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

conditions, longevity, and health that can hardly be removed or changed, and the individual can do little and generally has to accept them.³⁹ The human condition was seen as the result of a complex combination of factors which did not concern only destiny, success, health, and wealth, but also moral attitude, prudence, and wisdom. The psychophysical nature—different from the moral original nature elaborated by Mencius—is driven by dispositions due to the quality of the initial cosmic energy accidentally received at birth and roughly corresponds to the real character and personality of a subject. Concerning society, all processes attributed to Heaven are neither random nor willful, but natural.⁴⁰ The periods of clarity and periods of obscurity in the propagation of the Way, of good and bad government, the qi configuration of in a certain time and place that allows or does not allow the rise of sages, are all the result of the tianming.⁴¹ Nevertheless, human intervention is possible at least at the individual level: the subject can improve or worsen their original condition through various experiences, self-cultivation, and habits.⁴²

One of Zhu Xi’s merits was his effort of clarifying the concepts of the ming of destiny and the ming of moral imperative.⁴³ He classified what belongs to destiny and concerns life, luckiness, disasters: all these categories depend on heaven, even though heaven works through inaction and thus cannot be controlled by humans, who under such circumstances can do nothing but accept them. Commenting on Mencius’s passage “Nothing happens that is not due to destiny, and one should accept willingly what is proper” (莫非命也，顺受其正),⁴⁴ Zhu Xi argues that what is proper is what is beyond one’s control.⁴⁵ Nevertheless, humans do have some degree of choice when it comes to determining their life direction as well as their successes and failures; they are required to ponder the possible bad or good effects of their behavior. They can be responsible for avoiding future dangers if they are careful enough not to ruin their own lives, like arrest and death in prison as a consequence of one’s actions, or the imprudence of being near a crumbling wall. In these situations, they cannot blame destiny because they have caused their own disaster (你自取，不干天事).⁴⁶ Thus, some events are inevitable and