In the early years of ROC the university adopted the system similar to western especially American universities and began to award bachelor's degree. The university founded China's first modern laboratories in physics, chemistry, etc.. In , the university professors founded The Biology Research Institute of Science Society of China, the first modern scientific research institute in China, integrated with the university's biology department. With the aid of Rockefeller Foundation, Science Centre was constructed in and completed three years later.
China's first doctor's degree was awarded by the school of medicine of the university in Soon the educational system was changed. In the early s after a period of transformation, universities in mainland China resumed to award doctor's degrees, and graduate and undergraduate education were integrated into departments and schools. Nanjing University is the first in mainland China to award doctor's degrees in such fields as Chinese studies, world history, computer science.
It is distinguished in many fields including Chinese Language and Literature, [21] [22] and natural sciences. Nanjing University has three main campuses: Gulou, Xianlin and Pukou campus. The distance between Gulou and Xianlin campus is about 18 kilometers. The main campus itself is divided into two sections by Hankou Road: North Garden, Bei Yuan, is where teaching and research take place; and South Garden, Nan Yuan, serves as the living area for both students and academic staff.
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Once Pukou campus hosted undergraduate freshmen, sophomore and junior students. In , the Pukou campus became the campus hosted the undergraduate students in Nanjing University Jinling College, which was founded by Nanjing University in The campus is home to undergraduate students and parts of graduate students. It was opened in September There is Sun Yat-sen House. It's said that Sun Yat-sen , the first president provisional president of the Republic of China, lived there.
Gulou campus is now becoming mainly for professional graduate campus. The location of Nanjing University has changed for several times, with historical campuses mainly in Fuzimiao on the bank of Qinhuai River , Gulou, Chaotiangong and Sipailou south of Qintian Mountain areas. In addition, during Anti-Japanese War , its main campus moved to Shapingba, Chungking , with two auxiliary campuses, one in Bohsi, Chungking, and one in Hwahsiba, Chengdu , in some sense combined with Chongqing University and Western China University now medical school of Sichuan University respectively. It also deserves to mention that before the war, with the rapid development of the university, a new campus planned to cover an area of mu about 5.
After the war, it moved back to Nanjing, making former campus Sipailou as main campus, and the new campus Dingjiaqiao was built for agriculture and medical schools. Nanjing University relocated in Gulou six years after moving back, and then near sixty years later Xianlin campus emerged. Today's Nanjing University Gulou campus is the location of Imperial University of Nanjing during Former Song dynasty in more than years ago when it was in the west of the city, and now it's in the centre of the city. The first half of this motto was the motto during the National Central University time, and the last half was quoted from the classic literature work Book of Rites.
It was voted to be the motto by university students in , and the then university president supported it and wrote an article to interpret it. The translation does not fully express the meaning of the Chinese words of the motto. Motto counterparts between Chinese and English literally: The term Dun Xing comes from the context in Book of Rites: The school song, recovered in , was created in The present school anniversary is on May 20 every year, which was set by the school authority in in some sense due to some ideological reasons of the time, with the starting year being when relaunching the school as a modern higher learning institution, and the day May 20 in memory of the movement of anti-hunger and anti-war initiated by the university in that day of In recent years, the date May 20 has another new meaning: It shows students' love to their Alma Mater.
NU received a RMB million endowment gift from enterpriser Yang Xiu on the anniversary day in , million was designated for the establishment of engineering school and the rest for history study development fund. The Engineering Building covering floor space of sqm was started to construct in Xianlin campus in It's ranked 7th in China by ShanghaiRanking in Reviewing rankings, domestically, according to university rankings in China , Nanjing University was generally ranked among the top 3 universities before the university merger tide occurred in the several years about after , and then ranking down, even falling to No.
Chinese university ranking by Chinese Academy of Management Science since ranked Nanjing University between 1st and 3rd before and since then between 3rd and 6th. Known for its stringent admission criteria, Nanjing University was reported by national media to be the No.
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In Nanda recruited overseas students from 61 countries. Nanjing University has a long history in the field of Chinese language and literature. In modern times, it was the first in mainland China to have granted a doctoral degree in Chinese Language and Literature. In addition, Nanjing Universiyy is in close cooperation with the United Nations to offer a Chinese language programme. Nanjing University established the first department of Western literature among Chinese universities, in Two years later the department was merged with English department and other faculties including French and German and renamed department of foreign languages and literature, later known as school of foreign studies.
