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on reason, it is the emotional response of human nature originated from Heaven. According to Wang, while the Western concept of freedom means freeing oneself from authority and any other external sources, the Confucian concept of freedom is to free oneself from advantage, selfishness, weakness of mind, and corrupt society, all of which may be an obstacle to the Way. For Wang Yunping, instead of focusing on distinctions between individuals, between public life and private life, and between society and individuals, Confucians concentrated on the binding power of social bonds serving as a moral unity within which mutual concern takes the place of one-sided domination. This is not against the autonomous dimension of Confucian moral personhood, characterized by independent choices, by the exercise of will and voluntarism.

41. See, for instance, Chan, “Moral Autonomy, Civil Liberties and Confucianism,” 281–310. Richard Solomon’s famous volume on Mao’s Revolution (Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture, 4, 75–79, 128–129, 210) seems to have first used the wording “dependent orientation” to explain these phenomena in modern times. Xu Jiling (“Zhongguo Zhishi Fenzi Qunti Renge de Lishi Tansuo,” 1015) speaks, instead, in terms of “collective personality” (qunti renge 群體人格) or “dependent personality” (yifu renge 依附人格) as opposed to “autonomous personality in the modern sense” (jindai yiyishang de duli renge 近代意義上的獨立人格). According to Xu, the intellectuals of traditional China were neither autonomous nor critical, but dependent on ancients’ thought, Classics and political power (10). While Yang Guoshu (Zhongguoren de Bianqian. 391) is acknowledged for having advanced the idea of “heteronomous orientation” (taren quxiang 他人趨向), Wolfgang Kubin (“The Inconstant Monkey,” 7) openly criticizes those, like Metzger (Escape from Predicament) and Tu Weiming (“On the Mencian Perception of Moral Self-Development”), who speak in favor of an autonomous conscience in China. Yu Yingshi (Cong Jiazhi Xitong Kan Zhongguo Wenhua de Xiandai Yiyi) singles out a few concepts that point to moral autonomy not only in Confucianism but also in Buddhism and Daoism, like, for example, those of “looking within oneself” (qiu zhu ji 求諸己), “grounding oneself on oneself and not on others” (yishen bu yita 依身不依他), and “self-sufficiency” (zizu 自足). Roetz (Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age) has also emphasized the active and autonomous role of the individual in Confucianism as well as the inherent moral tension for self-improvement and changing reality; this stance, however, goes against the Weberian view that conceives of the spirit of Neo-Confucian morality as a pure