1. Books dedicated to moral teachings shed light on how intentions and circumstances were taken into account: these not only increased or decreased the merit or demerit of a particular action but could even change the very nature of the morality of that action. There is no doubt that responsibility was recognized by traditional Chinese moral discourses, both in the sense of carrying the burden of the consequences of one’s actions and as a necessary corollary of liberty and human will. On exemplarism, see David Wong, “Cultivating the Self in Concert with Others,” 176–178.

2. Wienpahl, “Spinoza and Wang Yang-Ming,” 19–27; Xiaosheng Chen’s PhD dissertation (“A Neo-Confucian Approach”) is dedicated to the analysis of possible parallels between the two thinkers concerning some metaphysical aspects (69–171), intuitive knowledge (172–236), and amor-humaneness (237–307). I am grateful to one of the anonymous readers for the challenging questions and hints included in the feedback.

3. Ethics, part 3, prop. 6. But the category of conatus, logically speaking, has no equivalent in Chinese culture, as it is the innate inclination to continue to exist and enhance oneself, but it is a general term for endeavor: “When this conatus is related to mind alone, it is called Will [voluntas]; when it is related to mind and body together, it is called Appetite [appetitus], which is therefore nothing else but man’s essence […] Further, there is no difference between appetite and Desire [cupiditas] except that desire is usually related to men insofar as they are conscious of their appetite.” (Ethics, part 3 p. 9 Scholium, cited by Xiaosheng Chen, 275). Thus, I hesitate to correlate it to the energy (qi). Only when considered as moral achievement, in choosing affects that improve one’s power and the union with God, it could be compared with the moral exercise, gongfu, although the tension is eudaimonistic rather than purely moral (Kisner, Spinoza on Human Freedom, 72–85). This self-cultivation is autonomous, like in Confucianism, and aimed at perfection, neither for the superstitious fear of punishments nor for the puritan avoidance of evil but rather based on loving virtue (Ethics, part 4, proposition 63). On Spinoza’s ideas of freedom, see Boros, “Freedom in Nature,” 27–46; on conatus, desires and affects, see Schrijvers, “The Conatus,” 63–80.