If there has to be a law, it's not Confucian

China appears ready to legislate filial duty:

Adult children of elderly parents will be required to visit their parents regularly and must care for their spiritual needs and cannot neglect or isolate them, according to a draft amendment of China’s elder law, Legal Daily reported Wednesday.

In traditional Chinese thinking, children who have come of age have the duty to support and assist their parents. However, among the total number of 167 million elderly people, half of them are living alone without children, and some of them cannot even get good care, said the report.

This might be a good idea, since the lack of elder care is growing in China.  But whatever it is, it is not Confucian.

Confucius, of course, urged children to care for their parents.  Indeed, such care is the "root of Humanity" (Analects 1.2), the means by which we become fully moral persons.  But Confucius also taught that the enactment of filial duty had to come from the heart, inspired by genuine love and concern.  If we simply go through the motions, impelled to care for parents by legal sanction, we are not living up to our obligations:

When Adept Yu asked about honoring parents, the Master said: "These days, being a worthy child just means keeping parents well-fed.  That's what we do for dogs and horses.  Everyone can feed their parents - but without reverence, they may as well be feeding animals." (2.7)

And these days the widespread lack of reverence for parents in China requires that legal penalty, external to the conscience, be imposed in order to counteract the malign effects of elder neglect...

Comments

[Darel E. Paul]

Luther argued against the antinomians that even redeemed Christians had need for the law: [1] as a curb (to restrain "wild, disobedient men"); [2] as a mirror (to show us our sins and call us to repentance); and [3] as a guide by which we know how to live our lives.

Could not a Confucian see this elder law functioning as [2] and/or [3] above, rather than strictly as a legal penalty (and thus [1])? Can't a Confucian allow the the law teach him his duty?

[Sam]

Darel,
Yes, there might be a minimal function for law in a Confucian polity. He was not an anarchist, after all. But Confucius was wary of relying on law as a primary source of moral education and moral regulation. Thus his emphasis on exemplary leadership. Analects 2.3 gets at this point nicely:

The Master said: "If you use government to show them the Way and punishment to keep them true, the people will grow evasive and lose all remorse. But if you use Integrity to show them the Way and Ritual to keep them true, they'll cultivate remorse and always see deeply into things."