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

moral determinism, narrative production rediscusses human negotiation between desires and rules, and the moral sphere where humans have a certain space and their will is partially free.

Heart-mind

Notwithstanding his various meanings for tian,²² Mencius’s idea of limitations in human life is such that people can neither change nor turn their back on destiny.²³ Conversely, Mencius confirms the responsibility of human beings as autonomous agents by his notions of mind and moral nature. He places the heart-mind at the center of personal self-determination and promoting its innate tendency toward virtue. Moreover, he traces back differences in moral stature to people’s greater or lesser capacity to develop their conscience and minds, so that they can emancipate themselves from the domain of sensibility through a process of self-cultivation. As explained by Ning Chen, according to Mencius, the power of fate cannot determine the autonomous volition and behavior of the “evaluating mind” to be good or evil.²⁴ Mencius believes that what makes one a human is one’s discernment, the ability to distinguish what should be done and what should be avoided (shifei zhi xin 是非之心) and to behave accordingly.²⁵ Moreover, he expounds that the gratification of physical desires coming from the five senses depends on destiny, and the fulfilment of moral dispositions rests only on people’s autonomous decision.²⁶ In his commentary to this passage, the second-century annotator Zhao Qi 趙岐 (d. 201) reinforces that independent from the lucky destiny of one’s five moral dispositions, one can carry them out only by nurturing one’s good nature.²⁷ Consequently, in Confucianism, one’s behavior must not be understood as subject to a prize or punishment because fortune and misfortune do not come as retribution for moral conduct.²⁸ Viewed from this perspective, Confucianism appears different from both Mohism, which is strictly built upon the concept of retributive destiny, and Daoism, where the individual and the state share a common blind destiny.