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 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was the first major European philosopher to engage seriously with Chinese thought. His interest was stimulated by the Jesuit reports from China, particularly the writings of Matteo Ricci and the ''Confucius Sinarum Philosophus''. Leibniz saw in Chinese philosophy a confirmation of his own philosophical project: the search for a universal rational order underlying the apparent diversity of human cultures and belief systems.<ref>Peter K. Bol, “The China Historical GIS,” ''Journal of Chinese History'' 4, no. 2 (2020).</ref>
-In his ''Novissima Sinica'' (Latest News from China, 1697), Leibniz argued that Europe and China represented complementary civilizations: Europe excelled in theoretical sciences and theology, while China excelled in practical philosophy and the art of government. He proposed an exchange of knowledge between the two civilizations — famously suggesting that the Chinese should send missionaries to Europe to teach the Europeans the art of good governance, just as European missionaries went to China to teach Christianity.<ref>Hilde De Weerdt, “MARKUS: Text Analysis and Reading Platform,” in ''Journal of Chinese History'' 4, no. 2 (2020); see also the Digital Humanities guide at University of Chicago Library.</ref>
+In his ''Novissima Sinica'' (Latest News from China, 1697), Leibniz argued that Europe and China represented complementary civilizations: Europe excelled in theoretical sciences and theology, while China excelled in practical philosophy and the art of government. He proposed an exchange of knowledge between the two civilizations — famously suggesting that the Chinese should send missionaries to Europe to teach the Europeans the art of good governance, just as European missionaries went to China to teach Christianity. As Perkins has demonstrated, this proposal for a “commerce of light” was grounded in Leibniz's metaphysics: the “natural theology of the Chinese complements the revealed theology of Europe,” and Leibniz judged that “an expert in the excellences of peoples would have to judge the Chinese as better, except for Europe's possession of Christianity.”<ref>Franklin Perkins, ''Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 142.</ref>
-Leibniz was particularly fascinated by the ''Yijing'' (Book of Changes) and its system of hexagrams, which he interpreted as a binary number system analogous to his own. He saw in the hexagrams evidence that the ancient Chinese had possessed a form of mathematical and philosophical knowledge that confirmed the universality of reason. His interpretation was fanciful — the hexagrams are not a number system — but it reflected a genuine philosophical conviction: that Chinese and European thought, despite their surface differences, were expressions of a single rational order.<ref>Tu Hsiu-chih, “DocuSky, A Personal Digital Humanities Platform for Scholars,” ''Journal of Chinese History'' 4, no. 2 (2020).</ref>
+Leibniz was particularly fascinated by the ''Yijing'' (Book of Changes) and its system of hexagrams, which he interpreted as a binary number system analogous to his own. He saw in the hexagrams evidence that the ancient Chinese had possessed a form of mathematical and philosophical knowledge that confirmed the universality of reason. His interpretation was fanciful — the hexagrams are not a number system — but it reflected a genuine philosophical conviction: that Chinese and European thought, despite their surface differences, were expressions of a single rational order. Mungello's detailed study of the Leibniz-Bouvet correspondence has shown that Leibniz credited Bouvet with “having assisted his discovery by sending a Chinese copy of Fu Hsi's diagrams” — but also that “exclusive reliance upon Jesuit sources left no way to check some of the Jesuits' more partial interpretations of Chinese culture,” a limitation that constrained Leibniz's understanding.<ref>David E. Mungello, ''Leibniz and Confucianism: The Search for Accord'' (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977), 8.</ref>
-Leibniz’s engagement with Chinese thought, as Eric Nelson has argued, belongs to the “more positive appropriation of Chinese thought and culture” that characterized the early Enlightenment, in contrast to the more negative assessments of Bayle, Montesquieu, and Malebranche, and the later hostile views of Herder, Kant, and Hegel.<ref>Peter K. Bol and Wen-chin Chang, “The China Biographical Database,” in ''Digital Humanities and East Asian Studies'' (Leiden: Brill, 2020).</ref>
+Leibniz’s engagement with Chinese thought, as Eric Nelson has argued, belongs to the “more positive appropriation of Chinese thought and culture” that characterized the early Enlightenment, in contrast to the more negative assessments of Bayle, Montesquieu, and Malebranche, and the later hostile views of Herder, Kant, and Hegel. Perkins has contextualized this by arguing that the surprising phenomenon “should not be Leibniz’s writings on China but that everyone else showed so little interest in the world outside Europe”: how could Descartes, “so interested in the nature of ‘man,’ show no interest in the variety of human beings?” and how could Locke, an “empiricist, show so little interest in the experiences of non-Europeans?”<ref>Perkins, ‘’Leibniz and China’’, ix.</ref>
 === 3.2 Wolff and the Scandal of Confucian Ethics ===
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 Jullien, Francois. ''Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece''. New York: Zone Books, 2000.
-May, Reinhard. ''Heidegger’s Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on His Work''. Translated by Graham Parkes. London: Routledge, 1996.
+May, Reinhard. ‘’Heidegger’s Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on His Work’’. Translated by Graham Parkes. London: Routledge, 1996.
-Perkins, Franklin. ''Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
+Mungello, David E. ‘’Leibniz and Confucianism: The Search for Accord’’. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977.
 Roetz, Heiner. ''Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age: A Reconstruction under the Aspect of the Breakthrough Toward Postconventional Thinking''. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.

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