On filial piety

On "Filial Piety" It seems difficult for me to bring up the topic of "Filial Piety" again today. Because western academic circles, as well as China academic circles influenced by western academic circles, seem to have forgotten this problem, and it seems that philosophers or ethicists should be concerned about this problem. Ethical scholars often care about issues such as justice, whether people have the right to commit suicide, euthanasia and abortion, environmental ethics, business ethics, sexual ethics and network ethics, but rarely care about filial piety.

Filial piety is a very important issue in the real society of China. Today, I will discuss some difficulties faced by filial piety in history and now, and then discuss whether these difficulties can be overcome today, and if possible, in what sense, so as to find the vitality and vitality of filial piety in modern and future.

First of all, let's talk about the difficult side of filial piety. The word "filial piety" embodies the meaning of filial piety, as if it is a descendant who supports an old man, so the basic meaning of "filial piety" is to be good at serving parents and making them happy. So, is filial piety a natural tendency of women, or is it a conscious behavior that needs external induction or even pressure? According to common sense analysis, a person is good to you, you are good to him, he is bad to you, and you are bad to him. We all know that parents are generally good to their children, so according to common sense, children should be filial to their parents. But there are many unfilial behaviors in real life. How did Confucianism answer this question? Is filial piety born or formed by external influences? Orthodox Confucianism believes that filial piety is natural and human nature is good, so there is goodness, righteousness and conscience. So Confucianism, like Mencius and Wang Yangming, thinks that girls are filial.

For unfilial, traditional Confucianism believes that it should be explained by external means, mainly the influence of the environment. In the realistic external environment, Confucianism believes that. People's rich activities are to pursue interests and satisfy their own wishes. So if they stay in this environment for a long time, they will think that parents are also interested, and the relationship between children and parents is also a very realistic interest relationship, so that a person will lose filial piety and it is impossible to have filial piety.

How to overcome unfilial? China traditional culture has many methods in this respect. According to Confucianism, first of all, children should be educated to be filial and prevent unfilial feelings; Secondly, it is necessary to construct various rules, customs, written or unwritten laws to suppress or even punish unfilial and encourage filial piety. This has been the case since the Han Dynasty, so in the past one or two thousand years, our culture in China has actually produced two major influences, namely, filial piety and filial piety:

First of all, talk about the difficulties of filial piety. Our culture has become a highly civilized culture that respects the old and loves the poor and pays attention to returning to the original. On the other hand, because children are required to be filial in all aspects, these regulations are often rigid, which leads to a lot of false filial piety and hypocrisy, especially the environment that inhibits young people's free innovation.

When our old culture faced great setbacks in the second half of the19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the new culture movement represented by New Youth shouted the slogans of "Down with Kongjiadian" and "Down with the feudal ethics of cannibalism". With this trend, what we see is the collapse of the feudal dynasty and the decline of Confucianism, followed by the decline of filial piety culture.

Since then, filial piety has faced great challenges and entered a very difficult period. At first, this challenge often comes from the spiritual level, that is, efforts to transform society, transform life and explain the world with a universal concept. So we have seen many young people rush out of the so-called feudal old family and devote themselves to social improvement and revolution. We have also seen many young people save the country scientifically and explain everything, family, family generation and family future with science. The general tendency is that everyone thinks that filial piety or parent-child relationship should give way to or obey the requirements or interests of individuals, parties or countries.

First of all, we should note that "filial piety" is not an eternal and abstract concept as traditional western philosophy deals with it. "Filial piety" contains a very profound and primitive time, which is not eternal. But this time is a primitive time. Filial piety refers to the close relationship between children and parents, that is, the close relationship between children or young people representing the present dimension and parents or the older generation representing the past.

In filial piety, generations overlap and alternate, and the past, present and future blend with each other, so it is called filial piety or filial piety. Filial piety is primitive because it is very different from physical time and GMT compared with physical time. It is not beyond human existence, or it is purely objective and can be accurately measured by clocks and calendars.

