Rethinking Moral Responsibility: The Case of the Evil-Natured Tyrants in Confucian Thought

Abstract

In general, the justification for the divine punishment in the Christian cosmos hinges on the notion of free will. Despite doctrinal complexities involving sin, grace, and divine sovereignty, individuals are held morally responsible for choosing evil over good. According to an ancient Chinese legend, however, the tyrant King Zhou (11th C. BCE) who lost his throne due to a changed mandate from Heaven was born with extreme evil tendencies. But if his evilness was determined before his birth and all his evil deeds are consequences of his natural tendencies, what might justify his punishment? Through an examination of Confucian responses to this question, this essay argues that Confucians did not ground moral responsibility in volitional freedom but rather in the extremity of one’s moral conduct. Their framework reveals a distinctive form of compatibilism—one in which blame is assigned not on the basis of freedom to choose otherwise but on how radically one’s actions deviate from shared ethical expectations. This suggests that the assumption of free will as a necessary condition for moral responsibility may reflect culturally specific intuitions, rather than a universal moral standard.

1. Introduction

In Chinese culture, the last rulers of the Xia 夏 (ca. 20th–16th C. BCE) and Shang 商 (ca. 16th–11th C. BCE) dynasties, the Kings Jie 桀 and Zhou 紂, are widely regarded as the worst sovereigns in history.1 More than just failed rulers, they are remembered as embodiments of human evil. Legends recount that King Zhou made mincemeat from the flesh of a loyal minister and devised a punishment in which victims were roasted alive on a scorching bronze pillar (Nienhauser 1994, p. 50). While many of these tales, perhaps even the existence of King Jie, lack historical credibility, the tradition of condemning King Zhou for the fall of his dynasty while extolling the virtues of his conquerors, Kings Wen 文 and Wu 武, is deeply rooted in Chinese cultural memory, predating even Confucius (c. 551–479 BCE).2

What draws our attention to this millennia-old myth is its implications for the concepts of free will and moral responsibility. At the center of this early dynastic narrative is Heaven, the highest god in the Chinese pantheon, who, dissatisfied with the tyrants’ wickedness, revoked their mandate and entrusted power to more virtuous persons. In place of King Jie, Heaven chose King Tang 湯 of the Shang dynasty, and for King Zhou, it granted the mandate to King Wen.3 This appears to be the earliest example of a divine punishment narrative in Chinese culture.4

Nearly a thousand years after the Zhou conquest, however, Confucians in the imperial era began to extend the legend beyond political legitimacy and incorporated it into discussions of human nature. They pointed to rulers like King Zhou as evidence that some people are simply born evil.5 But if their wickedness was inborn, how could Heaven justly punish them? This question challenges the incompatibilist assumption that is central to Christian theology and widely influential within Western philosophy. Incompatibilists maintain that if an agent’s actions are determined by factors beyond their control, such as divine will or causal necessity, then the agent cannot be held morally responsible. As contemporary philosophers like Peter van Inwagen argue, this position rests on the principle of alternative possibilities: that moral accountability requires the genuine ability to do otherwise in a given situation. If that ability is absent, punishment or blame loses its normative grounding (e.g., Inwagen 1983; Kane 1998).

Compatibilist philosophers in the modern era, however, have raised doubts about this view. They argue that moral responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise but rather depends on whether an agent’s actions reflect their internal character, reasoning, or evaluative attitudes—even if these are themselves determined (e.g., Strawson 1982; Dennett 1984; Fischer and Ravizza 1991). On this view, moral blame remains meaningful as long as the action expresses the agent’s own standpoint. I argue that Confucian thinkers are best understood as operating from within a broadly compatibilist framework.

Much has already been written on the question of free will in Confucian thought. Particularly in Chinese academia, there has been a long-standing tradition, beginning with thinkers like Li Zehou and Mou Zongsan, that interprets Confucian moral subjectivity through a Kantian lens (Carleo 2020). This line of inquiry continues in more recent comparative works on Wang Yangming’s doctrine of “innate moral knowledge” (liangzhi 良知), which draw parallels with Kantian accounts of autonomy and practical reason (e.g., Gao 2022; Qiu and Gong 2008; Liu 2005). In contrast, figures such as Herbert Fingarette (1972), Chad Hansen (1972), and Angus Charles Graham (1989) have argued that Confucian ethics lack the emphasis on choice that is essential to the Western notion of free will. On this view, moral action is not primarily a matter of deliberating among alternatives but of cultivating the dispositions and affective attunements that allow one to respond spontaneously to ethical patterns.

