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

social and political perspective, the consciousness of the value of each individual helps the growth of autonomous citizens and weakens the abuses of powers on subjects. The growth of consciousness in autonomous individuals and the development of a sense of responsibility based on “moral intuitions” and “ultimate desires” are inherent to politically sophisticated civilizations.⁶ Although we can find individualistic elements in the whole history of human societies, historical data show that the emergence of a renewed concern for individuality is the consequence of the collapse of highly integrated social systems and the rise of the masses in representative democracies where the emphasis is on freedom, privacy, plurality, and self-determination.⁷ This necessarily confines the scope of our inquiry on late developments in the history of ideas in China.

Beyond the various interpretations, a reasonable hypothesis is that, along with the broader cycles of social evolution, human societies tend to discourage antisocial behaviors and be more understanding of problems relating to individual and collective self-protection: the needs of an efficient organization are tempered by those of individual creativity and freedom. In the case of China, for example, we can find a statement in the Honglou Meng that reads: “[t]he ancients, in their society, in order to control the self, disciplined their temper, inhibited lustful tendencies, and suppressed extravagance.”⁸ This argument is not new, and from ancient Classics, the “Memory of Rites” states:

The things which men greatly desire are comprehended in meat and drink and sexual pleasure 飲食男女，人之大欲存焉; those which they greatly dislike are comprehended in death, exile, poverty, and suffering. Thus liking and disliking are the great elements in men’s minds. But men keep them hidden in their minds, where they cannot be fathomed or measured. The good and the bad of them being in their minds, and no outward manifestation of them being visible, if it be wished to determine these qualities in one uniform way, how can it be done without the use of the rules of propriety (implied in the ceremonial usages)?⁹