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

This attitude brings to mind the Buddhist faith in retribution, which would lead to questions concerning determinism-freedom in Buddhist cause-effect (yinguo 因果), the law of karma uniting the causes formed in the past with the consequences of the present, and the effects of present behavior on the future.¹⁸⁰

Popular literature is particularly interesting because it provides a window through which we can examine relevant differences in the level of responsibility, given a variety of circumstances and occasions which facilitate misdemeanors. Fiction offers the concrete dimension of personal choice, weakness, and moral struggle in the syncretic perception of ordinary people where Confucianism is combined with Buddhist and Daoist elements. The novel Jinghuayuan 鏡花緣 (Destinies of the flowers in the mirror) (1828) reads as follows:

I also know that human life is like a dream. The two terms “fame” and “profit” are falsehoods. Usually, when I hear people talking about fame and profit, I remain coldly indifferent, but when I face them myself, I become blinded and rush toward them as if I were immortal. If I should find myself in such a situation in the future, how will it be possible for someone to give me a blow to the head and wake me from this spell [to warn me and enlighten me]?¹⁸¹

Novels offer evidence of the way moral responsibility was practiced and regarded by common people, and in the aforementioned passage, the maxim “opportunity makes the thief” is expressed: opportunity is the moment-condition that weakens the will of self-perfection if self-cultivation has not prevented this weakness. Together with fame and profit, the third frequent temptation described in literary sources is lust. There are two topoi relating to illicit liaisons that appear most commonly in vernacular stories; these are festivals, especially those held during the Chinese New Year, and widowhood. The former, which can be roughly compared to the Carnival in the West, typifies a “relaxation” of the social norms of everyday life and implies the loosening of the barriers that bar communications between the inner quarters of the house and