Sunday, September 22, 2013

Culture and Identity (Chinese Morality)


Morality is the way that people understand themselves, understand other people, also how they understand the world. The traditional Chinese moral values​​, pay attention to "propriety, righteousness, benevolence and integrity." "The Analects" has impacted on Chinese moral values greatly.

The centre of Confucianism is benevolence. Confucian respect unaffected, doesn’t support rhetoric; focus on human action, strongly support that people should do what they said, do what they can. This attitude and spirit of morality has long-term impact on Chinese people.

Confucianism believes that the implementation of the filial piety at home will make the ruler does not  "guilty of rebellion"; then promote filial piety to all working people, then people will obey, not to revolt, so that you can improve national and social stability.

Filial piety and social stability are directly related to each other. Confucius has seen this point, so all of his thoughts are starting from here. From the point of if filial piety occurred the rebellion won’t happen, indicated that filial piety is the fundamental base of benevolence.

Since the warring state period the rulers and scholars have inherited what Confucius said, advocated the "Filial Piety." In the Han Dynasty, as an example, they put moral education as an important means of implementing the feudal rule, the people imprisoned in rules and ethics among the shackles of public morality. This action had a tremendous impact on the whole Chinese traditional culture and morality.

Confucian agreed with the thoughts of filial piety as a great important moral value is because that filial piety is the basis of loyalty; the person who cannot be filial to their parents cannot be loyal to the country. Therefore, the extension of filial piety is loyalty.

"The Analects" is one of the classics in Chinese culture, which is very important, in the past it was known as "China Man's Bible," everyone would read the book. In today's society, "Analects of Confucius" influence people through the "cultivate oneself". It has become a socially responsible manner conducive to social development, their ideas are worthy, and we all should read and study, scrutiny, then check ourselves. By doing so, we can increase the level of our own morality; promote the harmonious development of society. Therefore, the value of "Analects of Confucius" in the modern society cannot be ignored.

1 comment:

  1. I tend to find your entry as a good reminder to those values that had shaped up the foundations of the morality in most part of North East Asia. But these traditional values of Asian morality are often at risk these days, where a myriad of cultural clashes are happening in that region of the world. And as a result, some of the traditional values are often seen as something difficult to be abode by and Western cultural values are increasingly widespread.
    This provides me with an important lesson to be thoughtful about. How should we be able to consistently apply these values no matter what sort of changes are awaiting ahead of us?

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