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

of models and values, but the answer to personal experiences, the search for justice against wrongs, and the innate need to express one’s self as fully as possible. Moral responsibility is the consciousness that self-assertion is usually expressed in a “nice” behavior, and thus the basis of individual autonomy.

Concluding Remarks

Any discussion on the self is first and foremost a discussion about emotions.¹¹ We have reviewed different selves—prescriptive, concupiscible, irascible, sensorial selves—but their formulation is essentially grounded in their emotive constitutions as well as within the limits and expansions of accepted morality and identity. These limits and expansions primarily concern the system of social relations and contexts where the individual exists, where their family and social groups live, and the community where the agent shares similar beliefs and ideas with the other members.

This study has sidestepped any theoretical speculation on the nature of the self and personality, although a few theoretical aspects have been occasionally touched upon, and comparative insights have been proposed concerning specific topics. The purpose of this study is not to elaborate on a history of the self and identity in China but rather to conduct an empirical examination of some facets of the self and self-assertion. In the last few decades, important theoretical approaches have offered methods and materials to understand how emotions and the self have been perceived in Western cultures and how their perception has changed over time.

These chapters have questioned the two basic concepts of individual autonomy and responsibility in a cross-cultural perspective. We cannot conclude that these concepts are “metaphysically” and universally accepted, or are a fruit of self-deception. What we can empirically ascertain is that human beings have elaborated equivalent concepts in different