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

beasts. In another passage, Mengzi praises a king who shows compassion with a trembling ox being led to ritual slaughter as “humane,” but at the same time expresses astonishment why the king does not extend such an attitude to the people (Mengzi, Liang Hui Wang I, 7 梁惠王上). This shows that the morality of action follows not only from the intentions of the actor but from the correspondence of the intentions with the nature of the object—an act of compassion can also be aimed at an animal, but it has its true place among human beings.”¹⁷ Dignity in the broad sense is also mentioned by Mencius,¹⁸ as in the case of the beggar who refuses the gift that would save his life if it were given in a humiliating way.¹⁹

In conclusion, Confucian rites are undoubtedly an important cultural tool for reciprocal respect in every circumstance of social life, but they are insufficient because the respect of human dignity should not depend only on the heroism of scholars who pay with their life the courage of expressing their ideas, or on the enlightened paternalistic lenience of the authority. Rites have undoubtedly contributed to the general concept of dignity in ancient China, but they are only one aspect, and it is disputable if they are still fitting to the contemporary society with its changing social and gender relations.

Among late Ming scholars, Li Zhi’s contribution to the concept of dignity may be considered marginal because his work has been deemed heterodox. However, his insistence on individual autonomy and the priority of the self offered an important contribution to the cult of qing and thus to the construction of an autonomous subject. Nevertheless, some limits have been observed. Theodore de Bary proposes the categories of “negative and positive individualism.”²⁰ One may say that Li Zhi’s thought has both of these characteristics: the “negativity” of those who leave society because they are not willing to compromise and adapt themselves to its conventions and laws, and the “positiveness” inherent in defending desire as an objective, generalized phenomenon in humans. His reiteration of the inviolability of a person’s basic, universal passions and desires worked de facto toward the recognition that every person