The Confucian Filial Obligation and Care For Aged Parents

III. Conclusion: Xiao as a Virtue for Today As we know, the family was a basic social, economic and cultural unit of the society in China. It played a fundamental role in regulating and stabilizing Chinese social and political life in the past, and it continues to play an important role today. Family is ideally the first school of virtue, and parents are often the first teachers of their children. The values we learn from our family life, according to Confucians, will also make possible a good society. That is to say, we first learn how to deal with other people in society from watching our parents deal with each other, with our grandparents, and with us.(16) Therefore, it is very hard to imagine that a person who is devoid of caring, or unwilling to care for, her own family members can be a good citizen who will care for other people in the society. This is why in the Confucian tradition*"xiao"* (filial piety) was understood as the "root" of humanity and morality.(17)

It should be noted here that*"xiao"* was often used to justify and support the totalitarian and oppressive structure of the traditional patrilinear family and society. It is no doubt a fact that xiao played a very conservative political role in the past. However, when scholars point out that there was a historical connection between the kinship of the patrilinear family and the kingship of the totalitarian state (e.g., Schwartz, 1985, pp. 67-75, Roetz , 1993), they often neglect the fact that the care/love relation within a family is more natural and more primordial, and that the care/love relation between parents and children may not necessarily include patrilinear power and oppression. In today's society, for example, old age is not always associated with totalitarian political power. In many cases, especially in the case of health care for the elderly, old people are often disadvantaged and powerless. Considering this fact, a Confucian would argue that advocating xiao as taking respectful care of parents and adopting it as a moral duty of adult children will not only increase the happiness and security of our aged parents in their later years, but will also make members in our society care more for each other, especially for those who are disadvantaged.

Taking care of the aged generation has always been a social problem for civilized societies. The question is therefore not whether the elderly should be taken care of, but who should take care of them? There are few doubts that one has a moral duty to take care of oneself. But if a person has lost the ability to take care of herself, either due to old age, or to disease associated with old age, who, if anyone, has a moral obligation to take care of her? If Daniels and English are right in saying that adult children do not have any more of a moral obligation to take care of their aged parents than any stranger on the street, or that such an obligation only has a voluntary basis, then most likely either the burden of care would be on the whole society or the elderly who are disadvantaged would suffer. If letting the elderly suffer is immoral, then placing the burden of caring for the elderly on the whole society (through the government) would seem to be the only option.

However, there are at least two further questions here. First, should the society have that burden? Second, can the society or the government really provide adequate care for the elderly? If I, as a son, do not have a moral duty to take care of my parents, why should I, as a stranger, have a moral

duty to take care of anyone else' parents? Is the moral duty of helping a stranger based on my voluntary free will or on my existential status as a human being? If my existential status as a fellow human being imposes on me such a moral duty, why not my existential status as the son of my parents? On the other hand, the warning signals continually coming from the government-run Medicare system, as well as the Social Security system in the Unite States indicate that the society may not be able to bear the burden anymore without threatening the bankruptcy of the whole government. From a Confucian point of view, at least part of the problem is caused by the trend of deterioration of the family or individualization of the society in our modern life. The family, as a natural institution, should play a mediating role between individuals and society. That is to say, Confucians will deny neither the existential moral duty of the elderly to care for themselves, nor that of members in the society to care for the elderly. What a Confucian wants to suggest is the addition of the familial duty fulfilled by the adult children. All three kinds of moral duties, i.e., the individual, the social, and the familial, need to work together in order to strive towards the Confucian social ideal of*"da tong"* (the Great Harmony) where

[t]he elders having a happy ending, the youths having enough businesses to do, the young children having been well nurtured, and all the old men without wives, old women without husbands, old people without children, young children without parents having been taken good care of.(18)