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

while self-reproaching his faults and weaknesses, finally ascribes them to the crime of not having established his resolution (志):

My greatest weakness lay in loving lyrical composition and in addition, there were my many hatreds and desires. These three stabbed me within my breast; it was like a battle in which I was not long able to endure. This is the crime of not having established one’s resolve, there is nothing else to be said for it!⁹⁶

The terms of the debate indirectly concerned the space of freedom and responsibility bounded between two variables—namely, the degree of fullness of the innate human nature, affecting one’s ability to change, and the positivity of one’s experience and education, depending to a large extent on individual choices. Self-cultivation was considered the condition that helps humans in their search of perfection, unity with the universe, and independence from the slavery of desires for “external things.” In default of moral tension, with the lack of self-cultivation, the human mind can easily lose the Way. Huang Yong has studied the Neo-Confucian assertion of responsibility deeply and demonstrates the refined way of the discussion of theoretical problems related to it, especially in the light of the differences of psychophysical energy: all human beings can be good, as the turbid qi that they are born with can be purified (unlike animals). Whether such qi can be purified wholly depends upon the person’s will. Huang introduces the paradoxical concept similar to “moral luck,” borrowing it from Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, that is fitting to the Neo-Confucian system. Everyone can be moral or can even become a sage, but, due to the different qualities of qi, some need to make a much greater effort than others. This means that those who can be good with great ease cannot take credit for it, just as those who have to make a great effort to be good should not be faulted because the difference between the two is caused by their respective moral lucks.⁹⁷ In any case, will and determination are the main factor in moral responsibility, more than the effort in the choice and the moment of decision.