This essay aligns with the latter view questioning the centrality of choice in Confucian ethics but takes a different focus. Rather than asking how Confucians conceived of free will, I examine how they justified moral responsibility in contexts where the capacity to choose the good appears constrained, whether by external circumstance, natural endowment, or temperament. On this issue, the most directly relevant scholarship is Yong Huang (2018), who argues that Wang Yangming maintains a form of incompatibilism by grounding moral accountability in the will (zhi 志). While I follow Huang’s framing of the problem, I suggest that his solution cannot fully succeed, since Wang, like Mencius, also acknowledges the role of moral luck in mitigating moral responsibility.

To trace this tension more fully, the discussion begins with early Confucian interpretations of King Zhou’s downfall, where the claim that he was born evil sits uneasily alongside the belief that Heaven justly punished him. I then show how this problem persists even within the Neo-Confucian discourse, despite its commitment to Mencius’s doctrine that human nature is good. Turning to Mencius’s own reflections on material deprivation and moral failure, I argue that his reasoning anticipates modern discussions of moral luck. I conclude by comparing Confucian views with contemporary debates about the moral responsibility of psychopaths, emphasizing that for Confucians, it was the extremity of moral behavior, not volitional freedom, that grounded moral judgment.

2. Evil-Natured Tyrants and the Problem of Divine Punishment

In what is probably the oldest surviving account of these ancient dynastic changes, the victors of regime shifts justified their conquest not in terms of power, but by appeal to Heaven’s will. In strikingly similar language, they claimed they had merely obeyed a divine order:

Come, you multitudes. Listen to my words. It is not I, a little child, who dared to call myself a King and created chaos. [King Jie] of Xia had many sins. Heaven ordered that he be executed.

格爾眾庶，悉聽朕言，非台小子，敢行稱亂！有夏多罪，天命殛之。

(Shisan Jing Zhushu Zhengli Weiyuan Hui 2000, p. 227)6

As the sins of [King Zhou] of Shang filled [the world], Heaven ordered that he be slain. If I disobeyed Heaven, my sin would equal [his].

商罪貫盈，天命誅之。予弗順天，厥罪惟鈞。

(Shisan Jing Zhushu Zhengli Weiyuan Hui 2000, p. 324)7

From the conquerors’ perspective, invoking divine will as the ultimate cause of dynastic change was likely an attempt to legitimize their revolution while warning future challengers that military power alone is insufficient to claim the throne. Western audiences familiar with the Christian tradition, however, would find the story all too familiar in their own ways. Not only does it resemble the story of God rejecting Saul and anointing David as the new king of Israel, but the entire narrative could be read as an example of divine punishment—God punishing individuals for their immoral conduct. One might even argue that this concept, best exemplified by beliefs in heaven and hell, is the foundational basis of the entire Christian tradition.

However, in the Christian tradition, as strong as the possibility of divine punishment is emphasized, so is the idea of free will that justifies God’s punishment. This linkage is foundational: the notion that God can justly hold individuals accountable presupposes that their sins are the result of voluntary choices. Of course, Christian theology complicates this picture by intertwining free will with other key doctrines, such as original sin, divine grace, and God’s absolute sovereignty. Yet, thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas maintained that while all human actions, even sinful ones, ultimately occur under God’s creative will, individuals still act freely and are thus morally accountable (McCann and Johnson 2022). These theological accounts reflect a deeply rooted concern in Christian thought: to preserve moral responsibility even in the face of divine omnipotence.

In the Chinese version of the divine punishment narrative, however, a similar emphasis on free will is more difficult to find. Or more precisely, the tyrants might even be described as lacking free will. Consider the following passage:

When [good ministers like] Yu, Ji, and Xie helped [the sage-kings] Yao and Shun to do good, they did so. [But] when [bad people like] Gun and Huan Dou sought to help them do evil, [Yao and Shun] executed them. Those who can be helped to do good but not to do evil are called [people of] “highest wisdom.” [In contrast,] King Jie and Zhou killed [the good ministers] Guan Longfeng and Bigan when they wished to help them do good. [But] when the [bad advisors like] Yu Xin and the Marquis of Chong helped them do evil, they did so. Those who can be helped to do evil but not to do good are called the “lowest folly.” The Duke Huan of Qi became a hegemon with Guan Zhong’s assistance but fell into disorder when aided by Shu Diao. Those who can be helped do both good and evil are called “average people.”

