Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics Review

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Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics ReviewThis book, Individualism in Early China, is an ambitious, audacious, and pioneering work on a thorny topic.
Thorny, because it is controversial: western scholars tend to think that China does not have individualism at all, while Chinese scholars tend to argue that in Chinese tradition, individualism is not a major concern. Nevertheless, the author, Professor Erica Fox Brindley, based on her keen observation, tries to show that both of these long-held positions are erroneous, as they are extreme, biased, and obstructive to mutual understanding.
How does she overcome this difficulty? She adopts the concept of "human agency" to undergird individualism. As we can all agree that each human being is a unique entity, yet each person is also born from his/her parents, into a family with siblings, and brought up in certain environments and ways -- those are predestined, beyond one's personal control. So in the Chinese mind, an individual is always situated within a lager familial, social, and cosmic whole. An "agency" has its own power and potential, but it also acts under and on behalf of an external authority. Of external authorities, the author recognized three different sources: the cosmic authority of Heaven or Dao, the bodily authority of the ruler, and the institutional authority such as rites and law. It is through the efforts of "human agency," the decree of a higher authority can be enacted and fulfilled.
In the time frame that the author specifies (453-100 BCE), China went through a major socio-political change. The Zhou system of royal and kinship-based authority was gradually replaced by a kind of more centralized, bureaucratic order in some powerful states, with a demand for capable administrators on various levels. During this period, which the prominent Chinese historian Yu Ying-shih characterized as the age of "the first philosophical breakthrough" in China, a new group of educated elites with no specific allegiance to any state emerged. They travelled far and wide to promote their new ideas, with the purpose of gratifying their aspiration for personal achievement and fulfilling a higher mission - improving the general wellbeing of the entire populace. A creative minority of these educated elites founded many schools of thought, which constitute the source material for the author to advance her argument and present her thesis.
Professor Brindley studies these schools of thought carefully, interprets them by means of her own criteria, and reaches a conclusion that Chinese educated elites in that specific period were fully aware of the power and potential of themselves as an individual, as well as their mission dictated by a higher authority as an agent. She analyzes the "human agency" in terms of conformity and autonomy, but only in a relative sense. She does not polarize a problem or think in dichotomy mode, so she concludes her book by saying, in addition to Henry Rosemont's terms of "right-bearing individuals" - relevant to most Western traditions -- and "role-bearing persons" - relevant to Confucian ideologies - she would like to propose another term: "agency-fulfilling individuals."
The author cites Chinese source texts judiciously and interprets them with precision and lucidity. She is even able to look through the seemingly disparity between the thought of Mencius and that of the Moists, and perceive the deep-down similarity in their common goals - moral individuals and a harmonious society. This is a feat extremely useful for comparative studies.
This book serves three purposes at once. For students in the Chinese culture field, it provides the basic information of Chinese intellectual tradition; for scholars engaged in cross-cultural studies, it serves as a research model; for policy makers in and out of China, it shows how one can adapt one's view to arrive at a better understanding of the issue at hand with a new perspective.
Speaking of tradition, she thinks that it is not rigid, static, and inflexible, but constantly changing, developing, expanding, and incorporating new elements into its core systems, so as to accommodate to the ever changing environments. This book, in that sense, may also remind people to reevaluate their traditions, to be more open to new ideas, and thus to further facilitate cross-cultural interaction and understanding.
Hai-tao Tang
Plainsboro, NJIndividualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics Overview

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