Confucianism and the Family

Abstract

Nuyen reviews "Confucianism and the Family" by Walter H. Slote and George A. DeVos.

Confucianism and the Family

WALTER H. SLOTE 8 GEORGE A. DEVOS, 1998 Albany, State University of New York Press xiv + 390 pp.

Confucianism and the Family is a very useful addition to the fast-growing field of family studies. While the essays are mostly anthropological or historical in orientation, philosophers will not fail to find much that is of interest. With few exceptions, the essays are highly critical of the traditional Confucian family structure and the intellectual tradition from which it emerged, namely Confucianism. In what follows, instead of reviewing the essays one by one, I shall treat the whole as a critique of Confucianism and the Confucian family and shall say something in response to it.

The picture of the traditional Confucian family painted by the majority of the authors in this collection is not an appealing one, not just to the modern mind that subscribes to equality and personal liberty, but to most of the participants themselves. Numerous social and psychological problems are sheeted home to the attempt by contemporary Asian families to maintain the Confucian family structure. The victims are said to be not just the children and the wives, but the fathers and the husbands as well. The indictment is so severe that one wonders how the Confucian family has survived for so long and why East Asia does not follow Communist China in denouncing it, along with Confucianism, for its terrible effects on the family, among other things. Indeed, one wonders why, despite the efforts of the Communist regime, traces of the Confucian family structure can still be found in many parts of China itself.

For one author, the traditional Confucian family format reinforces the `hierarchical social structure' designed to entrench the authority of those in power, that of the husband and the father in the family context (p. 39). The claim that the `father was the ultimate disciplinarian' is supported with the example of `an elderly father ordering his fifty-year-old son to lie on the floor, arms outstretched, and beating him with a switch' (p. 41). In applying disciplinary actions, the Confucian father is `forced [to withhold] affection' (ibid.) and suffers the resulting emotional consequences. The same author observes that the `men were frequently abusive and demeaning toward their wives, diminishing the women's spirit and the vitality and spontaneity of the relationship' (p. 42). The effect on the child is equally appalling: '[it] was to reduce the child ... to impotence-helpless, frustrated, furious, and floundering' (p. 43). Thus, father/ husband, wife, child, all suffer the terrible effects of the Confucian family: `Each pays a price. The result is that the burden of proper conduct weighs heavily upon everyone' (p. 44). There is worse to come, if that is possible. Wives frequently entertain `incestuous fantasies' toward their sons to compensate for `the affection that is not forthcoming from their husbands' (pp. 44-45); the struggle for power within the family results in '(s)ibling rivalry and sibling envy' (p. 45); the enforcement of authoritarian domination results in `fear, dependency, and hostility' within the family (p. 46). On hostility, our author reports that on 'a number of occasions where I have seen it expressed, it has taken the form of what I can only describe as murderous rage' (p. 47).

The terrible effects of the Confucian family structure on family members are similarly reported by other authors from observations made in non-Chinese communities such as the Japanese, the Korean and to a lesser extent, the Vietnamese communities. In the case of Japan, for instance, one author claims that there is `no doubt that Confucianism was used politically and socially as a conservative ideology concerning the state, the economic system, and gender relationships' (p. 110). Another observes that as a result of the adoption of Confucianism in Japan, '(m)an is placed above woman, just as the heaven is above the earth, and the head above the body', an `asymmetry involving female inferiority, subordination, and vulnerability ...' (p. 211). In the case of Korea, we are told that the `moral axiom ... [of] ... filial piety' has resulted in 'a sense of guilt' in family members who `cannot fulfill their moral responsibilities', and in `the suppression of hostile feelings toward parents' (p. 165, emphasis original). One psychiatrist points out that there are psychiatric data linking incidents of mental illness in many Korean communities to conflicts within the Confucian family structure. He writes: 'I would suggest that the frustrations experienced among Korean women after marriage into a traditional patriarchal family still play an important role in the production of conversion symptoms [of hysterical disorders]' (p. 286). This author also quotes another psychiatrist who attributes incidents of homosexuality and incest in Korean families in America to `the strict early separation between roles for boys and girls in the Confucian tradition', to `the culturally sanctioned relationship among same-sex siblings in hierarchical terms' and so on (p. 287).

To be sure, the negative effects of the traditional Confucian family structure are not uniform. However, those communities that escape the worst excesses are those that manage to loosen the Confucian stricture with their own home-grown traditions or those that are forced by economic and other circumstances to modify the `traditional format'. According to one author, `the Vietnamese have preserved a resolute individualism [and] have insisted upon a compromise on power within the family blending patrilineal authority with matriarchy' (p. 147). Those Vietnamese families that manage to temper Confucian orthodoxy with home-grown traits are more likely to escape the negative effects observed elsewhere, albeit at the cost to an individual of an inner conflict between `orthodoxy and opposition to orthodoxy' (p. 159). In the case of Singapore, another author reports that the `Chinese family, which still draws fundamental values of Confucian ethics from various sources, has to adapt to the reality of a new urban-industrial state' (p. 237). The necessity to adapt arises because `industrialization and urbanization are incompatible with the maintenance of Confucian family traditions' (p. 244). By adapting well, the Singaporean Chinese manage to avoid many of the negative effects mentioned above.

