© March 2005; revised 25 June 2008

19th-century printer's ornament
Sidebar on the Chinese Character as a Philosophical Language

(for Gallery exhibit, “Richard Lovelace on Lely’s Talent for Psychological Portraiture, 1647”)



What Athanasius Kircher described as “marvellously intricate,” painted Chinese “significative characters which show an entire concept in a single character” continues to fascinate western arists and intellectuals.

Like Lovelace interpreting Lely’s psychological portraiture in terms of “the hieroglyphic characters of the Chinese,” Kircher appreciated how “the Chinese have so adapted the significance of many of their characters that an ingenious allusion is possible.”

“The Chinese have innumerable ... characters of this type which are formed by putting together different characters and which they use with ingenuity for expressing complex thoughts,” wrote Kircher in his authoritative China Monumentis (1667), choosing for his first example the compound Chinese character for “to be afflicted.” The Chinese logogram (Lat. Afflictus) is formed with the determinatives for heart (Lat. Cor) and gate (Lat. Porta), thus equating “to be afflicted” with “the gate of the heart is closed.”




Chinese character (muén) for “to be afflicted.” From Athanasius Kircher’s China monumentis, qua sacris quà profanis, nec non variis naturæ & artis spectaculis ... (Amsterdam, 1667), p. 234.

Kircher explains: “Character C signifies ‘to be afflicted’ and it is made from two characters B and A. B means heart and A means gate, which means ‘the gate of the heart (is) closed.’ A man in a state of affliction feels that all his breaths are concentrated within the gate of his heart, and so he feels fear, terror, and affliction.”




The profound spiritual meaning thus given by the Chinese to a common state of affliction would have held special significance for Jesuits like Kircher, and for 17th-century Europeans in general.

Most recently, it is the Chinese character for the verb “to listen” — compounded from the determinatives for ears, eyes, undivided attention, and heart — that has appealed to a group of U.S. artists & activists seeking new dialogic models of community and relationship.

= to listen


< Chinese character for EYES

< Chinese character for ATTENTION

< Chinese character for OPEN HEART

< Chinese character for EARS




LISTEN. Artwork for January page of the
2002 Peace Calendar from the
Syracuse Cultural Workers.

The artwork is captioned with a quote from Paul Tillich: “The first responsibility of love is to listen.”

And its concept is explained with a quote from Dan Wilkins: “What does it mean to listen? ¶ In our fast-paced ‘drive-thru’ cost-cutting downsizing gameboy world, the Chinese kanji, ‘Ting’, representing the verb ‘to listen’, is significant in that it explains the difference between simply hearing and truly listening. By integrating representations of not only our ears but of our eyes, our heart, and the selfless act of undivided attention, the Chinese have truly captured the essence of listening. ¶ It is so important in any dialogue to listen to one another with our whole bodies, to come from a non-egocentric, ‘non-self’ perspective. By doing this we show respect and value for the other and leave ourselves open to understanding a larger truth. We must believe, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, that we ‘can receive truth from outside ... that we can come away transformed by what is good, beautiful, and meaningful in another.’”



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