Confucianism in East Asia Confucianism Has Frequently

Confucianism in East Asia

Confucianism has frequently been regarded as a religion without a supernatural dimension, a set of ethical precepts wholly of this world: however I would argue that, given the fact of ancestor-worship in traditional Chinese religion, the Confucian teachings about filial piety may truly seem to have the force of otherworldly command. Confucius himself complains about the decline in standards for filial piety in the Analects (II.7), noting that most people in his lifetime thought their filial obligations had been met when their parents were fed: Confucius' complaint is that even dogs or horses can be merely fed, and what characterizes genuine filial piety is reverence. This is, of course, a complaint made by Confucius about the broad gap between ideals and actual practice, even within his own lifetime: we cannot expect the general trend in China to have been particularly better at any other point in history. The real origin of Confucian emphasis on filial piety, however, is probably socio-economic reality, combined with Confucius' overwhelming concern for social stability and peace. For a population to aspire to live long and work hard, they must have a comfortable old age to await them. So the Confucian hierarchy of age whereby a parent is provided for in old age by a reverent child essentially takes the place of a "social safety net." As long as all observe these pieties, society remains orderly and incentives remain for persons to live long and work hard. To some extent the basic Confucian notion of self-cultivation is, itself, a form of filial piety already: what I mean by this paradox is that self-cultivation entails measuring one's achieved potential against the canons of tradition, the achievement of past generations. They provide the measure whereby one's own level of cultivation is to be judged. In terms of social groups, however, filial piety in China essentially becomes practiced as a form of competitiveness: individuals lose the sense of comparing themselves to the established measure of the past, and instead are busy comparing themselves to their contemporaries. On the state level, however, the tenets of filial piety most likely contributed to the political stability that was the ultimate Confucian goal: if one observes these pieties within the structure of the traditional family, then it is much easier (as Friedrich Engels once noted) to submit to similar hierarchies of power on the political level.

2. The central Confucian tenet of filial piety is certainly relevant when we consider what is perhaps the most memorable incident in Lixin Fan's documentary Last Train Home: the argument in which the father slaps his daughter, Qin. Of course the central premise of Last Train Home seems to be turning Confucianism on its head: given the great emphasis placed in the Analects upon children respecting their parents, and providing for their parents in their age, the traditional Confucian values are already reversed in the film. The parent is not rearing his children but instead must work far away; the child is not obedient to parents, and instead abandons educational goals to pursue the immediate paycheck from a similar job. What is particularly fascinating, however, is the fact that in some sense the Confucian values are maintained, but what has been severed is the organic connection those values had to a traditional agrarian society. Therefore, one can see the way in which the ghost of Confucian filial piety is operating here. Confucius repeatedly stresses that it is a duty for the child to care for his or her parents in their old age, and that in some sense this is merely repayment for the parents' having raised the child in the first place. Here, the parents are attempting to raise children, but to do so they have to make money at a geographical distance. In Confucius' era we can be certain that people of this economic status would be more likely to be tied to the land. Obviously Confucius was familiar with commerce, and many of the Analects deal with persons who are traveling for work, such as a river merchant, but the notion that both parents might abandon their children to pursue factory employment -- leaving Qin to be raised by a grandmother -- would strike Confucius as frankly surreal. When the basis of the economy is no longer the agrarian sector but is the manufacturing sector, suddenly the Confucian family becomes subject to pressures that would have been unimaginable to Confucius. By the standards of the Analects, Qin and her father are both violating familial pieties gravely -- but so is a society which necessitates such lives as theirs, in the great numbers that are documented in Last Train Home.