Filial Duties

Particularism—bending rules to help one’s friends and relations—is a morally ambiguous form of corruption that, unlike bribery, might be justified by virtues of loyalty and care. To test whether they involve distinct moral vulnerabilities, we developed a 16-item Particularism vs. Bribery Tolerance Scale (PBTS) using lay input from Chinese populations, Rasch modeling, and Bayesian structural equation modeling (BSEM). Two pilot studies (N = 91; N = 114) in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland generated topic-matched scenarios of either particularism or (...) bribery. In Study 1 (N = 499), eight pairs of scenarios were selected based on topic coverage, Rasch fit indices, and similar item functioning between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese participants. In Study 2 (N = 991), BSEM analyses supported the scale’s two-factor structure, partial scalar invariance across regions, and convergent and discriminant validity. Critically, when controlling for shared variance, particularism tolerance was uniquely associated with moral excuse-making (high Moral Disengagement and low Rule Orientation) and not with virtues. In contrast, bribery tolerance was negatively related to caring virtues (Reciprocal Filial Piety and Warm virtues) and positively related to Authoritarian Filial Piety. The PBTS provides a psychometrically sound tool for investigating distinct moral motivations associated with bribery vs. particularism. (shrink)

In the seventh month of 210 BCE, at a travel palace called Shaqiu, the First Emperor of Qin died with only three people at his bedside: the chancellor Li Si, the palace official Zhao Gao, and his youngest son Huhai. Within days, those three had forged a letter in the dead emperor's name, sent it north to the empire's largest standing army, and used it to order two men to kill themselves — Crown Prince Fusu, the eldest son and designated (...) heir, and Meng Tian, the general who commanded that army. Both complied. Meng Tian's subordinates urged him to verify the order before obeying it; Fusu, on the primary record's own account, wept and killed himself without waiting to. Qin collapsed within four years. No dedicated academic paper, so far as this paper's search located — corroborating a search independently conducted and reported to this paper's author — exists asking directly what would have followed had Fusu paused, as Meng Tian did, to ask whether the letter was genuine. Historians of Qin's fall write about the dynasty's structural overextension. Historians of the Shaqiu incident write about a succession crisis. Writers on counterfactual method cite Fusu as a textbook branching point without building the branch. This paper builds it, and states plainly what building it can and cannot establish. -/- The paper's central methodological move is to separate two counterfactuals that existing informal discussion of this case runs together. A person-level counterfactual asks whether a different individual, with Fusu's recorded temperament and Meng Tian's recorded loyalty, would have made different choices than Huhai and Zhao Gao did. A structure-level counterfactual asks whether Qin's underlying extraction regime — the corvee labor mobilized for the Great Wall, the imperial mausoleum, and the road network, the harsh and inflexibly applied penal code, the standardization program imposed on a recently conquered and culturally heterogeneous population — would have produced comparable unrest regardless of who occupied the throne. The structural case is real, well evidenced, and independently defended in the current academic literature on Qin's collapse, and this paper states it first and states it fully, because a counterfactual argument that does not confront the strongest case against it is not an argument. -/- Against that structural case, this paper establishes three specific, checkable claims the informal "Fusu counterfactual" discussion has not, on this paper's search, assembled together. First, the conspiracy that killed Fusu was narrow and nearly did not happen: Li Si initially and sternly refused Zhao Gao's proposal, and Huhai himself initially objected to it on grounds of injustice, unfiliality, and incompetence, before Zhao Gao talked each of them into it — meaning the branching point this paper examines was not a single moment of Fusu's own choice but a sequence of at least three prior choices, any one of which failing would have prevented the forgery from ever reaching him. Second, the purge did not merely remove a temperament from the throne; it removed a specific army from the board. Meng Tian's death left his own veteran frontier force, later commanded by Wang Li, on the northern border rather than redeployed against the first rebellion, and Qin's actual emergency response to Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's 209 BCE uprising was not that veteran army but several hundred thousand convict laborers pulled from the First Emperor's own mausoleum construction and hastily armed under an improvised commander, Zhang Han, specifically because the court no longer trusted its regular troops — a distrust this paper argues is better explained by the paranoia a palace coup generates than by any structural feature of Qin's tax code. Third, and most directly: the rebellion that began Qin's collapse did not treat Fusu's death as historiographical trivia. Chen Sheng, the leader of that rebellion, explicitly invoked Fusu's murdered name as one of his two rallying causes. Contemporaries closest to the event, not modern counterfactual historians, are this paper's primary witnesses that the succession mattered. -/- The paper concludes narrowly rather than broadly, consistent with what the evidence actually supports. It does not conclude that a Fusu succession would have prevented Qin's fall; the structural pressures Section IV documents were already fully in motion before Shaqiu and this paper has no basis for claiming a different emperor unwinds them. It concludes something more specific and, this paper argues, more defensible: that the particular form Qin's collapse took — a purge-weakened court unable to trust its own army, responding to a regional uprising with convict labor instead of veterans, inside a climate of elite paranoia the coup itself manufactured — was not structurally inevitable, and that the branching point popular discussion locates correctly, at Shaqiu, is real, even though the discussion has not yet specified precisely what it was a branching point toward. (shrink)

Confucian ethics fundamentally rejects the notion of individual physical immortality, grounded in its intrinsic generative cosmology of“shengsheng”(continuous generation and renewal) and the temporal structure of filial piety. Familial emotions, such as the“joy”and“fear”concerning parental years, along with the consciousness of filial piety, both originate from the experience of life’s finitude and the limited horizon of inner time−consciousness. Physical immortality, by contrast, would result in the rigidification of family roles, the dissolution of ethical authority, and paradoxes in the practice of filial care, (...) thereby undermining the ethical order of generational succession. The Confucian concept of“longevity”(shou) aims at fulfilling one’s allotted natural lifespan and integrating into the flow of“shengsheng”, which differs essentially from the pursuit of physical immortality that seeks to transcend natural rhythms. Confucian efforts to attain“longevity”seek to preserve the intergenerational continuity and ethical significance of life, rather than the infinite persistence of the individual. -/- 儒家伦理以内在的“生生”宇宙观为根基，其孝道的时间性结构决定了它在根本上拒斥个 体身体不朽的构想。家庭情感，如对父母之年的“喜”与“惧”，以及孝道意识，均源于生命有 限性的体验与内时间意识的有限视域。身体不朽则会导致家庭角色固化、伦理权威消解以及行孝 实践的悖论，从而瓦解代际更替的伦理秩序。儒家“寿”的概念以尽天年为旨归，融入“生生” 之流，与试图超越自然节律的身体不朽存在本质差异；其对“寿”的追求旨在维护生命的代际连 续性与伦理意义，而非个体的无限持存。. (shrink)

When people feel that their country has betrayed its core ideals, it is natural for them to consider whether they ought finally to give up on their country. Our interest is with those who sincerely love their countries, and yet who are inclined to abandon their country because they judge it to have betrayed its ideals. We consider different variants of patriotism before defending what we call critical patriotism, a stance involving a commitment to a nation’s ideals without the attendant (...) need to love one’s country unconditionally. We further argue that even in the cases where one has good reasons to remain loyal to one’s country, doing so will typically be supererogatory rather than obligatory. The issue before us is of crucial practical significance given the current trend of people feeling justified in abandoning their country in response to feeling that their political ideals have been betrayed. (shrink)

Special obligations are directed duties to perform acts of partiality to relata in special relationships. Preferential treatment is owed to kith, kin, companions and compatriots over “outsiders” and “others”, and this is presumably a moral requirement, not merely a societal expectation. But why do special obligations exist at all? Why do the bonds of special relationships come bundled with the binds of special obligations? I argue against the non-reductionist thesis that special obligations are sui generis obligations uniquely grounded in special (...) relationships. This is because special obligations obtain in all special relationships but some special relationships generate no normative reasons (and, a fortiori, no obligations) to perform acts of partiality. Thus, nothing inherent in special relationships grounds special obligations. Special obligations are grounded in factors outside special relationships and are reducible to the general class of obligations grounded in those external factors. I suggest that satisficing rule consequentialism gives the best answer to the basis of the binds of bonds: special obligations exist most plausibly because their presence, as a rule, produces better outcomes than their absence. (shrink)

