulty confronting the Matteo Ricci who only made
friends who did him good.
47
R. Po-chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552-1610 (Oxford University
Press, 2010), 168.
35
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to every friend who has supported me throughout this ordeal. Thank
you to my parents and friends for their unending love and support. Thank you to
the Macalester College Asian Languages and Cultures Department for helping me
along in my academic journey. Thank you Librarian Ginny Moran (Macalester
College) for your help finding historical sources. Thank you Professor Jim Laine
(Macalester College) and Professor Andrew Hui (Yale-NUS) for providing
intellectual expertise and great company serving on my defense committee. Thank
you Rivi Handler-Spitz (Macalester College) for being the most critical reader I
have ever had the pleasure of being scrutinized by, and for advising me over the
last four years. And of course thank you all for your non-utilitarian contributions
to my life as well!
36
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39