Nanjing University Herbarium N was founded in the 4th year of ROC, although there were herbarium specimens in the school before. It's the first modern herbarium in China. It is located in the Tianjiabing Building. Public university — A public university is a university that is predominantly funded by public means through a national or subnational government, as opposed to private universities.
Whether a national university is considered public varies from one country to another, in Egypt, Al-Azhar University opened in AD as the second oldest university in the world. They are also eligible for a low interest loan from the Higher Education Loan Board and they are expected to pay back the loan after completing higher education.
South Africa has 23 public tertiary institutions, either categorised as a traditional university or a comprehensive university. The University Grant Commission is the body for all the public universities in Bangladesh. The universities do not deal directly with the government, but with the University Grants Commission, recently many private universities are established under the Private University Act of In mainland China, nearly all universities and research institutions are public and currently, the public universities are usually run by the provincial governments, there are also circumstances where the municipal governments administer the universities.
Some public universities are national, which are administered by the central government. Private undergraduate colleges do exist, which are vocational colleges sponsored by private enterprises. The majority of universities are not entitled to award bachelors degrees. Public universities usually enjoy higher reputation domestically, eight institutions are funded by the University Grants Committee. The Academy for Performing Arts also receives funding from the government, the Open University of Hong Kong is also a public university, but it is largely self-financed.
The Shue Yan University is the private institution with the status of a university. There are public and private institutes in Indonesia. The government provide public universities, institutes, high schools and academies in each province, the private educational institution usually provided by religious organizations, public organizations, and some big companies.
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In India, most universities and nearly all research institutions are public, There are some private undergraduate colleges, mostly engineering schools, but a majority of these are affiliated to public universities. Jiangsu — Jiangsu, formerly romanized as Kiangsu, is an eastern-central coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China.
It is one of the provinces in manufacturing electronics and apparel items.
Jiangsu is the third smallest, but the fifth most populous, Jiangsu has the second-highest GDP of Chinese provinces, after Guangdong. Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, Jiangsu has a coastline of over 1, kilometres along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze River passes through the southern part of the province. Since the Sui and Tang dynasties, Jiangsu has been an economic and commercial center. Cities such as Yangzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou and Shanghai are all major Chinese economic hubs, since the initiation of economic reforms in , Jiangsu has become a focal point for economic development.
It is widely regarded as Chinas most developed province measured by its Human Development Index, Jiangsu is home to many of the worlds leading exporters of electronic equipment, chemicals and textiles. It has also been Chinas largest recipient of foreign investment since Its nominal GDP was more than 1 trillion US dollars and its name is a compound of the first elements of the names of the two cities of Jiangning and Suzhou. Eventually the state of Qin swept away all the other states, during the Three Kingdoms period, southern Jiangsu became the base of the Eastern Wu whose capital, Jiankang, is modern Nanjing.
When nomadic invasions overran northern China in the 4th century, the court of the Jin Dynasty moved to Jiankang. Cities in southern and central Jiangsu swelled with the influx of migrants from the north, Jiankang remained as the capital for four successive Southern Dynasties and became the largest commercial and cultural center in China.
The Tang Dynasty relied on southern Jiangsu for annual deliveries of grain and it was during the Song Dynasty, which saw the development of a wealthy mercantile class and emergent market economy in China, that south Jiangsu emerged as a center of trade. From then onwards, south Jiangsu, especially cities like Suzhou or Yangzhou, would be synonymous with opulence.
Today south Jiangsu remains one of the richest parts of China, the Mongols took control of China in the thirteenth century. The Ming Dynasty, which was established in after driving out the Mongols who had occupied China, following a coup by Zhu Di, however, the capital was moved to Beijing, far to the north. The river is the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country and it drains one-fifth of the land area of the Peoples Republic of China and its river basin is home to one-third of the countrys population.
The Yangtze is the sixth-largest river by volume in the world. The Yangtze River plays a role in the history, culture. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world, in recent years, the river has suffered from industrial pollution, agricultural run-off, siltation, and loss of wetland and lakes, which exacerbates seasonal flooding. In mid the Chinese government announced it was building a transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports.
