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

the theologians of the Middle Ages was oriented toward the relationship between God and humans, original sin and human weakness (vitium animi), and consequently toward the moment when weakness leads to the fall into sin. Before them, the Stoics had already sought to identify the “strategic moment” in which judgements are formed and the impulse to act generated accordingly, and later this argument was developed by Patristics, which had it eventually incorporated into a theory on the “sprout of sin.”¹⁵¹ But taken as a whole, the centuries-long debate on the fall into sin has its roots in Augustine’s thought.

In his commentary De sermone Domini in monte secundum Matthaeum (1.12), Augustine talks of “three steps which may lead man to sin”; these are mental temptation, delightful representation, and consent (tribus gradibus ad peccatum pervenitur: suggestione, delectatione, consensione). The ambiguity of such steps pushed subsequent generations of thinkers to analyze responsibility and sin on a variety of aspects. What is the line that cannot be crossed to avoid mortal sin? The debate thus proceeded further with new crucial questions being raised especially in relation to sexual desire. When does passion start? What are its symptoms? Where does sin begin (propassio, antepassio, or primus motus)? Another question concerns the role of will in the impulse of sexual desire which was deemed essential to understanding the degree of responsibility. If such impulse was relevant, then it was considered a mortal sin; on the contrary, if secondary—that is an unintentional reaction to certain stimuli—it was considered a venial sin. For instance, according to Pierre Abélard (Petrus Abaelardus, 1079–1142), suggestio and delectatio are not sin but impulses of the fallen human nature, which, although prone to evil, are not evil in themselves. Peccatum (sin) starts only from consensus (consent). Moreover, he states that sin is in the will (another word for consensus) and not in crime (mala action).¹⁵² Similarly, Alain de Lilla (Alanus ab Insulis, ca. 1128–1202) and Gilbert de Poitiers (Gilbertus Porretanus, 1070/76–1154) distinguish “primary early movement” from secondary one as follows: motus primus primitivus, and motus primus non primitivus or primus post primitivum. The former is common to animals