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

---

1. Jin Jiang, “Heresy and Persecution in Late Ming Society,” 3, 11, 19–20.

2. This chapter is based on the speech “The Roots of Individualism in Chinese Culture: Search for Individual Autonomy” which I delivered on June 15, 2017, at Beijing Normal University on the occasion of a forum organized by Professor Guo Yingde (京师论坛, 何谓中华优秀传统文化, 北京师范大学京师学堂京师厅). On the concept of self, see the next chapter.

3. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, 717. The term “individualism” is used in different, sometimes even contradictory, theories, and may express similar values for different purposes. Worthy of mention is Agassi’s definition (“Institutional Individualism,” 144): “The theory which ascribes the power to act to all and only to those who have the power to decide, and which ascribes this power to all and only to individuals; not to collectives, and not to computers, etc.” While comparing “holism”—society as a “whole” that is more than its “parts,” and affects the individual’s aims—with “individualism”—only individuals have aims and interests, and behave in a way adequate to their aim, given circumstances—Agassi clarifies the differences between the two: (1) the holist does not deny that the individual acts purposefully (rationally). He merely denies that individuals’ aims and physical circumstances alone determine human action, and insists, contrary to the individualist, that the aims of the social group exist, apart from the aims of each individual; (2) the individualist does not deny that the behavior of any individual is constrained and influenced by social factors, provided that we can explain such constraints and influences as results of the presence and choices of other individuals. Only when the holist attributes these social constraints and influences to the social group as above and beyond its members, or to the aim of the social group as above and beyond the aims of its individual members, does the individualist disagree with the collectivist. Agassi also contrasts psychologism (the theory that every theory—related to economics, sociology, politics, and other such related disciplines—is reducible to psychology; that every social explanation can be fully explained, in its turn, by a purely psychological explanation; that any social theory is in the final analysis a branch of psychology) with institutionalism (the claim that the social sciences are autonomous and