Can you say how much physical time a person has devoted to his parents in a year, even if it is filial? Filial piety time is not linear like physical time, and the three-dimensional order of time is absolutely impossible to overlap and alternate. The whole physical time has been passing in one direction from the past to the future, so from this perspective, Confucian children naturally know that filial piety is right. The question is, is unfilial only caused by the external environment? With the growth of children's age, the more likely he is to downplay his contact with his parents and his childlike innocence from time and blood.

In my opinion, in addition to the material desires and interests of Confucianism, there is a more important reason to weaken filial piety, which is the emergence of personal consciousness. When children grow up to a certain extent, they begin to realize that they are an independent entity with their own survival value, which leads to a tendency to get rid of their parents' shadow and seek independence. Although he thinks the shadow is actually full of love and care.

Personal consciousness is not equal to material desire consciousness, it is a relatively natural mental form, and children will appear when they grow up. Therefore, I think filial piety has been faced with internal impact and destructive power for a certain period of time since ancient times, and orthodox Confucianism has not fully realized this. Personal consciousness and material desire do have one thing in common, that is, they both belong to an isolated present time form, which is fundamentally separated from the past and the future. For example, for physical objects, a bottle of Coca-Cola is only real when it is drunk in the mouth and swallowed in the stomach. The past 100 and the future 100 are not as real as the present 100.

Self-awareness is something that exists only in the present. It is not a plural number like a real thing, it has only one. Therefore, the self can be understood as an eternal, capitalized present, which runs through all concrete present, or capitalized me. We noticed that I in English, that is, I is always capitalized, and you, he or she don't write much. For this individualized self-awareness, the past me and the future me are just an extension and expansion of the present me. "I" is always the present. If "I" is gone, or not now, then nothing is gone. It's like Louis XV said, after I die, no matter what the flood is. Compared with the filial piety time or parent-child time I mentioned above, the time state of personal consciousness is closer to physical time. It is composed of a series of seemingly isolated "present", which is dominated by a capitalized "present" and flows from the past to the future in a flat way. It has a definite date of death. If one day an individual dies, it will be gone forever, and no one will really think about it again.

In the face of the impact of individual consciousness, China's traditional culture always tries to maintain the connection or consanguinity between parents and children. However, in the West, modern culture, modern civilization and the so-called modernization or globalization of the whole human being influenced by it encourage young people to completely cut off the umbilical cord of this consanguinity, thus completely freeing themselves from the shadow of their parents. We can read an article written by Mr. Lu Xun-"How Do We Be Fathers Now". He believes that only in this way can young people become mature individuals with independent judgment. A modern society is composed of such a single, equal and basically indistinguishable individual according to some explicit or implicit contract. This tendency holds that the society before this was primitive and underdeveloped.

Which form of time and society is preferable? I don't make any judgments. I just want to say that the fate of filial piety in the trend of modernity will not be too good. For example, we often see awakened parents, or awakened young people, as Mr. Lu Xun said. In fact, they feel indifferent to human feelings, and I don't have much real filial piety to my parents. It is estimated that my children will not be kind to me in the future. Then why do I have children and suffer this? Don't have children at all. Therefore, in this case, it is likely that there will not be a large number of parents who are filial, altruistic and sacrifice themselves to completely liberate their children, as Mr. Lu Xun expected.

Why? In my opinion, the premise of awakening is to give priority to personal consciousness and personal value, which is contradictory to the requirements of self-denial and self-help. As a result, the population of modern countries is decreasing. So modern science and technology came out to cure the common phenomenon of modern diseases. With cloning technology, we can mass-produce children. This will become a more realistic technology in the future.

Science and technology fantasy movies like The Matrix are all mass-produced in the pipeline. Although this is a fantasy, it is not completely impossible. If we think about this situation, by that time, when children meet together, they will no longer ask each other what their parents do, but what factory and workshop they came from, in which district, in which pipeline and according to what procedures they were raised. By that time, will human society have progressed or regressed? Isn't this completely objectified and productive person a real person?

