Eremitic landscape dwelling in Confucian China and Enlightenment Europe: structuring the moral self in reclusion and performing public duty

Abstract

This thesis explores how the experience of reclusion in free landscapes and private gardens of Confucian China and Enlightenment Europe contributed to people’s moral improvement by cultivating good passions such as temperance, encouraging introspection, increasing the sense of responsibility towards society and rendering erudite individuals prompt to perform their public duty as politicians and civil servants. The thesis is based on the comparative analysis of philosophical concepts, works of art, poems and cultural practices in order to highlight the similarities and divergences between Chinese and European – particularly British and French - eremitic landscape dwelling. Taking into account the historical context in which two important systems of thought were developed in different geographic regions, the research brings together the state-sanctioned Confucian ethics with Enlightenment Deism which, inspired by Roman Stoics, played a pivotal role in the promulgation of reclusive landscape culture and the creation of non-geometrical gardens used as retreats in the eighteenth-century Europe. Investigating human relationships with the natural environment and organized society, as well as views on interpersonal relationships, established religion and matters of cultural heritage, the thesis shows that gardens where Confucian literati and socially privileged Europeans, who had espoused Enlightenment ideals, liked to retire comprised mediating spaces between the private realm and the public sphere, solitude and public action. Eremitic landscape dwelling did not derive from a sentiment of contempt for the world or from a selfish desire to avoid hardships. Rather, this noble form of reclusion whose purpose was the cultivation of virtue and humaneness revolved around the greatest interest of individuals and the welfare of society.