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

modern concept is not inherent in Confucian doctrine.¹ Yan Yunxiang traces back the flaws of the contemporary top-down individualization in Chinese tradition, and concisely states: “due to the hostility of the Chinese state toward self-organizations and an autonomous society, the rising individual has shown a tendency to emphasize rights while overlooking obligations and other individuals’ rights, running the risk of becoming what I refer to the “uncivil individual.” Consequently, the rising individual is primarily confined to the sphere of private life, and egotism prevails when uncivil individuals interact with one another.”² This does not mean that Chinese culture is inherently opposed to any idea of dignity and human rights that are closely related.

Debates have concerned the lack or the compatibility of the concept of human rights.³ One may ask if it is correct to reconstruct empirical concepts of “sense of dignity” and “human dignity” in China as these concepts have been produced in the ambit of the Enlightenment-era together with those of inherent, inalienable rights. Premodern Chinese texts and Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist classics contain no exact notion and term of “human dignity.” In the Shuowen jiezi 說文解字, the entry yi 義 is explained as: “the dignity and respectable countenance and demeanour of the self”(ji zhi weiyi ye 己之威儀也),⁴ but it contains the ambiguity of the value attributed to morality rather than to the person valuable for itself. According to Zhang Qianfan 張千帆, dignity may be rendered in Chinese by the combination of two terms, zunyan 尊嚴 and renge 人格, prestige and personality, the former with prescriptive and the latter with descriptive functions.⁵

Several scholars have argued that rich conceptual resources relevant to the notion of “human dignity” can be evidenced in the history of Chinese thought.⁶ Then again, the question is to clarify what dignity means in a certain context. Both in Chinese and Western societies, questions on the self and human value have been raised in most philosophical and religious systems, but paradoxically the centrality of individual autonomy and freedom are still targets to be achieved or improved.⁷ However, in