Now let's talk about the touching side of filial piety. There is a question: in today's modern or modernized era, can "filial piety" still touch people's hearts or have natural vitality? Let's discuss along the clues of time analysis just mentioned.

In real life, influenced by the total flow of time, the flow of love in the parent-child relationship structure is unbalanced, and often the love of parents for their children is far behind the return of children to their parents. The flow of love is also the original connection between time and problems, which is reflected in the very close love relationship in life.

In my opinion, the more primitive and human beings exist, the more balanced and interactive the structure of love is. For example, in the paramecium world, the love between parents and children is not obvious. In birds and mammals, the love between parents and children is obvious, but the love between children and parents is not obvious, although there is a saying in our China culture that crows feed back. Only when human beings arrive can we see that there are many obvious rotating mechanisms in this river of love that has been sublimated from the initial time, and this mechanism has inspired richer and more magnificent emotional waves. So there are many deeper feelings than animals, besides love, there are also fears and hatred.

Only among humans, one person's hatred and fear of another person can reach a creepy and far-reaching level that animals can't imagine at all. This is related to the expansion and deepening of people's sense of time. Therefore, Wittgenstein, a famous modern western philosopher, said that the dog would be afraid of his master hitting him, but he would not be afraid of his master hitting him tomorrow.

It is precisely because of the expansion of human vision of time and the internal blending of the three dimensions of time-past, future and present, that we have a deeper sense of independence and reaction, which we can call a primary sense of communication. From animals to people, consciousness and feelings are like melting from a stream into a big river and flowing from the big river to the East China Sea, so Zhuangzi talks about the ocean and sighs. At this time, a profound and wonderful love-hate transformation took place. This kind of love, infatuation with love, is not entirely determined by the body, the flat time, nor by the sense of interest determined by this time. Instead, it can inspire abnormal, physically called anti-entropy, richer and more touching feelings, and oscillate a profound and gorgeous artistic conception of life to respond to the past and the future. People have to endure great suffering and experience great sadness. As Sakyamuni said, life is endless. Only people can suffer to this extent, but animals can't, but this profound time and living situation is the meaning of life and the source of happiness.

In my opinion, to make filial piety moving is to let children enter the primitive turbulent time and pure sea. In reality, it first means entering the parents' time and entering the life state where parents love their children. Entering is not just general knowledge. Love is actually a combination of love and fear. Parents are always afraid that their children will get sick and learn badly, so they call it love. If children can enter this river of time and be deeply moved by it, it will naturally produce a filial piety and filial piety that can impress parents and others, so as to achieve the love interaction in parent-child relationship and construct different perfect and self-sufficient life forms.

Therefore, the touch of filial piety should begin with the touch of parents. The love of parents is really touching. Always so spontaneous and firm. No matter whether children are weak or not, they already have personal consciousness and rebellious consciousness. Even the most ordinary people, once they become parents, can have the consciousness of transcending the present and self and dare to break through all difficulties. In the face of this kind of love, the more heroes bow their heads, the more tough guys cry. For example, Zhuan Xu, who stabbed Liao Wang in the Spring and Autumn Period, and Yue Fei in the Southern Song Dynasty were all like this. This kind of love has been the sacred source and real source of China people since ancient times. There are two poems, "I advise you not to catch birds in the spring, and your son will stay in the nest until his mother returns." I feel very moved every time I look at it. Touching comes from the affection expressed in the poem, although it is the deep affection between parents and children of animals, and it is the survival form of parents and children.