譬如堯舜，禹、稷、镨與之為善則行，鯀、讙兜欲與為惡則誅。可與為善，不可與為惡，是謂上智。桀紂，龍逢、比干欲與之為善則誅，于莘、崇侯與之為惡則行。可與為惡，不可與為善，是謂下愚。齊桓公，管仲相之則霸，豎貂輔之則亂。可與為善，可與為惡，是謂中人。

(Ban 1964, p. 861)

Despite the many historical references that are familiar only to the Chinese audience, the core message about Jie and Zhou is clear: Jie and Zhou were the kind of people who could only do evil—being virtuous was never a possibility for them. They belonged to the category of “lowest folly”: those who were incapable of performing good. This type of people stands in contrast with those of “highest wisdom”, who can only be helped to do good, and the “average people” are those who can do both good and evil. This distinction, known as the “three grades of human nature”,8 is grounded upon a passage in the Analects (17.3) where Confucius said the following:

The Master said: Only those of the highest wisdom and those of the lowest folly do not change.

子曰：「唯上知與下愚不移。」

(Zhu 1983, p. 176)

But if one believes that certain people are incapable of doing good, how can they be held responsible for their wickedness? When Jie and Zhou could not choose to do good even when guided by virtuous ministers, did they not lack the free will that Augustine and other Western thinkers would consider necessary for just punishment?

Some scholars may contend that it would have never been impossible for Jie and Zhou to choose good over evil, as Chinese thinkers never endorsed such a deterministic view, at least regarding moral autonomy (Chen 1997, p. 330). Admittedly, Wang Chong (fl. 1st C CE), a well-known advocate of the three grades of human nature theory, allows for the possibility that even those born with extreme evil tendencies could, in rare cases, change (C. Wang 1990, p. 68).9 They may face greater resistance to moral cultivation, but this does not mean change was impossible (Shao 2009, pp. 295–97; McLeod 2018, p. 227).

As we will see, this position, that anyone can become good if they exert enough effort—no matter how disadvantageous one’s individual inborn tendencies might be—was later taken up by prominent Neo-Confucian thinkers like Cheng Yi and Wang Yangming. This denial of the impossibility of moral transformation was, in a sense, their inheritance of Mencius’s affirmation of the universal potential for goodness. Yet while upholding the idea of universal moral responsibility, they simultaneously introduced concepts such as talent cai 才 or endowment of qi 氣 that reinforced differences in moral capacity. In doing so, they preserved rather than resolved the underlying tension between moral responsibility and unequal inborn tendencies.

3. The Problem of Will Under Unequal Conditions: A Neo-Confucian Dilemma

To be clear, not all Confucians participated in the belief in the three grades of human nature. For Mencius, at least, this question of inborn moral inequality likely never arose, not only because he lived several centuries before the theory’s emergence,10 but more fundamentally because his conception of human nature leaves no room for the idea that anyone is born irredeemably evil. In his view, everyone is born with the same innate moral potential, and those who fail to realize it are not victims of their nature but of their own choices. Anyone claiming to be born beyond the reach of goodness, he would see as engaged in self-deception—or, more precisely, what he termed “self-injury” and “self-abandonment”, the destruction of the moral potential bestowed by Heaven (4A.10).11

However, this clear explanation, which enables Mencius to hold tyrants accountable without contradiction, does not carry over to later Neo-Confucians. In veneration of Mencius, thinkers like Cheng Yi, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming all affirmed the doctrine that human nature is universally good.12 Cheng Yi even attempted to explain the distinction between the “highest wisdom” and “lowest folly” as a matter of will. Yet in doing so, he introduced a new explanatory framework—one that ultimately reopens the very question of innate moral inequality that Mencius’s account had foreclosed.

