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

found within a culture and across cultures. He expresses his doubts on Zhang’s associating the notion of “human dignity” with that of the “ideal Confucian personality.”¹²

The question is dual, then 1) whether human dignity is sufficiently protected by moral rules if legal and ethical spheres are not well distinguished and 2) whether we understand the rites as the rules elaborated by the ancient Confucians, or as the innate morality, the ability to decide according to one’s conscience, evolving with times, without conformism and subordination.

What rites seem lacking for full compatibility of Confucianism to the idea of dignity is their limits in recovering its offences, the deficiency to support the autonomy of subjects. Innate humaneness and the Golden Rule need to be integrated by ideological and institutional devices so that the subjects are neither led into new bondage nor renounce their responsibility for the common interest.¹³ Moreover, the dignity of each human being, if understood not just as a subordinate bearer of duties, needs a political and legal structure limiting the abuses of power and assuring the change of dynasty without violence. Rites not only had to be moral rules but also external devices and institutional tools to maintain people’s dignity in each situation; rites should have a political force to limit abuses of authorities. If dignity is reduced to the equal moral possibility of every human being, the consequence is the heroic reaction of the scholar who dies for justice and the beggar who starves to death to preserve it. It is difficult to find a ruler of an autocratic regime who does not present himself as a benevolent lord who loves order and harmony. What happens when the authority fails the rules of propriety, and how will the superior be held accountable? As Anthony Yu notices, “subjects, wives, children, and inquisitive journalists may be swiftly penalized if they err, but who will effectively censure, curb, or bring to justice the transgressive emperor, the patriarch, the judge, the senior minister, or the members of the ruling party?” ¹⁴