Being moved by this living form is the end of filial piety and the beginning of human beings. Just asking children to maintain justice, destroying people's desires and self-denial of filial piety, although it can produce some effects in a period of time, may not lead to filial piety and filial piety full of primitive love. Only true feelings can be found in true feelings, and true feelings should be understood as truly moving true feelings, which always come from true feelings and are full of true feelings. Confucianism pays special attention to filial piety. As the founder of Confucianism, Confucius's way of thinking and style are more original than those of later Confucian orthodox masters. He pays more attention to the blending of morality and thinking with emotion, emotion and reason. When we read the Analects of Confucius, we can see that when Confucius talked about filial piety, he always led the students to their family and the initial time. There is a famous discussion about three-year mourning. In ancient times, after the death of parents, children had to be filial for three years. A student of Confucius said that three years of mourning delayed everything, so one year was enough. When Confucius refuted him, it made no sense at all. He said, why is there a three-year mourning period? Because a person can't live without his parents' arms for three years after birth, he must keep it for three years. Another doctor in Lu asked Confucius what filial piety was, and Confucius replied that "parents only worry about their own illness", which translates into "parents always worry about their children's illness". Although it seems insignificant, it is of great significance to savor it carefully. Confucius actually said that parents are most worried about their children's illness, so caring about their health is filial piety.

After having children, I deeply realized this. Children who are weak are prone to illness. When I was sick, my wife and I discussed whether to send them to the hospital. I was afraid of being infected again, so I didn't send them to the hospital to take some medicine, so I made do with it. At midnight, I started to have a fever. So I braved the heavy snow and rode my bike. The wife took the child to the hospital for an injection. This is very common, and all parents know that it is the same at all times and in all countries.

Confucius' words are moving. As long as you can feel that parents are most worried about their children's health, if you are moved, then caring about your health is filial piety. At the same time, since I am moved, I will worry about my parents' illness and my parents' illness.

Confucius also said: "In the year of parents, you should know that one is happy and the other is afraid." The "year of parents" here seems to be a physical time and an era, but Confucius believes that this is not just a physical time, but a time for survival and filial piety. What is "being happy alone"? Because my father has such a rich past, I am very happy. I will be one year older next year and I am very happy. But "fear comes first" means that you are afraid and afraid at the same time, because your parents are getting older and more prone to illness, and his future is getting less and less. Therefore, the year of parents is actually a lively time to worry about the past and the future, and the noise exists slightly in the heart of the dutiful son.

3,000 years ago, the Book of Songs sang, "My mother is kind, and I have no one." Translated into modern Chinese, it means "my mother is so holy and beautiful, and we children are always unfilial without good people." Mother is sincere and pure, how can people not be holy and kind? The real mother in the world, which is not a saint? Which mother is not perfect when trying to raise a child?

China has a saying, "A son doesn't think his mother is ugly, and a dog doesn't think his family is poor." In the eyes of his son, his mother is always the best and most beautiful. When can we be moved by these unfilial children in our modern life? Time series will never completely abide by any universal law, especially touching time series. When I encounter the biggest setback in my life, when many other relationships are deteriorating and moldy, I will feel the precious love of my parents.

There is an old saying, "Only when you have children can you know your parents' kindness. "A classmate asked me if I could talk about whether there is any internal connection between filial piety and falling in love. That's a good question. I want to ask you a few questions about this problem. When you call friends of the opposite sex "Dear XXX", have you ever thought about the origin of "Dear"? Without the pure and touching love of parents, can you talk about your love for friends of the opposite sex here? Can a person who cannot be moved by this primitive parent-child love love love his girlfriend or boyfriend for a long time? Can you love his or her future children? In the famous Me and You, martin buber expounded a truth well. He said that the most primitive existence and the most real experience in the world happened between me and you, not between me and it. " It "means that it can be objectified and subject to physical time, calculation time and causal rate." He said, "When I recite you, things and objects no longer exist. In my direct relationship with you, real life meets in this direct relationship. "In my opinion, the original you are not necessarily what Bubo said. You met me through the grace of God, but first, your mother and father. We met you in the arms of parents, in the sound of milk and milk, in the clear and innocent cries of parents. Parents always responded to this call with love, and "Mom and Dad, so in my opinion, as long as we can hear this call to mom and dad and parents, this call is full of various meanings, some are needs, some are fears, some are anxiety, some are excitement, and some are expressions of happiness.