The institution of the family and its importance have recently received considerable attention from political theorists. Leading views maintain that the institution’s justification is grounded, at least in part, in the non-instrumental value of the parent-child relationship itself. Such views face the challenge of identifying a specific good in the parent-child relationship that can account for how adults acquire parental rights over a particular child—as opposed to general parental rights, which need not warrant a claim to parent one’s biological progeny. (...) I develop a view that meets this challenge. This Project View identifies the pursuit of a parental project as a distinctive non-instrumentally valuable good that provides a justification for the family and whose pursuit is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of parental rights. This view grounds moral parenthood in a normative relation as opposed to a biological one, supports polyadic forms of parenting, and provides plausible guidance in cases of assisted reproduction. (shrink)

Confucianism’s emphasis on filial piety is both a hallmark of its approach to ethics and a source of concern. Critics charge that filial piety’s extreme partialism corrupts Chinese society and should therefore be expunged from the tradition. Are the critics correct? In this article, we outline the criticism and note its persistence over the last century. We then evaluate data from the empirical study of corruption to see whether they support the claim that partialism corrupts. Finally, we report some recent (...) experimental work done with colleagues testing the claim that filial piety is associated with tolerance of corruption in Chinese societies. The results suggest that the critics are on to something. However, partialism (or kin affection) is not a cause of concern. Instead, authoritarianism (another aspect of filial piety) is associated with tolerance of corruption. We conclude that critics should reformulate their criticisms if they seek to combat corruption effectively. (shrink)

When and why are coercion, indoctrination, manipulation, deception, and bullshit morally wrongful modes of influence in the context of educating children? Answering this question requires identifying what valid claims different parties have against one another regarding how children are influenced. Most prominently among these, it requires discerning what claims children have regarding whether and how they and their peers are influenced, and against whom they have these claims. The claims they have are grounded in the weighty interests they each equally (...) have in their wellbeing, prospective autonomy and being regarded with equal concern and respect. Plausibly children have valid claims regarding the content and means of influence they themselves are subjected to. For instance, considerations of concern and respect for children confer duties on others enable them to know important information and develop important skills. Children also plausibly have valid claims to be free from certain means of influence including indoctrination. This is because indoctrinatory practices threaten to diminish both their capacity to reason soundly, thereby constituting a wrongful harm, and their opportunities to form judgements and choices in response to relevant evidence and reasons, thereby constituting a wrong of disrespect. (shrink)

Siblings ought to treat one another specially – in other words, siblings qua siblings ought to treat one another in ways that they need not treat others. This paper offers a theory of why this is the case. The paper begins with some intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another and some other normative features of siblinghood. I then review three potential theories of why siblings ought to treat one another specially, adapted from the literature on filial (...) piety: the gratitude theory, the friendship theory, and the special goods theory. In each case, these theories fail to explain some of the intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another. The paper then proposes a familial belonging theory. The institution of the family has certain goals, which impose normative demands on family members. I suggest that one such family goal is that every member feel familial belonging towards every other member, a goal which grounds the ways in which siblings ought to treat one another specially. (shrink)

We think about personal relationships in two distinct ways. The first focuses on relationships between blood relatives: parents and their children, siblings, and perhaps first cousins. The second focuses on intimacy: relationships where each individual is honest to and trusting of the other; each cares for the other and seeks the other’s company. In this article I ask how these two conceptions are, can be, or should be linked. Should we strive to make all relationships with kin intimate? Even if (...) the answer is a qualified “No,” does that mean relationships with kin are not valuable? I offer some tentative answers to these questions. Despite its limitations, I hope this provides a framework from which future exploration of these issues might profitably begin. (shrink)

