This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.

---

100. Levy, “Antigone’s Motives,” 137–144; and Bonazzi, “Antigone contro il Sofista,” 209–222.

101. Guarde-Paz “Moral Dilemmas in Chinese Philosophy,” 85.

102. Works of this nature also appeared in China (e.g., Xiyouji, with its metaphorical travel adventures), but the spirit that inspired these works was different (see Plaks, The Four Masterworks, 234–276, 504). In Christian Europe, even for less tormented agents, making a choice could become so arduous that it might be at times entrusted to accidental events and be easily turned into a sort of faith in fate—the “Divine Providence.” A meaningful episode is told in the biography of Ignatius Loyola. The saint, while reflecting on a conversation that he had earlier with a Muslim about Mary’s virginity and the birth of Christ, was suddenly possessed with the desire to punish the infidel. He then found himself racked with doubt as to whether he should kill him or ignore him. Finally, “weary of examining what he should best do, and finding no certain way of reaching a decision, he resolved that he would let his mule go with a slack brittle to the point where the roads divided, and if the beast took the road to the village he would go in search of the Moor and stab him, but if it did not go toward the village but took the main road, he would do nothing more about the matter.” See Il Racconto del Pellegrino: Autobiografia di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola, 30:15–16, as quoted in Bodei, Geometria delle Passioni, 107–108.

103. Well known are the differences in the respective ontologic vesions, especially on the conceptualization of divinity, and the relationship between spirit and matter, reason and desires, individual self and universe. See Bloom “On the Matter of Mind,” 299.

104. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 7, 21–25. Just before this statement, it is written: “[w]e know that the Law is spiritual; but I am a mortal man, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do; for I don’t do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate” (14–15).

105. The Chinese and non-Chinese Manichaean dramatization of fight between the Realm of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness, the conflict between the body and the soul (Kósa, “Imprisoned evil forces,” 64–87)—that had some influence on Augustine and Christianity—had no significant impact on mainstream thought in China.

106. The question was the object of debates until premodern times, between the extremes of Pelagianism and Calvinism, justification through faith or merits, God’s Grace and prescience.