Because the source of the Yangtze was not ascertained until modern times, Yangtze was actually the name of Chang Jiang for the lower part from Nanjing to the river mouth at Shanghai. In modern Chinese, Yangtze is still used to refer to the part of Chang Jiang from Nanjing to the river mouth. Yangtze never stands for the whole Chang Jiang, Chang Jiang is the modern Chinese name for the lower 2, km of the Yangtze from its confluence with the Min River at Yibin in Sichuan Province to the river mouth at Shanghai.
By the Han Dynasty, Jiang had come to any river in Chinese.
It previously existed from — as a vassal kingdom nominally under Cao Wei, its rival state and it became an empire in after its founding ruler, Sun Quan, declared himself Emperor. Its name was derived from the place it was based in — the Jiangnan region and it was called Eastern Wu because it occupied most of eastern China in the Three Kingdoms period, and Sun Wu because the family name of its rulers was Sun.
During its existence, Wus capital was at Jianye, but at times it was also at Wuchang. Sun Ce broke off relations with Yuan Shu around after the latter declared himself emperor — an act deemed as treason against Emperor Xian, the figurehead ruler of the Han dynasty. The warlord Cao Cao, who was the de facto head of government in the Han imperial court, Sun Ce was assassinated in the summer of and was succeeded by his younger brother, Sun Quan. Sun Quan, like his brother, also paid nominal allegiance to Emperor Xian while maintaining autonomous rule over the Wu territories. In , Sun Quan allied with the warlord Liu Bei, Sun Quan and Liu Bei maintained their alliance against Cao Cao after the battle for the next ten years or so, despite having some territorial disputes over Jing Province.
After that, the boundaries of Sun Quans domain extended from beyond the Jiangdong region to include the part of Jing Province. His legitimacy was recognised by Shu, Sun Quan ruled for over 30 years and his long reign resulted in stability in southern China. During his reign, Wu engaged Wei in numerous wars, including the battles of Ruxu, Shiting, however, Wu never managed to gain any territory north of the Yangtze River while Wei also never succeeded in conquering the lands south of the Yangtze. The conflict resulted in the emergence of two rivalling factions, each supporting either Sun He or Sun Ba, in Sun Quans imperial court.
Confucianism — Confucianism, also known as Ruism, is described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or simply a way of life. In the Han dynasty, Confucian approaches edged out the proto-Taoist Huang-Lao, the disintegration of the Han political order in the second century CE opened the way for the doctrines of Buddhism and Neo-Taoism, which offered spiritual explanations lacking in Confucianism.
A Confucian revival began during the Tang dynasty of , in the late Tang, Confucianism developed in response to Buddhism and Taoism and was reformulated as Neo-Confucianism. This reinvigorated form was adopted as the basis of the imperial exams, the abolition of the examination system in marked the end of official Confucianism. The New Culture intellectuals of the twentieth century blamed Confucianism for Chinas weaknesses.
In the late twentieth century Confucian work ethic has been credited with the rise of the East Asian economy, with particular emphasis on the importance of the family and social harmony, rather than on an otherworldly source of spiritual values, the core of Confucianism is humanistic. In the 20th century Confucianisms influence diminished greatly, in the last decades there have been talks of a Confucian Revival in the academic and the scholarly community and there has been a grassroots proliferation of various types of Confucian churches.
In late many Confucian personalities formally established a national Holy Confucian Church in China to unify the many Confucian congregations, strictly speaking, there is no term in Chinese which directly corresponds to Confucianism. Within the area are cultural attractions, arts, shopping, in the 3rd year of Xiankang reign of Jin Dynasty, Nanking Imperial University was founded on the southern bank of Qinhuai River.
Temple of Confucius was firstly constructed in the school in The place was destroyed In during Song Dynasty, Confucius Temple was newly constructed on site of imperial university. The place became Imperial University again in in the year of Ming Dynasty. During Qing Dynasty, there were two Xianxue in Fuzimiao area, the current buildings date from the 19th century, in Qing Dynasty, with additions made since then. The temple lost all financial support by the state as a result of the revolution of , during the late s to and again in it was used as army barracks for troops the KMT regime and left in a dilapidated state.
