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

Zhinang 智囊).⁸⁷ The “genuine” human nature is looked for in the basic desire and wish for self-realization (Li Zhi). These desires allow one to understand the true nature of others and establish a relational net of empathy and altruism; thus, they are the source of morality (Dai Zhen). Changing the meaning of traditional expressions, such as “rites” (li), “self-mastery” (keji), or reversing the order and hierarchy of values, or recognizing one’s self-motivation to become altruist, are all ways for reconstructing the self and opening up society.

Generally speaking, such attitudes indicate the search for a new independent personality, but they were not the expression of a sense of rebellion against the political order. Rather, they were a personal ethical-aesthetic choice that, through mental and emotional freedom, sought to accomplish the ideal of refined elegance and an inherent “gusto” (qu 趣), and/or to reevaluate one’s vital and natural tendencies, which included desires, ambitions, and passions. These tendencies can be found also in a few antiheroes in fiction. At least in the counterculture of certain circles, the traditional dyads selfish-universal, virtue-interest, principle-desires, wisdom-foolishness were rediscussed and reinterpreted.⁸⁸

The next section of the chapter will provide an overview of a few literary works which present the complexity of the individual and its personality. It will very shortly deal with the well-known and controversial protagonists of Dream of the Red Chamber, The Peony Pavilion, and Feng Menglong’s complex discourse. The analysis will concentrate on minor works, the stories of those heroines who, by playing on “passion” (qing 情) and “talent” (cai 才), conciliated between private-peculiar interests and the public-general rule of propriety as well as between individual psychology and social morality. Qing’s cross-dressing dramas and works of the conventional genre of “talent and beauty” will also be discussed for their attempt to unveil the internal contradictions of identity discourses, where multiple selves and roles are often involved.⁸⁹