The Complexities of a Stoic Breakthrough: Matteo Ricci’s Ershiwu Yan (Twenty-five Paragraphs)

Published in 1605 and selectively translated from Epictetus’s Encheiridion, Matteo Ricci’s Ershiwu Yan (Twenty-five Paragraphs) represented a major breakthrough in his proselytizing enterprise in China, but the precise nature of this triumph may not have been the way it has so far been understood. By examining Ricci’s intricate adaptation of Stoicism to Catholicism and Confucianism, and exploring the Chinese responses to Ricci’s effort, this article strives to cast light on the diverse complexities of East-West intellectual interactions in the early modern period.