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

rather than elaborate entitlements for the protection of the subject from excesses of authorities, and it seems to ignore human dignity and its value in itself. In fact, in the Chinese history of ideas, conceptions of the self or its negation vary. Every scholar has focused on one or some of the many facets of the problem of self-autonomy, and each aspect treated in various analyses has enriched the debate with new, important insights which, if tied together, can help us gain a more complete picture. Confucian morality, rather than describing and prescribing human behavior according to social context, represents the subject as an autonomous individual, endowed with conscience and responsibility.

Any metaphysical question of whether autonomy or capacity of a decision by the subject is either effective or illusory will not be touched upon here. I will also not be discussing the “focal self” and the presence or absence of an “inner psychic life” which has dominated sinological studies since the 1990s.¹³ Pregnant is Roger Ames’s definition of the self as “a reflexive impulse within a repertory of socially embedded experiences, desires, and beliefs that are articulated through multiple levels of communal discourse.”¹⁴ The notion wavers between various approaches toward “individual autonomy,” the fulfilment of one’s basic requirements, or warnings against pursuing one’s mere self-interest. The following chapters will offer some examples to illustrate the variety of possible views.¹⁵

Chinese terms that have contiguous meanings are not exactly equivalent. Deborah Sommer has done a lexical enquiry on related terms such as ji 己, xing 形, gong 躬, shen 身, and ti 體 in the main ancient philosophical texts.¹⁶ Xing is form, or physical frame, while gong is the body that visually performs ritualized conduct; shen, body-person, covers a broader semantic field and includes the person and social identity; and ti, body-essence, overlaps bodies and identities. Although ji is not synonymous with the Western notion of “self,” it is closer to it: it is used in “study for the sake of one’s self “(xue zhe wei ji 學者為己), and “reflecting on the self” (xing hu ji 省乎己). ¹⁷ It is like an empty or full