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

acknowledged by only one or two persons, your opinion must not be changed; but if you consider it wrong, you cannot follow that idea, even if it is shared by thousands of people. If it was a mistake even followed by thousands of people, for hundreds and thousands of years, as soon as we first notice it, we must not continue to echo and repeat this mistake.³⁶

In various ways, some writers of this period brought into question previously widely accepted polarities such as public-private, wise-foolish, principle-desire, and morality-profit and demonstrated their intrinsic complementarity. Efforts were put into deconstructing the traditional dyads “private” versus “general interest,” “personal profit” versus “collective morals,” and more generally “wisdom” versus “foolishness.” Nevertheless, this change of perspective followed the traditional yin-yang dialectics rather than excluding one of the two opposites. Various arguments contributed to the construction of a wider autonomous self. They markedly downplayed the logic that frames human desires as opposed to heavenly principles, either by elevating the former to the latter’s position (Li Zhi), by identifying the former with the latter (Chen Que), or by regarding desire as the genuine basis of morality and life (Feng Menglong and Dai Zhen). Thus, the shift toward the adoption of an emotionally colored vocabulary—see, for example, the gaining popularity of terms like desires (yu) or foolishness (chi)—helped add a new positive meaning to concepts with a consolidated derogatory sense, and thereby became symptomatic of the overall change of values that occurred in some Ming-Qing circles. Over this period, the reform movement of so-called “practical studies” (shixue 實學) developed throughout China, Korea, and Japan, expressing a new sensibility toward the “righteousness-profit” polarity.³⁷ The interest in practicality, economic conditions, and statecraft was however less eversive than the exaltation of private interests and desires based on individual expectations and against the conformism of principles.

As mentioned, this growth of individualism differed from what was taking place in the West, as it was not isolating but “holistic,” not exclusive