Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions (92 page)

According to Western customs, fathers do not discipline grown-up sons but leave them to the law of the country and the control of society. But in the Way of Confucius “When one’s parents are angry and not pleased and beat him until he bleeds, he does not complain but instead arouses in himself the feelings of reverence and filial piety.”53 This is the reason why in China there is the saying, “One has to die if his father wants him to, and the minister has to perish if his ruler wants him to.” . . .

Confucius lived in a feudal age. The ethics he promoted is the ethics of the feudal age. The social mores he taught and even his own mode of living were teachings and modes of a feudal age. The objectives, ethics, social norms, mode of living, and political institutions did not go beyond the privilege and prestige of a few rulers and aristocrats and had nothing to do with the happiness of the great masses. How can this be shown? In the teachings of Confucius, the most important elements in social ethics and social life are the rules of decorum,
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441

and the most serious thing in government is punishment. In chapter 1 of the
Record of Ritual,
it is said, “The rules of decorum do not go down to the common people and the penal statues do not go up to great officers” [1:35]. Is this not solid proof of the [true] spirit of the Way of Confucius and the spirit of the feudal age?

[From Chen Duxiu, “Kongzi zhi dao yu xiandai shenghuo,” pp. 3–5, trans. Wingtsit Chan, in
Sources of Chinese Tradition,
ed. W. Theodore De Bary and Richard Lufrano, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), vol. 2, pp. 353–356]

FENG YOULAN ON THE PHILOSOPHY AT THE

BASIS OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE SOCIETY

Feng Youlan (1895–1990) studied philosophy at Columbia University from 1920

to 1923, then returned to China to teach philosophy and the history of philosophy, from 1928 at Qinghua University in Beijing. By the 1930s he was a dom-inant figure in Chinese philosophy circles. In 1949, when many intellectuals left China, Feng decided to stay. He became professor at Peking University in 1952. He strongly believed that traditional Chinese thought, especially Confucian thought, could provide a basis for a modernized China, a view which at times led to strong attacks on him. The essay below was published in English in 1949 and later translated into Chinese for his collected works.

Document 6–24

Traditional Chinese society originated at a time long before the Christian era, and continued to exist, without fundamental change, until the latter part of the last century, when it began to break down with what is usually called the invasion of the East by the West but which is really an invasion of medieval by modern society. The basic factor in modern society is its industrialized economy. The use of machines revolutionized the preindustrial economy which might be agrarian like that of China or commercial like that of Greece and England. . . .

Modern industrialism is destroying the traditional Chinese family system and thereby the traditional Chinese society. People leave their land to work in the factories, together with other people who are neither their brothers nor their cousins. Formerly they were attached to the land but now they are more mobile.

Formerly they cultivated their lands collectively with their fathers and brothers, so that there were no products they could claim as their own. Now they have their own income in the form of wages received in the factory. Formerly they usually lived with their parents and perhaps grandparents but now they live by themselves or with their wives and children. Ideologically, this is known in China as the “emancipation of the individual from the family.”

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With this change of social structure, it is natural that filial piety, which was the ideological basis of the traditional society, should receive the most severe attacks. That is exactly what has happened in China. The attacks reached a climax during the earlier period of the Republic which was established in 1912

when the abolition of
zhong
or loyalty to the sovereign as a moral principle took place. As we shall see, in traditional Chinese society,
zhong
and
xiao,
or filial piety, were parallel moral principles.
Xiao,
once considered the foundation of all moral good, is now regarded by some critics as the source of all social evil. In one popular book of the Taoist religion it is said: “Among all the evils, adultery is the first; among all the virtues, filial piety is the first.” In the earlier period of the Republic one writer paraphrased this statement by saying that among all the evils filial piety is the first, although he did not go so far as to say that among all virtues adultery is the first.

During recent years there have been fewer attacks on filial piety and the traditional family system. This fact does not mean that they have recovered much of their lost influence but rather indicates that they have almost completely lost their traditional position in Chinese society. They are dead tigers, to use a Chinese expression, and attacking dead tigers is no evidence of courage.

I remember quite clearly that during my youth I often heard people arguing over the advantage or disadvantage of the traditional family system. But now it ceases to be a question of argument. People realize that they simply cannot keep it, even if they want to.

The attacks on the traditional family system have been mostly polemic in character; as a consequence some of the criticisms have failed to do justice to it. For instance, among the many criticisms a major one is that, in the traditional family system, an individual completely loses his individuality. His duties and responsibilities for the family are so many that it seems he can be only the son and grandson of his parents and ancestors, but never himself.

In answer to this criticism it may be said that an individual, in so far as he is a member of a society, must assume some responsibility for the society. The assumption of responsibility is not the same as the abolition of one’s personality.

Moreover, it is questionable whether an individual’s burden of responsibility toward his family and society in the traditional Chinese scheme is really greater than that of an individual in the modern industrial order.

A society under the industrial system is organized on a basis broader than blood relationship. In this system the individual has less responsibility for the family but more for society as a whole. In modern industrialism the individual has less obligation to obey his parents but more of a duty to obey his government. He is less bound to support his brothers and cousins but is under greater pressure to give, in the form of income tax and community chest, to support the needy in society at large.

In modern industrialized society the family is just one of many institutions.

But in traditional China the family, in the wider sense, was actually a society.

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In traditional China the duties and responsibilities of an individual toward his greater family were really those of an individual toward his family in the modern sense, plus those toward his state or society. It is due to this combination that the duties and responsibilities of an individual toward his family looked heavy.

