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

Woman of the Capital (Jingshi Jienü 京師節女) was married to a man with many enemies who wanted to murder him. They blackmailed his wife, who was a filial daughter, by capturing her father in order to force her to cooperate in her husband’s murder. Faced with a conflict between her filial duties to her father and her loyalty to her husband and being unable to choose, she devised a plan to save both her father and husband, which led to her immolation: she tricked her husband to exchange his sleeping places with her so that the kidnappers would mistake her for him. Through her sacrifice, she saved the lives of her husband and her father.¹²³ Other similar cases are given from the ancient times; for example, in the pre-Qin compilation of the “Zuo Commentary” (Zuozhuan), which focuses on the female conflict between the subordinate roles of daughter and wife, Ying 贏 (in the twenty-second year of Duke Xi) tries to find a way to be loyal to both her father and her husband but privileges her husband over her father.¹²⁴

Concerning the conflict between family obligations and state rule, Anne Cheng discussed murders committed out of vengeance, where rites and law are in total contradiction, with the dilemma being whether to give priority to the state’s monopoly of justice or the clan’s “private” ethical obligation of vengeance. The tolerance of vengeance is a derogation to the objective legal punishment, justified on the basis of the inefficiency of justice administration. This decision comes from the resolution by the subject, thanks to the Gongyang notion of “balancing the circumstances” (quan 權):¹²⁵ quan is the free judgement of the agent, an important element of responsible decision-making in pondering the situation.

While pre-Qin Confucians prioritized filial piety,¹²⁶ Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (179–104 BC) created a metaphysical justification of the three cardinal relationships of emperor-minister, father-son, and husband-wife based on the yin-yang cosmic order:

The relationship between monarch and minister, father and son, and husband and wife, are all derived from the principles of the Yin and Yang. The monarch is Yang, the minister is Yin; the father