The Aristotelian Concept of Substance Introduced by Early Jesuit Missionaries to China and Its Problems in Encountering Confucianism

From an intercultural point of view, the early Jesuits’ introduction of Western philosophy to China in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a highly significant historical event, inducting the Chinese people into the works of Western philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and St. Thomas Aquinas, whose thoughts, and indeed names, they had not previously heard of. As such, this was an unparalleled moment of interaction between Chinese and Western philosophies. It also served to establish the role of the early Jesuits in China as intercultural mediators between China and the West. Among the Western