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

and self-deception. Not all these categories have an equivalent in traditional Chinese, but this does not exclude analogous perceptions in Chinese culture.²³

It is easier to keep in mind some key terms from Chinese texts which concern and influence the concept of moral responsibility: ²⁴ (1) tian 天 (Heaven, blue sky) and ming 命 (command/mandate, lifespan, destiny), (2) xin 心 (heart-mind) and zhi 志 (tendency, determination, or more generally heart-mind-commitment);²⁵ (3) xing 性 (human nature), and ziran 自然 (self-so, so of itself, spontaneity, inclination), ²⁶ and (4) youchi qiege 有耻且格 (“they will have the sense of shame, and will reform themselves”); that is, the human ability of self-reformation.²⁷ Part II will mainly focus on items 1, 2, and 4. These terms concur to delimit and/or affirm what we call moral responsibility; that is, the human agent is supposed to be endowed with the capacity to choose among alternatives and thus be morally accountable for their choice. These concepts have been transmitted and re-elaborated through the centuries but have remained fundamental to the Confucian conscience so that late imperial Neo-Confucianism has inherited them from ancient China.

Debates

The innovations introduced by early Confucian thinkers in a period of crisis of values and decadence like that suffered by Zhou’s (ca. 1046 BC–256 BC) institutions and aristocracy, as well as the crisis of the established worldview based on the religion of Heaven and the code of ritual propriety (li 禮) have been the object of several studies.²⁸ The early Confucian thinkers grounded traditional rules of conduct (rites) on the moral self and inner nature and linked personal integrity to the fulfilment of social roles. These thinkers expressed the consciousness of the responsibility of the moral agent acting in the interest of the common good: the self-respect at the basis of any autonomous action takes the place of public reputation and the opinions of the majority. Borrowing Heiner Roetz’s words, “[b]y humaneness (ren 仁) in terms of the Golden Rule,