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

Chapter 5

Past and Recent Debates

Concerning the importance of the individual and a person’s autonomy in Chinese history, Confucian neiwai 内外 cultivation and Daoist dialectics offer interesting examples: Beyond rule-based simplification and role-based ethics, the importance attributed to “following one’s own inclination” is a key point in the Chinese traditional way of thinking.¹ The majority of scholars have noted the Chinese culture’s holistic approach in describing the relationship of the self with the other members of the society, with the cosmos and society, while no emphasis is placed upon the idea of distinction and the contraposition between social and natural systems.² At any rate, the self is perceived as being shaped by the dialectical interrelation of opposed and yet complementary polarities like internal-external—as best exemplified by the quatrain “inner wisdom and outer regality” (neisheng waiwang 內聖外王)—law-propriety (fa 法-li 禮), principle-energy/desire (li 理-qi 氣/yu 欲), and the like. Signs of “individualism” in Chinese culture can be traced back to the period before Chinese encounters with the West and the increasing internationalisation of the nineteenth century, the Neo-Daoist Movement of the Wei-Jin period (265–420), and as far as to the pre-Qin times when classical schools of thought had just begun sprouting.