Some halls were used as picture gallery, in Fuzimiao area was restored. Throughout its history, the temple along with the area has been a place for study of Confucianism. There is an exhibit of folkart within the temple. Yu the Great — The dates proposed for Yus reign predate the oldest known written records in China, the oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty, by nearly a millennium.
No inscriptions on artifacts from the era of Yu, nor the later oracle bones, make any mention of Yu. The lack of anything remotely close to documentary evidence has led to some controversy over the historicity of Yu. Many of the stories about Yu were collected in Sima Qians famous Records of the Grand Historian, Yu and other sage-kings of Ancient China were lauded for their virtues and morals by Confucius and other Chinese teachers.
Yu is one of the few Chinese rulers posthumously honored with the epithet the Great, Yu was said to have been born at Mount Wen, in modern-day Beichuan County, Sichuan Province, though there are debates as to whether he was born in Shifang instead. Yu is thus believed to have grown up on the slopes of Mount Song and he later married a woman from Mount Tu who is generally referred to as Tushan-shi.
They had a son named Qi, a literally meaning revelation. During the reign of king Yao, the Chinese heartland was frequently plagued by floods that prevented further economic, Yus father, Gun, was tasked with devising a system to control the flooding. As an adult, Yu continued his fathers work and made a study of the river systems in an attempt to learn why his fathers great efforts had failed. Instead of directly damming the rivers flow, Yu made a system of canals which relieved floodwater into fields.
The dredging and irrigation were successful, and allowed ancient Chinese culture to flourish along the Yellow River, Wei River, the project earned Yu renown throughout Chinese history, and is referred to in Chinese history as Great Yu Controls the Waters. In particular, Mount Longmen along the Yellow River had a narrow channel which blocked water from flowing freely east toward the ocean. Yu is said to have brought a number of workers to open up this channel.
Another local myth says that Yu created the Sanmenxia Three Passes Gorge of the Yangzi River by cutting a mountain ridge with a divine battle-axe to control flooding, traditional stories say that Yu sacrificed a great deal of his body to control the floods. Han dynasty — The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period.
Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han, and briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the gentry class.
The Han Empire was divided into areas controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States, from the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu. This policy endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in AD, the Han dynasty was an age of economic prosperity and saw a significant growth of the money economy first established during the Zhou dynasty.
The coinage issued by the government mint in BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty.
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The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations, the Xiongnu, a nomadic steppe confederation, defeated the Han in BC and forced the Han to submit as a de facto inferior partner, but continued their raids on the Han borders. Emperor Wu of Han launched several campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries, the territories north of Hans borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation.
Imperial authority was seriously challenged by large Daoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Chinas first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty, the Qin unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their empire became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi.
Within four years, the authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion. Liu Bang assumed the title emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu, Changan was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han. Mount Lu — Mount Lu or Lushan, also known as Kuanglu in ancient times, is situated in the northern part of Jiangxi province in southeastern China, and is one of the most renowned mountains in the country.
The oval-shaped mountains are about 25 km long and 10 km wide, and neighbors Jiujiang city and the Yangtze River to the north, Nanchang city to the south, Lushan was a summer resort for Western missionaries in China. Absalom Sydenstricker, the father of Pearl Buck was one of the first five missionaries to acquire property in the Kuling Estate on the mountain, huiyuan founded Pure Land Buddhism here on the northwest slope in It is one of the most famous higher learning institutions in ancient China, west is the Flower Path which provided inspiration to Bai Juyi, a famous poet who lived during the Tang Dynasty.
At the centre, and at an altitude of over 1 kilometer above sea level, is the town of Guling, world-famous Lushan Clouds and Mist Tea is grown in the mountains. Mount Lu was once dubbed the xiadu of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, Chinas leader at the time, would frequently spend his summers here. In , following the war, the U. Mao Zedong convened three large conferences of senior party officials at Mount Lu, in ,, and , the conference became known as the Lushan Conference. The meeting saw the purge of decorated Chinese Civil War and Korean War general Peng Dehuai, the Lushan Conference took place during the Cultural Revolution, and marked the increasing antagonism between those loyal to Mao and those loyal to his chosen successor Lin Biao.
