The rationalist thinkers of the European Enlightenment suspected that the politics of the Greek city-states had led to incessant wars and great devastation and they were moved by Confucianism's secular and non-superstitious moral teachings.
講求理性的歐洲啟蒙運動思想家，甚至質疑希臘城邦政治其實只造成連年戰爭、廢墟滿目。他們感動於孔子學說不講神跡、不作玄虛的道德教訓。