Human nature is fundamentally good, [but] why are there those who cannot change? Speaking of human nature, everyone is good, [but] speaking of [one’s] talent, there are those of the lowest folly who “do not change.” The so-called “lowest folly” is of two kinds: those who injure themselves and those who abandon themselves. If a person truly regulates oneself with goodness, then there is nothing that cannot be changed. Even the most benighted and foolish can make gradual progress. Only those who injure themselves deny [this possibility] by disbelief, while those who abandon themselves sever [this opportunity] by not doing it… When the sage [i.e., Confucius] spoke of the “lowest folly”, he was referring to those who have cut themselves from goodness.

人性本善，有不可移者何也？語其性則皆善也，語其才則有下愚之不移。所謂下愚有二焉：自暴自棄也。人苟以善自治，則無不可移，雖昏愚之至，皆可漸磨而進也。惟自暴者拒之以不信，自棄者絕之以不為⋯聖人以其自絕於善，謂之下愚。

(Zhu 1983, p. 176)

This formulation appears to preserve the integrity of Mencius’ solution for the accountability of the tyrants. Following Mencius, Cheng Yi posits that no one is born without the potential to become good. “Even the most benighted and foolish can all make gradual progress”, he asserts. The only difference between those who succeed in moral cultivation and those who do not lies in their will, not in their inherent nature. However, just before equating the lowest folly with those who abandon themselves, Cheng Yi introduces the concept of “[one’s] talent”, cai, which does not seem directly related to one’s will. Some two hundred years later, a student of Zhu Xi questioned whether this statement contradicts Mencius’ position.

Yang Yinshu asked: Cheng Yi said, “Speaking of one’s talent, there are those of the lowest folly who do not change.” This does not seem to agree with Mencius’ saying “It is not the case that there are differences in [individuals’] talent that Heaven bestowed upon them.”

楊尹叔問：「伊川曰『語其才則有下愚之不移』，與孟子『非天之降才爾殊』語意似不同？」

(Zhu et al. 2002, vol. 16, p. 1887)

Surprisingly, Zhu Xi not only acknowledges the conflict but also explicitly sides with Cheng Yi, identifying the concept of “endowment of qi” as an area where Mencius lacked understanding.

There is naturally a slight difference between what Master Mencius and Master Cheng said. Mencius saw only that human nature is good and thus regarded [even] one’s talent as good. He did not understand that individuals all differ in what is called the “endowment of qi….” Mencius, having seen the goodness of human nature, just grasped the principles in its basic foundations and did not further contemplate the origins of good and evil below that level or know of the individual differences in the so-called “endowment of qi.”

孟子之說自是與程子之說小異。孟子只見得是性善，便把才都做善，不知有所謂氣稟各不同。⋯孟子已見得性善，只就大本處理會，更不思量這下面善惡所由起處，有所謂氣稟各不同。

(Zhu et al. 2002, vol. 16, pp. 1887–88)

Zhu Xi’s point here is that Mencius saw only a partial picture. While everyone is indeed equal in human nature, that is not the only thing a person is born with—there is also an endowment of qi, which dictates individual differences. And since qi, like human nature, is present from birth, it was inevitably also referred to as “nature.” This dual account, with human nature as universally good and qi as individually varied, allowed Neo-Confucians to reconcile Mencius’s doctrine with the observation that some individuals seem morally disadvantaged. Every person, they argued, possesses li (principle), the normative structure of moral goodness, but is also born with a particular configuration of qi, which may be more or less pure. These differences shape not only temperament and clarity of judgment but, more broadly, one’s cai (moral capacity or “talent”). As Angus Graham explains, “his moral stuff (cai)… depends on its degree of purity” (Graham 1958, p. 48). Though this qi can be gradually refined through moral effort, its initial condition helps explain why some people, like those of “lowest folly”, struggle more than others to actualize their innate moral potential. In this way, Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi could affirm the Mencian claim that human nature is good while also accounting for persistent inequality in inborn moral tendencies.

Wang Yangming, though often portrayed as a radical departure from the Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy, likewise acknowledges the uneven moral starting points of individuals, echoing the same basic structure found in their account.

People’s endowments of qi vary in clarity and turbidity. There are those above average and those below. In relation to the Way, some are born knowing and act with ease; others must learn and act with effort. Those at the lowest end must apply one hundred efforts for every one by others, or one thousand for every ten.