Todo lo que compete al ámbito familiar es fundamental para una correcta vertebración social. Debido a ello, es preciso abordar integral e integradoramente los diferentes aspectos de la política familiar; así, desde los fundamentos de la protección familiar y su importancia dentro del conjunto de instrumentos de políticas de articulación social hasta las claves demográficas que explican y condicionan el futuro de España en el campo de la educación, del empleo, de la seguridad social y del diálogo social, merecen un (...) tratamiento adecuado y especializado. La protección social de la familia es, en la actualidad, no sólo oportuna sino también necesaria. Y ello por varias razones: en primer lugar, por su relevancia social e instrumental -la familia es fuente de solidaridad frente a las crisis económicas y crisis de valores-; en segundo lugar, por la alta valoración de ella que revelan todas las encuestas –lo que se interpreta como satisfacción por su concreto funcionamiento interno y como célula que fundamenta nuestro sistema social-; en tercer lugar, por la necesidad del reconocimiento social de la maternidad como garantía de futuro –pues de la maternidad no debieran derivarse efectos negativos para la vida personal de la mujer (ni en calidad, ni en oportunidades), lo que lleva a la necesidad de compatibilizar la esfera laboral y familiar-. Y, por último, por la necesidad de compensación pública de las cargas familiares. Además, no debe obviarse el hecho de que todo ello va asociado a los fuertes cambios que afectan a la familia como la aparición de nuevos problemas que van erosionando la institución familiar. Tales son, entre otros, la feminización de la pobreza, la aparición de familias reconstituidas, el rápido crecimiento del número de hogares de personas solas, el fuerte incremento cuantitativo de familias monoparentales, el aumento de divorcios, la caída de la natalidad y el envejecimiento de la población. Todo ello justifica el empeño investigador y preservador de la familia. En esta línea heurística y axiológica, el objetivo de este libro es ofrecer un panorama completo de los principales aspectos que hoy son considerados más relevantes en el ámbito de la protección de la familia teniendo como meta el que los análisis sectoriales confluyan de forma integradora hacia la consideración de la familia como unidad integral con entidad propia. (shrink)

This is a review of Laurence Houlgate's "Family and State: the Philosophy of Family Law. It takes a look at the moral theory from which Houlgate begins and raises questions about is correctness and appropriateness, but it finds more to agree with with respect to his middle-level principles. It considers his definition of "family" in the context of contemporary political controversy over such definitions. It looks at his consequentialist justification for the family, agrees with it, and suggests additional supplementary arguments, (...) primarily from Brigitte and Peter Berger, to give additional support for Houlgate's argument. It looks at his justification for family law and agrees with his principle of optimum communal benefit. It seeks to place Houlgate's views within the context of contemporary political debate about being "pro-family" or "anti-family". It then goes on to look briefly at some of the specific issues of family law that Houlgate considers, taking time to raise a few questions about some of them, and concludes by dealing in a more extensive way with the question of what the extent and limits of state interference in the family should be, agreeing with Houlgate's basic position, but considering further its application to specific issues. (shrink)

This paper (in Chinese) is focusing on Zhang Xianglong’s temporal interpretation of filial piety. Zhang Xianglong argues that parental love is necessary for filial consciousness, emerging from a temporal reversal when children become parents. This paper challenges that claim using counterexamples (parental absence, abuse, adoption, childlessness), showing filial consciousness can arise without receiving or giving parental love. While affirming the inner time consciousness framework, it proposes a revised view: filial consciousness is rooted in past-present-future intertwining but can be activated by (...) blood-related “Jemeinigkeit” or existential empathy with parents’ struggles. -/- 张祥龙先⽣融合胡塞尔与海德格尔的现象学时间性理论，提出了孝意识⽣成的内时间意识阐释，其核⼼论断为：⽗⺟之慈是孝意识产⽣的必要条件。该阐释强调，⽗⺟慈爱蕴含过去-现在-未来的统⼀时间性体验，⽽当⼦女为⼈ ⽗⺟施予慈爱时，会触发时间性“反转”(Kehre)，使其回溯理解⽗⺟艰辛，从⽽⽣发孝⼼。本⽂旨在重思张祥龙先⽣“慈为孝之必要条件”这⼀核⼼观点。通过分析⽗⺟缺位、亲⼦虐待（如舜之案例）、弃⼉收养、无后 （丁克）等实践反例，本⽂论证：孝意识之产⽣可独立于接受或施予⽗⺟之慈。本⽂在肯定内时间意识理论价值的同时，主张其解释⼒不应囿于⽣育⾏为或慈爱经验。本⽂尝试提出⼀种修正性现象学阐释：孝意识虽植根于内时间 意识结构（过去-现在-未来的交织），但其激活机制或具多元性，既可源于⾎缘“向来我属”(Jemeinigkeit)的⽣存论指引，亦可⽣于相似⼈⽣困境中对⽗⺟处境的⽣存论共情。此模型或可回应张祥龙先⽣阐释 遇到之挑战，亦为理解现代多元家庭结构中的孝道实践提供⼀种哲学思考维度。. (shrink)