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

several authors and editors of this genre who offer an examination of the anatomy of individualism, where the qing and cai of the characters—heroes, heroines, and antiheroes alike—are played on to single out the unicity of each and every individual, and create much room for maneuver within the moral world of orthodox Neo-Confucian ideology. Each individual has their own qing, which works as a bridge between private and public arrangements, between psychological and moral attitudes.⁹⁵ The moral implications of each individual’s action and choice vary according to the character’s qing (personality and circumstances).⁹⁶ The late-Ming-early-Qing novelist who went by the pseudonym of Master of the House of Heavenly Flowers (dates unknown), in his preface to Heke Qicaizi Shu 合刻七才子書 (Combined Edition of the Book of Seven Talents),⁹⁷ elevates the role of talent in defining one’s self and adds it to “emotions” and “nature.” While nature (xing) is common to all, talent and emotions are grounded in one’s individuality and differ from person to person. To a certain extent, cai is innate, for it is contained in all human beings as a part of nature, but at the same time, it features a sophisticated and distinctively individual sensibility, hence taking on new importance as a mark of distinction.

Pu Songling 蒲松齡 (1640–1715) in his Strange Stories from the Studio of Liao (Liaozhai Zhiyi 聊齊誌異) follows an analogous path. On the one side, he plays between traditional moral rules and the extension of desires so powerful as to transform reality; on the other, his criticism of institutions and the system of governance runs in tandem with his attachment to the status quo. Borrowing Karl Kao’s words, “[Pu] reinforce[s] most of [feudal] values in his writings, just as, while exposing the flaws of the civil service examination as an institution in many of his tales, yet he continue[s] to take the examinations himself even into advanced age.”⁹⁸ Instead of representing a personal weakness or incoherence, this attitude is to be ascribed to Pu’s consciousness of the centrality of subjective self and the fluctuating reality around him.