人之氣質，清濁粹駁。有中人以上，中人以下。其於道，有生知安行，學知利行，其下者，必須人一己百，人十己千。

(S. Wang 1992, p. 28)

The recognition of differing degrees of clarity and turbidity in individuals means that these scholars leave the problem of moral responsibility largely unresolved in the case of the tyrants. To his credit, Cheng Yi does emphasize that no one is completely without alternate possibilities; anyone can become good, he insists, so long as they will it. This seems to offer a potential basis for attributing responsibility even to those of the lowest capacity—a position that, according to Yong Huang, is also taken by Yangming.

While it is out of one’s control and has nothing to do with one’s will that one is born with and in the impure qi, clearly, for Wang, it is not the functioning of such impure qi that causes the will’s being lacking; rather, it is the will’s being lacking that allows the functioning of the impure qi, and so as soon as one firms up one’s will, the impure qi will not be able to function and one will cease to be selfish.

(Huang 2018, p. 77)

I cannot agree, however, with Huang’s view that this appeal to the will resolves the problem of moral responsibility we are confronting. The difficulty lies in the fact that the very framework invoked to support the claim—namely, the distinction between those “born knowing” and those who “must learn”—already carries implicit assumptions about the will’s dependence on one’s inborn constitution. This typology, which Wang Yangming references and Cheng Yi also cites,13 appears in Analects 16.9 and has direct relevance to one’s will to pursue goodness. There, Confucius distinguishes between four types: those “who know [good] by birth”, those “who know it by learning”, those “who learn despite difficulties”, and those “who do not learn because of difficulties.” While Confucius does not explicitly attribute these differences to innate traits, the Neo-Confucian reinterpretation, recast in terms of pure and impure qi, effectively transforms it into a graded account of moral will shaped by natural endowment. Within this scheme, even if Cheng Yi or Wang Yangming maintain that change is possible even for those in the “lowest folly”, the odds of such transformation appear as slim—and as structurally contained—as winning the lottery.

If Confucians had indeed ascribed full moral responsibility to individuals regardless of their circumstances, their position would closely resemble certain strands of Christian theology, where even overwhelming temptation does not excuse moral failure. In that tradition, as illustrated in texts like The Dialogue on Miracles (13th C), demons may tempt but cannot defile the soul—culpability rests fully on the individual who consents to sin.14 As I will show in the next section, however, the Confucian tradition explicitly recognizes that external circumstances can mitigate one’s blame. Mencius famously argued that those who commit crimes during periods of hardship cannot be held to the same standards as those who offend in times of stability. This resonates with modern discussions of moral luck, where philosophers and sociologists alike question the fairness of attributing full responsibility to individuals whose actions are shaped by factors beyond their control.

4. Confucian Recognition of Moral Luck and Limits of Moral Responsibility

The problem with attributing full moral responsibility to those born with impure qi on the grounds that they possessed some degree of free will is that if they were indeed born with abnormally strong evil tendencies, choosing virtue would have been significantly more challenging for them than for others. In such cases, do they deserve blame for failing to overcome such a disadvantage? Similar questions arise in modern discussions on justice and moral desert. Social scientists often debate whether it is fair to apply the same legal standards to those raised in unstable, impoverished environments as to those who grew up in secure, affluent conditions, given the strong correlation between crime and socioeconomic factors (Wilson 2012; Young 1999; Sampson and Laub 1995).

Philosophers have explored this issue through the concept of moral luck, which suggests our seemingly free moral decisions are shaped by factors that are beyond our control. As Thomas Nagel explains:

Someone who was an officer in a concentration camp might have led a quiet and harmless life if the Nazis had never come to power in Germany. And someone who led a quiet and harmless life in Argentina might have become an officer in a concentration camp if he had not left Germany for business reasons in 1930.

(Nagel 2002, pp. 25–26)

This example illustrates what Nagel refers to as circumstantial luck—how external conditions influence our moral choices. Although classical Confucian texts lack a precise term for “moral luck”, Mencius clearly recognized the moral impact of circumstance. Nowhere is this clearer than in his famous discussion on livelihood and conduct:

To be of stable minds without stable livelihoods—only a gentleman can do it. As for the common people, without stable livelihoods, they cannot have stable minds. When truly without a stable mind, they will be self-indulgent, unruly, wicked, and wasteful in that there would be nothing that one would not do. And once they have fallen into committing crimes, they are sought after and punished. This is [like capturing] people in a net. When a humane person is on the throne, how could [the government] capture people in such a way? (Mencius 1A.7)

無恆產而有恆心者，惟士為能。若民，則無恆產，因無恆心。苟無恆心，放辟，邪侈，無不為已。及陷於罪，然後從而刑之，是罔民也。焉有仁人在位，罔民而可為也？

(Zhu 1983, p. 211)

Here, Mencius argues that certain circumstances increase the likelihood of crime, in which case, punishing offenders is not entirely just. In other words, adverse circumstances reduce moral blame. It is important to note that Mencius does not require free will to be completely absent for responsibility to be lessened. A morally cultivated person, or a gentleman, can still choose the right path despite hardship. Yet, while it may be admirable for a gentleman to act virtuously in such situations, Mencius does not hold ordinary people to the same standard. The ability of some to rise above difficult conditions does not negate the fact that these conditions lead many toward wrongdoing. And what is especially revealing is that Wang Yangming echoes this Mencian insight. In a striking passage, he writes the following:

In the past, newly assimilated people often abandoned their clans and betrayed their villages, spreading in all directions to commit acts of violence. Can this be attributed solely to a difference in their nature, and held entirely as their personal fault? It is also because we, the officials, governed them without proper methods and failed to educate them with appropriate guidance.

往者新民蓋常棄其宗族，畔其鄉里，四出而為暴，豈獨其性之異，其人之罪哉？亦由我有司治之無道，教之無方。

(S. Wang 1992, p. 599)15

This acknowledgment—that “it is not their fault”— directly echoes the spirit of Mencius’s argument in 1A.7. Both thinkers recognize that unfavorable external conditions can shape moral behavior in ways that limit individual blame. But this raises a deeper question: if one accepts Mencius’s reasoning that individuals may be exempt from moral judgment due to circumstantial constraints, why should the same logic not apply to those born with impure qi? That is, if unfavorable material conditions can lessen one’s responsibility for evil choices, then shouldn’t unfavorable psychological or physiological endowment—qualities over which one has no more control—do the same?

Here, Nagel’s broader framework of moral luck offers helpful terminology. In addition to circumstantial luck, he introduces constitutive luck, which concerns “the kind of person you are, where this is not just a question of what you deliberately do, but of your inclinations, capacities, and temperament” (Nagel 2002, p. 28). A classic example would be being born with a naturally short temper versus a calm disposition. In the Confucian tradition, no case better illustrates this concept than that of Jie and Zhou, who are often portrayed as having been born with fundamentally flawed moral tendencies. In his analysis of Wang Yangming’s view on inborn moral tendencies, Huang also affirms that this aspect of Confucian thought corresponds closely to what contemporary philosophers describe as constitutive luck (Huang 2018, pp. 72–75).

If one accepts this framework, it would seem consistent with Mencius’s own reasoning in 1A.7 to conclude that individuals like Jie and Zhou, whose moral failings stem from innate disadvantages rather than voluntary corruption, should not be judged by the same standard as those born with more favorable dispositions. Their condition is no less beyond their control than the poverty that excuses the crimes of the desperate. And yet Neo-Confucians, including Wang Yangming, stop short of applying this reasoning consistently. Despite acknowledging that unfavorable external conditions can lessen moral responsibility, they do not admit the possibility that inborn traits, equally involuntary, might do the same.

5. The Grounds of Confucian Judgment

The case of King Zhou serves as a revealing example of how Neo-Confucians navigated the tension between determinative factors and moral accountability. Wang Yangming, for instance, briefly characterizes “King Wu’s conquest of Zhou to save the people [as being] truly aligned with [the will of] Heaven 伐紂救民之舉，真有以順乎天” (S. Wang 1992, p. 982), implying a moral justification grounded in cosmic order. 16 While his treatment is succinct, it signals a broader pattern in Neo-Confucian thought: tyrannical downfall is not attributed to misfortune or structural inevitability, but to moral failure. This view is more explicit in Zhu Xi, who portrays King Zhou’s defeat not as a tragic product of fate but as the righteous consequence of his extreme wickedness, which warranted punishment by Heaven.

King Wen had no intention of attacking King Zhou, yet Heaven granted him [all under Heaven], and the people rallied to him. [This is all done] only after the circumstances were that King Zhou had to be punished. Thus, it is said, ‘he respectfully upheld Heaven’s authority, [though] the great achievement was not completed [before his death].’ However, when King Zhou was yet to be entirely evil, Heaven’s Mandate was [also] yet to be revoked. Therefore, King Wen, even while obtaining two-thirds of the [world], still served King Zhou. If King Wen had not passed away and another twelve or thirteen years had passed, with King Zhou showing no sign of repentance and Heaven’s Mandate fully withdrawn, would King Wen have been able to avoid the events at Mengjin [where his son King Wu launched his decisive campaign against King Zhou]? From this, we can see that the intentions of Kings Wen and Wu were never different; neither acted out of personal motives but only observed [the will of] Heaven and the people.

文王無伐紂之心，而天與之，人歸之，其勢必誅紂而後已，故有‘肅將天威，大勳未集’之語。但紂惡未盈，天命未絶，故文王猶得以三分之二而服事紂。若使文王未崩，十二三年，紂惡不悛，天命已絶，則孟津之事文王亦豈得而辭哉？以此見文·武之心未嘗不同，皆無私意，視天與人而已。

(Zhu et al. 2002, vol. 22, p. 1757)

Zhu Xi’s explanation here addresses why it was only after the death of King Wen, the bearer of the new mandate, that his son King Wu finally ascended to the throne. In Zhu’s view, it was only because King Zhou’s evil deeds were not severe enough to necessitate a complete overthrow of the dynasty while King Wen was still alive. Thus, beyond simply acknowledging that King Zhou was indeed punished for his evil actions, Zhu further specifies that the justification for this punishment was not merely that he was a bad person, but that his wickedness was extreme.

Nevertheless, if the tyrants were truly born with exceptionally evil tendencies, could one not argue that even their most extreme actions lay beyond their control? After all, Christians have long debated whether even Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus, grievous as it was, should warrant eternal punishment if it were the inevitable result of divine providence.17 In more ordinary contexts, contemporary scholars raise similar concerns about psychopaths, arguing that they should not be fully held responsible for their harmful actions because they lack certain essential qualities of autonomous moral agents (Benn 1999; Watson 2011; Levy 2014).18 Why could Confucians not have thought the same way about evil-natured tyrants? These tyrants are akin to psychopaths in that they are also believed to have an inherent difficulty in becoming virtuous. Of course, even among contemporary scholars, some argue that psychopaths remain morally responsible despite their impairments (Arpaly 2009; Ramirez 2013). Yet, a striking contrast between modern discussions of psychopathy and the Confucian view of evil-natured tyrants is that, while contemporary scholars debate whether individuals with severe moral deficits should be seen as blameworthy, no such debate existed among the Neo-Confucians. They universally believed that tyrants were entirely accountable for their actions.

This unwavering judgment stems from a deeper structural difference between modern and Confucian frameworks. Both acknowledge the possibility of moral impairment, but they locate its identification differently. In modern psychology, psychopathy is diagnosed based on independent psychological traits, and not all psychopaths commit heinous crimes, nor are all who do considered psychopaths. In the Confucian tradition, by contrast, there is no such independent diagnostic method. A person is judged to be evil-natured solely on the basis of their extreme behavior; the severity of the wrongdoing itself serves as retrospective proof of an innately corrupt disposition. In this sense, the Confucian claim was never primarily about diminished moral capacity or volitional freedom but about the extremity of one’s moral character as revealed in action.

This logic of reading moral nature from moral performance was not limited to negative cases; it also shaped how Confucians understood figures like Confucius, whose extraordinary virtue was viewed as a reflection of his naturally perfect moral endowment. Despite Confucius’s claim that he attained virtue through gradual cultivation, culminating in his ability to “follow his heart’s desires without overstepping the boundaries” at the age of seventy (Analects 2.4), Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi argue that he must have been born with perfect moral knowledge. They interpret Confucius’ statement as rhetorical modesty, meant to encourage later generations to focus on self-cultivation. Cheng Yi writes the following:

Confucius is someone who is born with the [complete] knowledge [of the cosmic pattern]. Saying as if he reached this [stage] through learning is to encourage people of the later generations [to focus on moral cultivation.] … Confucius himself says that the steps in the advancement of one’s virtue is like this, but the sage need not be like this. He is only establishing the rules for the learners.

