Moralinė asmens laisvė ir socialinė atsakomybė konfucijaus mokyme
Persons moral freedom and its social responsibility in Confucius

Summary/Abstract: The article shows that paradigmatic Confucian personality (junzi) as it is pictured in the Analects of Confucius and in The Great Learning, contains in it self both the individual moral freedom and the deep sense of social responsibility. Although there are traditional forms of the moral “right” and the moral “good” embodied in the li, but they are not able to cover all the constantly changing life situations. Here is where junzi not only has the right and moral freedom to evaluate new phenomena, but has also the duty to implement those new forms of moral goodness into the public life. In the end we argue that this moral freedom is not a privilege of any kind of elite which could not be attained by every individual. We also state that the fact, that Confucius bases his idea of a true personhood on the fulfillment of social obligations and the development of social relations, endows every individual with the fundamental freedom and autonomy of the development of one’s own personality, becoming in this way a real junzi: an active man of moral freedom and social responsibilities.

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