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

study of emotions is useful in this research, especially psychological and linguistic inquiries into the cognitive dimension. However, the affective phenomenon is particularly interesting not only for its physiological and natural aspects but especially for its cultural construction. Cultural and social contexts not only influence emotions’ manifestations but model their motivations, interactions, and meanings, including the body and its symbolic values. Emotions in their ritualization, description, narration, and codification reflect social values and disvalues but in turn can organize and modify the social environment, and they always respond to self-assertion.¹³ Their representation offers the best evidence for a reconstruction of the self in a certain culture and period.

The reevaluation of individual autonomy and rehabilitation of passions and desires giving birth to a kind of individualism in Chinese culture have been discussed in the first part of the volume and its final comments. We have examined the characteristics of this individualism, its interest in an autonomous self and the self-motivated reconstruction of the individual, its social orientation, and its holistic dimension. The extension of desires to others (tuiyu) based on the principle of reciprocity (shu) denotes a deep understanding of one’s and others’ expectations as well as the consciousness that humans are different in their conditions, abilities, interests, and other aspects but also share the same nature, with corresponding needs, hopes, desires, and weaknesses. Various autonomous stands have been mentioned, from heroism and martyrdom to the hermit and monastic existence, from the adaptation to circumstances to an aesthetic style of life. This study started by focusing on two scholars who professed their dignity and autonomy at the cost of their life, freedom, and their privileges of scholars. Li Zhi demonstrated his awareness that the real motivation of each individual is self-realization and self-interests, and professed a tolerance grounded in the acknowledgement that truth is not the monopoly of any cultural, religious, or moral system. Zhu Jiyou dared to resist Emperor Yongle’s cultural policy. Then, notwithstanding different traditions, the basic concepts of personal autonomy and human dignity emerge forcefully in Chinese intellectual history, as Zhu Jiyou, Li