The anthropological data surveyed in Confucianism and the Family appear to be damning. The question is whether the case against the Confucian family as it exists historically is also the case against Confucianism itself, against Confucian ethics and Confucian philosophy generally. Some social critics are prepared to accept that the two cases are separate, and are reluctant to conflate them. Indeed, one author is critical of those of his colleagues who tend to conflate the two. His own view is that it is `apparent ... that some dysfunctional aspects of Confucian family life are the results of distortions or misperceptions and the undue rigidification of potentially more flexible interactions actually accepted within Confucian thought' (p. 289). By contrast, other authors take for granted the causal link between Confucianism and the family structure that has historically evolved. For them, the case against the latter is the case against the former. For instance, one author is in no doubt that the authoritarianism found in the Confucian family originates from Confucianism itself: `Confucianism was based on authoritarianism, and filial piety was the principal instrument through which it was established and maintained' (p. 46). Another tells us that during `the Chinese Renaissance of 1919 led by Hu Shih, Chinese intellectuals attacked filial piety and Confucianism' (p. 61), clearly blaming Confucianism for the lack of progress in China and for the inferiority of China vis-a-vis the West. For them, the Confucian family was merely the symptom of the disease, the disease being Confucianism itself. According to one author, since filial piety `was upheld as the ultimate value in Confucianism, at least in Koreanized Confucianism' (p. 193), anything negative about the Confucian family (in Korea) can be sheeted home to Confucianism.

Textual support for the critique of Confucianism itself is based on Confucian writings on the doctrine of the Three Bonds, on filial piety and on the virtue of li (propriety). The common interpretation of the doctrine of the Three Bonds is that it seeks to establish the authority of the king over his minister, of the father over his son and of the husband over his wife. Clearly, a strict application of the Three Bonds doctrine requires the son to yield to the authority of the father and the wife to yield to that of the husband. It is understandable that many authors have cited this doctrine as the source of authoritarianism in the Confucian family, and for some, it is as well the source of totalitarianism, domination and oppression. Other writings on filial piety are also cited, particularly the notorious Twenty Four Examples of Filial Piety (Er Shih Ssu Hsiao). Certain passage in the Analects are also frequently cited, such as Analects 1:11, Analects 2:5 and Analects 2:7, all stressing respect, reverence and obedience. From passages such as these, many critical conclusions are drawn, such as: `The most salient feature of filial piety is the subordination of the will and welfare of each individual to the will and welfare of his or her real classificatory parents' (p. 268), and `Filial Piety is quintessentially described as the subordination of a son to his father...' (p. 269).

For many authors, filial piety and for that matter, the Three Bonds doctrine, are rooted in the Confucian notion of li (propriety). The respect, reverence, obedience, loyalty etc. that must be shown by the wife toward her husband and by the son toward his father are aspects of li. As one author sees it, li was 'a core concept for Confucius [and] was demanded of all' (p. 139). This rather uncontroversial claim is followed by the claim that li `defined the correct, stylized behavior which was attached to social roles and forestalled the idiosyncrasies of individual expression' (ibid.) It is by li that society is ordered `into a hierarchy of superior and subordinate roles' (p. 138). The implication is that it is by li that the family is likewise ordered, with wives and children occupying subordinate roles. This is how li ultimately gives rise to authoritarianism and totalitarianism in the family.

The author most sympathetic to Confucianism in its relationship to the family is Wei-Ming Tu. In one chapter, Tu gives a useful and instructive historical account of Confucius and Confucianism. In another, Tu tempers the stricture of the Three Bonds doctrine with the flexibility of the Mencian Five Relationships. He argues that there is enough flexibility in Confucianism to allow individuals to construct lives that are rich and meaningful within the confines of propriety and filial piety. We have also seen that one commentator, the psychiatrist Bou-Yong Rhi, attributes the disorders observed in Confucian families to `distortions and misperceptions' of Confucianism rather than to Confucianism itself. My own view is that Tu does not go far enough in his defence of Confucianism and a case can be made out to support Rhi's contention.

It has to be said that there is indeed an emphasis on propriety (lz) in Confucian writings about the family. However, the reason for this emphasis is not to ensure domination and control, and to translate it into a structure of domination and control is a 'distortion', or a 'misperception' of Confucianism. What is most important in Confucianism is the idea of harmony. Harmony consists in balancing opposing forces, such as the balancing of yin and yang. Confucius and Confucianists regard the human world as continuous with the natural world and regard the harmony in the former as of the same kind as the harmony in the latter. Now, the feelings of love and affection can be assumed to be abundant in the family. They arise naturally from biological inclinations binding fathers and children, and romantic and/or sexual inclinations binding husbands and wife. Yet, a family cannot thrive on love and affection alone. There have to be also the feelings of respect and reverence, enough to ensure a necessary amount of obedience. Given a natural abundance of love and affection, something has to act as a counter-balance. It is for this reason that respect and reverence are emphasised. Since these feelings accompany the practice of li, it is understandable that there is an emphasis on li in Confucian writings on the family. The yin of love and affection has to be balanced by the yang of respect and reverence, the yang of li. To read the emphasis on li as an exclusive endorsement of respect and reverence, of obedience and domination, is indeed a distortion and a misperception.

Confucianism and the Family is a very valuable contribution to the debate about the role of the Confucian family in the modern context. The critique advanced by the contributors to this volume certainly calls for a reassessment of the Confucian tradition. However, if I am right, what is needed is a correction of the distortions inherent in the family structure that has historically developed, rather than the abandonment of the Confucian tradition altogether.

A.T. NUYEN

The University of Queensland, Australia