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

Due to the high price of official remonstrance against authorities or refusal of orthodox morality, the dilemma for resistance could not be exclusively intended as an alternative between rectitude and cowardice. From another perspective, the alternative could be seen between two values: the importance of principle and the importance of one’s life and one’s family’s safety. Thus Li Zhi’s anti-moralism may be understood not only as a Daoist legacy but as a reasonable integration of the Confucian imperative: Li Zhi’s warning is that human beings are an end in themselves, as the Way is in themselves.

It seems that even from the theoretical point of view, there are elements that go beyond the concept of a moral dignity bound to rites and accepted conventions. The respect due to any human being in any relation with others requires reciprocal sense of dignity. Borrowing Mencius’s words, human nature is the innate nobility (gui 貴) anterior to any other external dignity that might be conferred by state and society: “To desire to be honored is the common mind of men. In fact, all men have in themselves that which is truly honorable. Only they do not think of it. The honor which men confer is not good honor” (欲貴者，人之同心也。人人有貴於己者，弗思耳。人之所貴者，非良貴也).²⁷ Thus we may hypothesize a universal idea of human dignity as the consciousness of the value of one’s self and the care for its protection and development, although methods are personal and contents reflect cultural development and circumstances. Li Zhi elaborates such an idea with the concept of “child-mind” (tongxin 童心), “free of all falseness and entirely genuine mind, the original mind of one’s very first thought.”²⁸ This innocence is the consciousness of the value of one’s autonomous and free personality. Summing up, in the specific case of Chinese culture, the sense of shame (chi),²⁹ the rules of rites, the notion of “human nature” (xing),³⁰ with its manifestation of emotions and desires, contributed to the construction of a concept similar to that of human dignity. We should also take into consideration that the notion of dignity is nurtured by the concern for social respectability and face, the defence of one’s ideas, loyalty to public and private engagements, and the refusal of any humiliating charity.³¹