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

withdrawing to a hermit life or becoming monk. Symptomatic is, for instance, Wang Fuzhi’s tormented state of mind during the years of his life under the new Qing dynasty. No less complex was the ambiguous case of Xue Cai 薛寀 (1598–1665), discussed by Lynn Struve.⁶ Xue Cai’s journal shows that with the worsening of the political situation and the dissolution of the Ming order, he started to record his dreams; they reflected his disillusionment, skepticism, and increasing worries and fears, and they accompanied his progressive conversion from Confucian life to Daoism and finally to the Buddhist eremite retirement. Xue felt unworthy of martyrdom and felt ill at ease about his personal dignity: “outwardly he seemed easy to accommodate everything, but inwardly he judged himself severely and was self-deprecating to the end.”⁷

Different schools of thought and doctrines have elaborated on different systems. Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism have created their moral systems. Inside each school, thinkers have singled out a variety of worths. Thus, when we investigate autonomy and the sense of the self, it is necessary to keep into consideration the value ladder of writers which conditions the self-perception. The following chapters provide some concrete examples of theories and practices of the self in premodern and modern China, with some reflections on different interpretations and the main questions concerning the autonomous individual. Various aspects of personal identity and personality in Neo-Confucianism, especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties, have been discussed both in the philosophical and literary fields.

Both in China and the world of sinology, Chinese culture is appreciated for its ancient and splendid achievements in the fields of literature, moral thought, artistic production, and social organization. Harmony is considered to be the ideal foundation of the Confucian cosmology and structure of society. Confucianism insists on the continuous process of change of reality, on the dialectic recomposition of order, and the need for education and self-cultivation; understanding the changes taking place in the present is seen as a means of participation in mastering them