It was one of the Four Great Academies of China, the academy had its beginnings as a place for the pursuit of learning by the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bo when he was living in retirement. In the years —, when the area was under the control of the Southern Tang, in the early years of the Northern Song dynasty, which began in , the Lushan Guoxue was transformed into an academy known as the White Deer Grotto Academy.
The academy was the recipient of imperial favour from the Emperor Taizong, however, it later fell into disrepair. This defense, however, remains unconvincing for critics. While his action is not morally obligatory, it is supererogatory. While I think that none of these Confucian justifications for emphasizing famil- ial love are convincing to critics, I do not mean that those critics have provided justifications for prioritizing a broader love for non-family members that would be convincing to the defenders of Confucianism.
However, I also suspect that the very notion that this Analects passage presents us with a dilemma is perhaps wrong, even though this is also what I once thought Huang , 6. There are two reasons for my suspicion. First, as I argued elsewhere ibid. In his commentary on Analects Duke Xiang, Year 7.
This assumes a dichotomy between filial piety and social justice, at least in this particular case. However, while filial piety means to take care of our parents, in order to do so we need be concerned not only with their external wellbeing, but also with their internal well-being, which requires us to make sure that our parents do not do immoral things and, if they already have, that they correct themselves.
Filial piety in this sense is perfectly consistent with social justice or our love for people outside our family.
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In other words, the moral principles in Confucianism, while universal, must func- tion differently in different situations. Lao uses the analogy of the principle of fairness in treating workers moving stones. To treat them fairly does not mean to ask them to move the same amount of stones. Instead, it is only fair to ask them to move different numbers of stones according to their different abilities.
Simi- larly, to treat people with uprightness does not mean to treat them in exactly the same way. Instead, we need to take their uniqueness into consideration. Lau does not answer this question. As this is a very rich concept, I shall limit my discussion only to the aspect that is most directly related to the question under discussion and yet has largely been neglected in related works for other aspects of filial piety, see Huang , — This gives the impression that to be filial and to be obedient are, if 3 Moreover, Lao points out there are two issues involved here.
In another place, Confucius says: In ancient times, when a good king of a big state has seven ministers who dare to remonstrate, the king will not make mistakes; if a middle sized state has five remon- strating ministers, the state will have no danger; if a small state has three remonstrating ministers, the official salaries and positions can last. If a father has a remonstrating child, he will not fall into doing things with- out propriety; and if a scholar has a remonstrating friend, he will not do immoral things. So how can a son who merely obeys the parents be regarded as being filial, and a minister who merely obeys the ruler be re- garded as being loyal?
To be filial and loyal is to examine what to follow. Kongzi Jiayu 9; 57 5 4 There is disagreement about how to understand the first part of the passage. Lau, in his English translation of the Analects, also adopts this interpretation and translates this part as: Chen Daqi compares these two interpretations and concludes that the interpretation adopted in this essay is more plausible see Chen , 10— Now I would like to ask you, my master, whether it is also filial to obey parents.
How can that be? We ought to obey our parents only about right things, and should not obey when our parents ask us to do wrong things and should remonstrate with them against it when our parents themselves are doing wrong things. Later, Xunzi summarizes his ideas as follows: Therefore, it is not proper for a son to not obey what should be obeyed, and it is not loyal for a child to obey what cannot be obeyed. It is great filial piety to understand when to obey and when not to obey in order to be reverent and respectful, loyal and trustworthy, and act with sincerity and careful- ness.
However, in the pas- sage regarding remonstration quoted above, Confucius does not make any such distinction. Just as loyal ministers ought to remonstrate with their rulers, filial children ought to do so with their parents. In serving rulers, one ought to remonstrate with them against wrongdoings and yet ought to disclose their wrongdoings.
So when something is not right, then sons and daughters must remonstrate with their fathers, and ministers must re- monstrate with their rulers. One ought to remonstrate whenever there is something immoral. How can obedience be regarded as filial piety? In this respect, Analects 4. The first part of this passage is not very controversial.
