Roy K McCall

Confucius & the Enlightenment's Christian von Wolff Roy K McCall

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.