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

Chapter 10

Preliminary Conclusions

From the reflections in the previous chapters, it is evident that definitive conclusions are difficult not only because the main question of human responsibility is the object of endless debates but also because all concepts and categories related to it are disputable and relative. The beginning of the second part of this book dealt with the ways of representing and evaluating the concept of responsibility in China and the West. It has shown how in Chinese culture there is almost no relevant philosophical debate on the contrast between determinism and free will, which instead figures as one of the cornerstones of European history of thought. The lack of a debate on free will, which in the West developed especially from Augustine to Luther up to Steiner attests to the relatively scarce relevance of this problem in Chinese culture. This does not mean that the sense of responsibility and individual autonomy do not exist in Chinese culture. This study demonstrates that this different approach is primarily due to different religious and cosmologic traditions being adopted, but it does not mean that the Chinese stance is intrinsically agnostic because in China, the individual is also generally considered responsible for their actions.