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Triple Analysis of Modern Neo-Confucian Family Ethics Research in the past 30 Years

Author: Wu Genyou Fu Jiayi

Source: “Ethics Research” Issue 6, 2024

 

Abstract: Facing the transformation of Chinese society and civilization, modern Neo-Confucianism, which is active in the 20th century, has a continuous discussion and reflection on traditional Confucian family ethics, and has tried to open up a way to reconstruct modern family ethics. In the past thirty years, after seeing each other several times, we have a good impression of each other. The two parties have studied the researcher and the two parties have also paid attention to the modern neo-Confucian family ethics thinking in many aspects, and have explored the modern neo-Confucian family ethics thinking from a different perspective, which includes both confirmation and recognition, and criticism. According to the three aspects of tradition, modernity and individuality, we can analyze and analyze the research and development of Confucian family ethics in the past 30 years. On the one hand, we can continue to conduct in-depth research on modern neo-Confucian family ethics for academic advances. On the other hand, we can also use the analysis and reflection of these research results to build family ethics for contemporary and future Chinese society to provide benefits for the enlightenment of ideas.

 

Keywords: Modern Neo-Confucianism  Family Ethics  Three-fold Analysis

 

Author Introduction: Wu Genyou, professor of Wuhan University of Philosophy, doctoral supervisor, director of the Wuhan University of Civilization Dialogue; Fu Jiayi, doctoral student of Wuhan University of Philosophy.

 

Family ethics is one of the focus areas of Confucian ethics thinking and one of the ideological problems shared by Confucianism in ancient and modern times. Traditional Confucian family ethics focus on filial piety, benevolence, filial piety and loyalty as important theories, and the common political, economic, and elected officials and other related systems have become the basis or origin of the basic ethics order of China’s traditional society that has been extended for thousands of years. Since the 20th century, with the collapse of the order of traditional society and the continuous rise of modern ideological civilizations in the East, Confucianism includes the traditional Confucian family ethics encountering unprecedented historical shocks and challenges. As a socially-based family, its structure and effectiveness, related career methods, ethics and value concepts have also undergone grand changes: the focus family gradually replaced the college and the main family; the traditional society focuses on the axial of the blood-filled family. The family ethics of point gradually transform into a family ethics based on the relationship between men and women in love; the relationship between parents’ descendants no longer focuses on traditional filial piety, but is importantly manifested as the new family ethics of “downward concern” that parents care about their children’s growth. The in-depth changes and displacement between the family ethics relationship and the center of gravity generated by the development and change in this era of development have made Confucianism and traditional Confucian family ethics a long time ago one of the important objects of reflection and criticism. However, the modern neo-Confucianism, which lived in the 20th century, moved against the tide of the times, and resolutely carried forward the protection and replacement of new data Confucianism (includingThe flag of family ethics) and conducts continuous discussion and reflection on it, trying to “take on tradition and continue to open up to meet real problems and external challenges” [1] (282), opening a way to reconstruct Chinese modern family ethics.

 

In strict meaning, modern neo-Confucianism “is still hard to be considered a past history, it is close to us”[1] (282). In the mid-80s of the 20th century, the research and development of modern neo-Confucianism in the mainland academic community was truly launched. The “Modern New Confucian Thought Research” was once established as the focus of the National Social Science Fund’s “Seventh Five-Year Plan” and “Eighth Five-Year Plan” planning subject, but its focus is on macro-viewing such as thinking history and civilization history. There are still fewer discussions on micro-viewing such as family ethics thinking. After 1990, some researchers began to focus on the modern neo-Confucian family ethics thinking, and had some special assessments and discussions, but they were still in a relatively clear state①. From the academic level, if we do not study modern neo-Confucian thinking about family ethics, the research on modern neo-Confucianism seems to be unable to find the root of their thinking. This article attempts to assess and briefly review the results of contemporary Chinese researchers ② on the ethics of modern neo-Confucian family in the past thirty years, and to provide a preliminary academic foundation for further research on the ethics of modern neo-Confucian family.

 

Due to space limitations, this article has important insights and two areas: one is to assess the results of family ethics research and discussions in the field of modern neo-Confucianism, and the other is to assess the results of modern neo-Confucian family ethics thinking in the field of modern neo-Confucian family ethics and related fields. Because the relevant research results are more evacuated, in order to facilitate the description, the authors focused on the important results of contemporary researchers’ assessment of modern neo-Confucian family ethics on three perspectives: tradition, modernity and individuality. The development points, thinking standpoints, and value choices of these three differentiation have their own characteristics, which will help us to double the comprehensive understanding of the theory of modern neo-Confucian family ethics, and to further deepen the research and offer the research and provision of modern neo-Confucian family ethics to think and academic advances. Due to the diversity and evacuation of data, the researchers and related documents discussed in this article will not be missed, and hope that the education of the country will be correct.

 

1. The ultimate evaluation of “returning to the original” and “staying with the old” – an analysis of the tradition of modern neo-Confucian family ethics

 

The important reason why modern neo-Confucianism is called “Confucianism” is that they maintain Confucian focus thinking and take it as their responsibility to develop Confucian thinking, recognize family ethics as the focus of Confucian civilization, and believe in the most basic and eternal nature of filial piety. Contemporary researchers first focused on the traditional aspect of modern neo-Confucian family ethical thinking and analyzed it, analyze the “Confucian” thinking components here. The modern neo-Confucian community once clearly proposed the “return to the original and open up new” saying that based on the excellent traditional civilization including Confucian family ethics, it opened up the “new” of the times in the path of modernization in China. The researchers have produced more extreme ratings on whether this “return to the capital” will lead to and have “old” colors at the age of many years.

 

According to a certain school of researchers, modern neo-Confucianism has well inherited the division of Confucian traditional family ethics, fairness and ethics. Its family ethics has neither left the basic paradigm and discussion area of ​​Confucian ethics, but also insisted on the non-removal of ethnicization and its own unique ethics tradition, and has made reforms to China’s traditional Confucian family ethics, which can be called “returning to the original and opening up new”. This important body now has two aspects of civilization and politics: the determination of “returning to the root and opening up” in civilization, and the important contacts and two aspects: First, it is to agree that modern neo-Confucianism regards filial piety and tribute civilization as the basis for Confucian family ethics, and conducts creative transformation on this basis. Yu Wenbo and others compared the views of Ma Yifu filial piety, “filial piety is the basis of virtue” “Filial piety” as the basis of the six philosophical system and its positive influence on the construction of family ethics in the construction of the philosophical system, the accumulation of ethics and morality, and the support of energy worship [2] (64). Li Zonggui also believed that Tang Junyi combined the Chinese civilization to become a “gratulation civilization” based on filial piety. It is said that the filial piety of descendants to their parents, their younger brothers to their elders, and their respect between husbands and their husbands all depend on their family life [3] (28). Xiao Qunzhong proposed that the three generations of new Confucians were dragged to this environment after staying in the laboratory for several days. Ye also took advantage of the deep influence of the representative figures of the resting home on the filial piety’s energy on Chinese civilization and Chinese society, which fully determined the meaning of filial people [4] (94). The second is to fully recognize the value of modern Neo-Confucianism’s view of family ethics as the origin of Chinese civilization and the reliance on the lives of the people. Among them TC: