Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China By ...

The unrestrained does not obey the present rules and does not follow past examples; his understanding is high. You can compare it to the Phoenixes that fly high in the sky without rivals. [...] Only those who are free and unrestrained (狂狷) can reach the illumination.⁷⁰

The defence shows that the dyad kuangjuan 狂狷 had already undergone a significant semantic transformation long before Wang Yangming and his school. Its use in the Analects and Mencius speaks of the existence of an alternative meaning being attached to the spontaneity of conscience. Yet Li Zhi has pushed this even further. In his writings, the compound acquires the connotation of “free and unrestrained,” with particular reference to the upper stage of wisdom. The term thus came to indicate no more the balanced behavior mentioned in the Zhongyong, but “the pursuit of heroic holiness which originates only from unrestrained freedom” (求豪傑必在於狂狷)⁷¹; simultaneously, “loyalty is [deemed to be] the reason why unrestrained free men are perfect” (是信者，狂狷之所以成始成終者也).⁷² In the former phrase the association with another classical term, haojie 豪傑 (commonly rendered as a hero), suggests a strong and straight personality engaged in their existential path, and representing the very opposite of aforesaid “local hypocrites”—the virtuous, conformist, and bigoted xiangyuan.⁷³ This haojie was one of the many expressions often referenced in the context of the “cult of qing”—that important intellectual and literary movement which developed during the late Ming and was aimed at reevaluating emotions in response to the traditional diffidence for passions and desires.⁷⁴ Haojie runs parallel with the taste for “craziness and foolishness.” Indeed, the state of being “unrestrained” and becoming “foolish for something,” like manias and other obsessions, became cultural slogans stressing a new sensitivity and distinction.

Zhang Dafu 張大復 (1554–1630) recognizes the preciousness of these attitudes by comparing them to the knobs on the trees and a myna-bird-shaped spot on a stone.⁷⁵ Yuan Hongdao goes a step further and