Even so, this does not mean that remonstration has no role after the wrongdoing is committed; one ought still to remonstrate, with the aim of rectifying the wrong that has been done. The question is thus how one ought to remonstrate, whether before or after the wrongdoing is committed. Clearly Confucius does not think that a filial child ought to shout at his or her parents. So this very first passage is rich in meaning and particularly significant to the issue we are concerned with here. However, there are more scholarly disagreements on the next part of this Analects passage, which I shall translate as follows: This part is mainly controversial because in the original sentence the object of this verb, buwei, is not explicitly stated.
Although the object of this verb, jing, is not explicitly stated either, there is no disagreement that it means parents; and since these two verbs are used together, it is natural to think that these two verbs have the same object. In this connection, Zhu Xi makes a very elegant and convincing argument. When our parents do not listen to our initial remonstration, it is wrong for us to stop remonstrating with them in order to avoid making them angry; it is also wrong to remonstrate with them in a way that makes our parents angry. However, it is not in this chapter, number 12 in the extant edition, but instead appears in the second chapter Liji 2.
However, as I discussed elsewhere Huang , 43 , Zengzi is criticized by Confucius for being too blindly obedient to his parents even when they are wrong, which actually causes harm, i. There are a couple of reasons for adopting this interpretation. His student Fan Chi asks what this means. It would thus be inconsistent if Confucius, in Analects 4. This interpretation receives some support from the chapter in the Book of Rites that appears to be a paraphrase of Analects 4. After the sentence about how to remonstrate with parents gently quoted three paragraphs back, it is stated that if your remonstration is not taken by your parents, you ought to remain reverent and filial.
If they are happy, you ought to resume gentle remon- stration; if they are not happy, however, instead of letting your parents cause harm to your neighbors, you ought to use an extreme form of re- monstration. If at this extreme form of remonstration your parents get angry and unhappy, hitting you hard with whips, you still ought not to complain about them; instead you ought to remain reverent and filial to them.
Both insist that if our remonstration is not taken, then rather than letting our parents commit the bad deed or even assisting them in doing so, we ought not to give up our efforts at remonstrating with them. Although this is not the interpretation I adopt here, the outcome is the same. This is a very interesting point, and one that Confucius may well accept. Still the original Analects passage that we have been discussing does not mention stopping our parents from harming our neighbors and being hit by our parents because of our protests.
I thus agree with most commentators who understand the passage to mean simply that children should continue to remonstrate with their parents. Even though we are thereby exhausted physically and mentally, we ought not to lodge any complaint against our parents. So lao here means that the son or daughter, instead of giving up, makes a tire- less effort to remonstrate with his or her parents until they cease to commit any wrongdoings. Now we can put the whole passage together. Confucius asks us, when serving our parents, to remonstrate with a low tone, appropriate facial expressions, and a soft voice, if we are aware that our parents are going to do commit some bad action.
If our parents do not listen to our initial remonstrations, we ought to remain rev- erent and filial toward them but not change our view of their deeds.
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Instead, we ought to think of all possible ways to dissuade our parents from carrying out the action, instead of letting them proceed and harm the neighbors see Liji Even if this process exhausts us physically and mentally, we should not make any complaints about our parents. What we learn from the textual analysis of this short Analects passage is that when parents are committing or about to commit wrongdoings, a filial child ought not to be obedient in the sense of allowing them to do these actions, or even helping them to do so.
If this is the case, however, how should we understand Analects 1. The key to understanding this passage is to be clear about what Confucius means by the thoughts and practices of parents that a filial child is supposed to observe, and the ways that parents do things that a filial child is not supposed to change for three years after their death. Yang Bojun claims that all these mean right things, since if they were bad then Confucius would not think a filial child should continue to observe them without any changes. However, this then raises the question: In this context, thus, I agree with Qian Mu, according to whom what Confucius has in mind are the ways to run routine family matters, such as the budget for various rituals, gifts to relatives, the arrangement of food and clothing for family members, and so on, which are more or less morally neu- tral.
There is thus no urgency to change such routines, even if there are more efficient ways to run them Qian , On moral matters, however, if what parents think and do is wrong, then a filial child ought to try and change them even when the parents are alive. In contrast, if what parents think and do is right, then these practices ought not be changed even after three years following their death. Understood this way, there is no tension between the passages in which Confucius seems to think that a filial child ought to be obedient to their parents and those in which he makes clear that a filial child ought to remonstrate with their parents if they are doing the wrong thing.
