Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China By Paolo Santangelo

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

Chapter 9:

Heaven, Destiny, Mind, and Will

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These divergent tendencies become even more evident when contrasted with the anguish of the dramatic pages of Christian writers of different periods, including Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Dostoievski in the West. Moreover, allegorical poems, whose prototype may be traced back to Prudentius’s Psychomachia, emphasized the struggle between virtues and vices.¹⁰² The dramatization of the conflict between the law of God and the law of sin, spirit, and matter¹⁰³ is evident in the following well-known passage taken from a classic of Western moral thought, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which marks too a turning point for its radical disruption to the original European-Greek tradition and the beginning of the Christian era:

For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.

For that which I do I know not: for not what I would, that do I practice; but what I hate, that I do.

But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that it is good.

So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me.

For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good I find not.

For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practice.

But if what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me.

I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present.

For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:

but I see a different law in my memories, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.

Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body to this death?

Generally speaking, in the West, the choice between good and evil has been dramatized as a struggle, in which the subject fights against