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

Chapter 5:  Past and Recent Debates
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14. Fingarette, Confucius. Though one may agree or not with his ideas of responsibility and liberalism, Fingarette is a fascinating thinker who dealt with ethics, philosophy, psychology, retributive punishment, and psychoanalysis, and his works are always challenging. He has questioned the concepts of self and the unconscious, personal responsibility, guilt and innocence.
15. See Fingarette, “The Problem of the Self in the Analects,” 291.
16. Fingarette, Confucius, 34.
17. Rosemont, “Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role-Bearing Persons,” 84.
18. Ibid., 71–101. In a critical comment on Rosemont’s refusal of liberal Western reality, Peimin Ni (“Confucianism and Democracy,” 93–95) writes: “Rosemont admits that classic Confucianism must be modified to accommodate the development of contemporary moral consensus, on such things as gender equality and acceptance of different sexual orientations (Rosemont, “Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role-Bearing Persons,” 75). […] There is indeed an asymmetry in Rosemont’s comparison. He tells us that the Confucianism he advocates is not the kind that was practiced by the authoritarian rulers, self-serving officials, exploitative parents, [and] dull pedants; it is rather classic Confucianism the ideal of which was never realized in imperial China (74). Therefore, he is not defending dogmatic insistence on social hierarchy, authoritarianism, and repressive form of government. Instead, he is advocating loving and caring relationships, a nurturing reciprocity between people in different social positions.”
19. Hansen, Philosophy of Language and Logic in Ancient China, and “Individualism in Chinese Thought.”
20. Hansen, Philosophy of Language and Logic in Ancient China, 446–448.
21. Xu Keqian, “A Different Type of Individualism in Zhuangzi,” 445–462.
22. Benedict Chan (“A Human Rights Debate,” 567–588) argues that the thesis of the incompatibility of cultural habits derived from Confucianism with democracy, political liberty, and human rights is controversial because it is unclear whether these cultural habits are based on Confucianism, which Confucian rules are conflicting, and what cultural values should be preserved from supposed foreign influences. Furthermore, Chan demonstrates how political liberty is consistent with at least a part of the Confucian tradition: instead of a conflict between liberalism and Confucianism, one may discuss the issue as an internal conflict between different trends of the Confucian tradition; the same can be said of the rights to physical security and the practice of slavery and torture, which