So far as the traditional Chinese social philosophy is concerned, the emphasis is upon the individual. It is the individual who is a father or a son, a husband or a wife. It is by becoming a father or a son, a husband or wife, that an individual enlists himself as a member of society, and it is by this enlistment that a man differentiates himself from the beasts. In serving his father and sovereign a man is not giving up his personality. On the contrary, it is only in these services that his personality has its fullest development. . . .

According to traditional social theory each individual is a center from which relationships radiate in four directions: upward being his relationship with his father and ancestors, downward being that with his sons and descendants, to the right and left being that with his brothers and cousins. In James Legge’s translation of the
Record of Ritual
54 there are several tables [of mourning obli-tations] illustrating this point. Within the radius there are different degrees of greater and lesser affections and responsibilities. Persons outside the limit of the radius are considered by the person at the center as “affection ended” and are to be treated by him on the basis of the relationship of friends.

Thus according to traditional social theory every individual is the center of a social circle which is constituted of various social relationships. He is a person and is to be treated as a person. Whatever may be the merit or demerit of traditional Chinese society and its family system, it is quite wrong to say that there was no place for the personality of the individual.

I mention these arguments only to show that, although traditional Chinese society is radically different from a modern one, it is not so irrational as some of its critics may suppose. In saying this I have no intention of supporting it as a working social system in present-day China. In order to live in the modern world in a position worthy of her past China must be industrialized. When there is industrialization, there is no place for the traditional family system and the traditional social structure. But this does not mean that we should not try to have a sympathetic understanding of them and their underlying ideas.

I shall try to give a brief account of these ideas as expounded in the Classics and accepted by most of the educated people in traditional China.

t h e i d e a o f x i a o o r fi l i a l p i e t y The central philosophical idea at the basis of traditional Chinese society was that of filial piety. “Filial piety” is the common translation of the Chinese word
xiao,
which in Chinese traditional literature has a very comprehensive meaning.

In the book
Xiao jing,
or the
Classic of Filial Piety,
translated by Ivan Chen under the title,
The Book of Filial Piety,
55 it is said that there is a “perfect virtue 444

and essential principle, with which the ancient kings made the world peaceful, and the people in harmony with one another.” This perfect virtue is
xiao,
and this essential principle is also
xiao,
which was considered as “the foundation of all virtues, and the fountain of human culture.” . . . In Book XIV of the
Lu¨shi
chunqiu,
which is a work of [the third] century [bc] and a product of the eclectic school, it is said: “If there is one principle by holding which one can possess all the virtues and avoid all the evils, and have a following of the whole world, it is filial piety.” All the social and moral philosophers of later times agreed with this statement. Even the emperors of the following dynasties in Chinese history used to say proudly with the
Classic of Filial Piety:
“Our dynasty rules the world with the principle of filial piety.”56

Such is the very comprehensive implication of the word
xiao,
which the simple English phrase filial piety can hardly suggest. To those who are not familiar with its Chinese equivalent, filial piety may mean simply taking care of one’s parents. But as the
Record of Ritual
says: “To prepare fragrant flesh and grain which one has cooked, tasting and then presenting before one’s parents, is not filial piety; it is only nourishing them.”57 This is no doubt an over-statement, but from the above quotations we can see that taking care of one’s parents is certainly only a very small part of the comprehensive implication of the word
xiao
.

One would not be surprised to find that the virtue of
xiao
was so much emphasized in the traditional Chinese social philosophy if one realized that traditional Chinese society is founded on a family system and that
xiao
is the virtue that holds the family together. . . .

The relationship between sovereign and subject can be conceived in terms either of that between father and son or of that between husband and wife.

That is why I say that in ancient times the royal family of the ruling dynasty was considered in one respect as a family over and above the other ones but in another respect as theoretically only one of the many families.

It was quite common to consider the Son of Heaven as the father of the people. It was a common saying that “the serving of the sovereign by the subject was analogous to the serving of the parents by the son.” In the
Classic of Filial
Piety
it is said: “From the way in which one serves one’s father, one learns how to serve one’s mother. The love toward them is the same. From the way in which one serves one’s father, one learns how to serve one’s sovereign. The respect shown to them is the same. To one’s mother, one shows love, to one’s father both love and respect.”58 In these sayings the relationship between sovereign and subject is conceived in terms of that between father and son. If this relationship is considered in this way, then the royal family of the ruling dynasty must be considered as a superfamily over and above all other families.

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But it was also very common for the relationship between sovereign and subject to be conceived in terms of that between husband and wife. One of the similarities between the two relationships is that the tie between sovereign and subject, like that between husband and wife, is, as the Chinese philosophers said, a “social or moral” one, not a “natural” one. That is to say, the tie is not one of blood. That is why, as it is said in the above quotation, one shows one’s father both respect and love but to one’s sovereign only respect, which is also, according to the Chinese philosophers, what husband and wife should show to each other.

One does not have a chance to choose one’s father. That is something determined by fate. But one can choose one’s sovereign, just as a girl, before her marriage, can have a choice as to who should be her husband. It was a common saying that “the wise bird chooses the right tree to build its nest; the wise minister chooses the right sovereign to offer his service.” It is true that traditionally all the people of the Chinese Empire were theoretically the subjects of the emperor. But it is also true that traditionally the common people had not the same obligation of allegiance toward the emperor as those who entered the official ranks of the government. It was to the officials that the relationship between sovereign and subjects was especially relevant. So even in the time of unification when there was only one sovereign, one still could choose whether to join the official ranks or not, just as a girl might choose to remain single, even though there were only one man whom she could marry. In Chinese history, if a scholar chose to remain outside the official ranks, he was a man, as a traditional saying puts it, “whom the Son of Heaven could not take as his minister, nor the princes take as their friend.” He was a great free man, without any obligation to the emperor except the paying of taxes.