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

This position should not be confused with European individualism or modern moral relativism: Wang’s individualism is a development of both Mencius’s personalistic theory and Daoist and Buddhist individualism, emphasizing the sense of oneness of the individual’s experience during the journey along his inner path. It is evident that for Wang Yangming’s disciples, too, this brand of individualism signifies that the quest for personal fulfilment lies within the framework of society, while at the same time it is a mystical communion with the entire universe. Thus the greater worth assigned to the individual never enters into conflict with society nor with nature, even if no superiority of canons or masters is recognized.²³ By integrating the Daoist idea of “stillness” with that of the mutual obligation being prescribed in Confucianism, Wang combines tranquility with activity, and spontaneity with responsibility. In theorizing a constant tension between motion and stillness (dongjing 動靜), his philosophy thus paradoxically equates creativity to spontaneity and emptiness to quietness:

Activity and tranquility are one. If it is in accord with the Principle of Nature, the mind that is empty and tranquil at midnight will be the same mind that responds to events and deals with affairs now. If it is in accord with the Principle of Nature, the mind that responds to events and deals with affairs now is the same mind that is empty and tranquil at midnight. Therefore, activity and tranquility are one and cannot be separated. If we know that activity and tranquility form a unity, the fact that the Buddhist’s infinitesimal mistake at the beginning leads to an infinite error, in the end, cannot be concealed.²⁴

Within the context of Wang Yangming’s system, the concept of the oneness of the personal process of self-perfection was driven from Zhang Zai, and the view of the individual as independent with respect to the intellectual authorities and external moral precepts was later re-elaborated within the Taizhou school. The independence from the established doctrine threatened the principle of authority which was