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

to specific cultural self-conceptions. This concept is not only a descriptive notion but also a normative one, for it mirrors the meaning and values of personhood, as well as issues of legitimacy and dignity connected with self-identity.⁷ The main question is then to “translate” into modern terms concepts that were elaborated in and for different social and cultural contexts, and single out those experiences that transcend the local and the temporal and that resonate with us.⁸ For example, dealing with the self, on the one side, the notions of “human nature” (xing 性) have to be taken into consideration, although the perspective under which they were elaborated was far from ours.⁹ On the other side, the notion of “human dignity” (rende zunyan 人的尊嚴) cannot be ignored, although its compatibility with Confucianism is the object of debates,¹⁰ as it is a modern construct rooted in European history where it was first developed.

Behind the concepts of human rights and abstract personality, as well as beyond social roles, a human being is above all what they think of themselves, how they live in reality, and how they build their image, convincing themselves and others of this image and interacting with the environment. Especially since Ming times, with the “privatizing” process of fiction, we witness a shift from the court and the battlefield to the bedroom and the garden.¹¹ Growing attention has been paid to the individual’s private life not in function with their public one, or in a frame of allegorical abstraction, but for the sake of “peeping into others’ private life,”¹² in a fashion similar to that found in Europe where a libertine narrative uncovers the private place of pleasures and talks about hidden amorous lives, letting people peek at the secrets of the urban elite.

The shift of interest of Ming writers toward the inner and private world has been noted by several scholars over the last few decades. Rich information on private history, tastes, secret vices, unconventional and transgressing behaviors, relationships with friends and family, aesthetic enjoyment, body sustenance, and modesty are obtained from multiple sources, in particular literary works.¹³ Among all, the discussion triggered by Robert Hegel in the panel “Expression of Selfhood in Chinese