The Confucian Atomistic Individual? Selfhood in Xiong Shili's New Treatise on the Uniqueness of Consciousness

Proceeding from the role ethicist distinction between the Enlightenment atomistic individual and the Confucian person, this article argues that Xiong Shili's discourse on self-cultivation in the New Treatise on the Uniqueness of Consciousness can be better described by appealing to the language of atomistic individualism, insofar as it depicts others, tradition, the body, and the affective as limitations imposed on the inner core of selfhood.