孔子生而知之也，言亦由學而至，所以勉進後人也。⋯孔子自言其進德之序如此者，聖人未必然，但為學者立法。

(Zhu 1983, pp. 54–55)

The baselessness of the claim that Confucius was born with perfect moral knowledge mirrors the equally unfounded assertion that tyrants must have been born evil. Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi reject Confucius’ own words about achieving virtue through cultivation because of the extremity of his moral perfection. Such effortless virtue, they believe, could only be explained by an inborn, exceptional nature—no ordinary person could attain such flawless goodness. By the same logic, tyrants are deemed inherently wicked, their extreme depravity serving not as a mitigating factor but as further justification for their condemnation. In both cases, it was the extremity of the behavior, whether virtuous or vicious, that demanded an explanation beyond ordinary moral development.

Framing blame in terms of extremity rather than volitional failure also helps make sense of why Mencius and Wang Yangming could exempt those without stable livelihoods from moral condemnation without contradiction. The analogy of casting a net to catch impoverished individuals is most compelling when understood as addressing crimes committed out of immediate necessity—acts driven not by malice, but by the urgency of survival. Essentially, Mencius is saying that if a man needs to steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister’s children, the fault is less with the man than with the ruler who created such a situation in the first place. But if a man is so evil that he makes mincemeat out of the flesh of his loyal minister, it is unlikely that Mencius would have excused him by appealing to circumstance. Such extreme behavior simply falls outside the range of actions Mencius was willing to attribute to contextual misfortune.

If this reading is correct, then Mencius could hardly be seen as questioning whether impoverished individuals could have acted otherwise as independent moral agents. Rather, he was asking whether their actions aligned with what most people in similar situations would have done. The poor are excused because their behavior falls within the bounds of predictable human response to hardship. Evil-natured tyrants, by contrast, fail this test—not because they had greater control over their actions but because their behavior deviates so radically from what is morally expected. This interpretation also echoes the views of Fingarette (1972), Hansen (1972), and Graham (1989), who emphasize that Confucian ethics centers not on deliberative autonomy but on cultivated responsiveness and alignment with moral patterns. In this sense, Confucian moral judgment is ultimately concerned not with metaphysical freedom but with the extent to which one’s conduct conforms to or strays from prevailing ethical expectations.

6. Conclusions

By examining the case of King Zhou, this essay has highlighted a distinctive feature of Confucian moral thought: the absence of incompatibilist assumptions linking moral responsibility to metaphysical free will. While Western philosophical and theological traditions often treat autonomy as a necessary condition for moral judgment, Confucian thinkers consistently operate within a broadly compatibilist framework. The comparison with contemporary debates on psychopathy underscores this difference. Whereas modern ethics tends to question the culpability of individuals with congenital moral impairments, Confucians appealed to inborn dispositions as a way to intensify blame—offering them as retrospective explanations for behavior so extreme that it could not be understood in ordinary moral terms.

This reflects what may be a uniquely Confucian understanding of responsibility—one centered not on the freedom to choose otherwise but on how a person’s conduct aligns with shared ethical expectations. Yet the conspicuous absence of incompatibilist reasoning suggests that the Western linkage between moral agency and free will is not self-evident. If anything, the Western insistence on individual autonomy as the basis for moral judgment may be just as culturally specific as the Confucian emphasis on conformity to prevailing moral expectations.

Future research might further explore how this compatibilist outlook is embedded in other domains of Confucian thought—for instance, in discussions of self-cultivation, ritual, or filial piety—and how it diverges from assumptions underpinning modern liberal ethics. Such an inquiry could help illuminate how different philosophical traditions frame the relationship between nature, effort, and blame, not only in metaphysical terms but as part of larger cultural understandings of moral life. It may also offer new resources for contemporary debates, for example, in assessing the moral significance of actions performed by artificial intelligence, where autonomous intention may be absent but alignment with ethical norms remains evaluable.