It is thus clear that, for Confucius, it is important for us to remonstrate with our parents when needed, and so we should not blindly obey them. Moreover, al- though we tend to think that filial piety is inseparably connected with obedience to parents, for Confucius remonstration is also its essential component. When parents are doing moral things, a filial child should of course be obedient to them; and a filial child should also be obedient to them when they are doings things that are more or less morally neutral, even though such matter could be done more efficiently or otherwise better.
However, when parents are doing immoral things a filial child, being filial, ought to remonstrate with them. So remonstration is a valid way to serve our parents. However, in what sense is remonstration with our parents a service to them and therefore a filial action? For Confucius this is not an egoist thesis, as would be familiar in the Western phil- osophical tradition. In this egoistic sense, to be moral, for example, to be honest, is the best policy to serve our own selfish interest.
First, since for example it is in our own interest that other people be honest with us, being honest with them seems to be the most reliable way to achieve this. Second, our being honest with others is also the most reliable way to serve our other interests. For example, if I own a business and am honest with my customers, then this not only wins their repeated business but also attracts new customers because of my good reputation, both outcomes serving my interest to make more money. Third, it is much easier to be honest than dishonest. To be honest, we only need to tell the truth in every situation.
To be dishonest, however, requires us to remember what lies we have previously told and make sure that we do not tell another lie or accidentally tell a truth that contradicts our previous lies. Since people easily forget things, sooner or later a dishonest person will be found out, and so, as the saying goes, it pays to be honest. Zengzi shows his filial piety in both his whole-hearted care of his parents and his complete obedience to them, as demonstrated by his attitude when his father knocks him unconscious because he accidentally harmed some plants when weed- ing: In contrast, Confucius exclaims: No one can disagree with what his parents and brothers say about him!
On a cold winter day, while driving a carriage, Min Ziqian began to shiver and lost hold of the reins. His father got mad and hit him with a whip, which ripped open his coat so that the reed catkins came out. Then his father held the hands of his other two sons who were also in the carriage. Realizing that his wife had been dis- criminating against Min Ziqian, he planned to divorce her.
This is a typical form of the gentle remonstration that Confucius advocates in Analects 4. Moreover, his stepmother and stepbrothers were also moved and transformed by it. From then on, his stepmother treated him as she treated her own two sons, and his stepbrothers loved him as an older broth- er. This was his serving his parents above. This was his loving his brothers below….
Why a Filial Son Does Not Disclose His Father Stealing a Sheep With such an understanding of this often neglected dimension of the Confucian idea of filial piety, we can now return to the difficult passage mentioned at the beginning of this paper: When his father stole a sheep, he bore witness against him. Uprightness lies within it. According to some commen- tators, it does not mean the positive action of stealing, but simply to keep or not return.
So in the Analects passage it means that the father simply took a lost sheep without attempting to find its original owner see Guo , 2. This interpretation is interesting and possibly authentic al- though there is also disagreement among classical commentators , but not consequential to our ar- gument. This is in- deed a serious lack of filial piety! Quoted in Guo , 1 In this passage, Cai makes a couple of important points. This is indeed what Confucius himself says about his student Zengzi, ironically famous for his virtue of filial piety, when he allows his father to wrongfully knock him unconscious, instead of running away so that the opportunity for his father to commit this action would have been eliminated.
This is why Cai says that this episode represents a serious lack of filial piety. It is thus clear that after our parents have committed a wrong action Confucius thinks that, to be filial, we ought not to disclose it, but we are not supposed to stop here. Cai does not explicitly mention what such remedies should be. In our discussion of Analects 4. If one remonstration fails, then do it second time, third time, until the goal is reached. Chen , As we have seen, in order for the remonstration to be effective, i.
If we yell at them then our non-vir- tuous parents would naturally get angry, and so it is very unlikely that they would listen to our remonstration even if we tried to give it. It is thus important to maintain an intimate atmosphere for an effective remonstration to occur. Since his father is not yet virtuous, he will naturally resent his son. In such an atmosphere, if the son wants to remonstrate with his father, it is very unlikely that the father will listen.