The Confucian tradition is famous for its family value. This tradition emphasizes that, after one's moral sentiments are cultivated in the family, one is capable of caring for people outside the family. However, since the early 2000s, there has been a debate in the Chinese Philosophy community about how to understand the ?the father-covering-son? story in the Analects. The story tells that a father covers for his son's stealing a sheep. This is a puzzle because while Confucius's virtue theory implies (...) that concealing a theft is wrong, Confucius contends that a father's covering is right. In this paper I discuss two arguments, the tree argument and the argument of the whole, implicitly held by the Confucian scholars for the priority of the family love in this debate. I argue that none of the arguments are convincing. (shrink)

The Mohists develop the concept of yi 義 to denote what is morally right in a normative sense. We argue that this concept has, as one of its necessary conditions, a requirement to not harm others. Additionally, we will show that the motivation of developing this concept is that it can be both universalized and publicly agreed upon, thus serving the Mohists’ endeavor to overcome human conflicts that make the world chaotic and unlivable. We argue therefore that the Mohist notion (...) of gongyi 公義 is best captured by the requirement of “not harming.” Moreover, we shall show that the Mohists themselves committed to this requirement as the first principle of all their core doctrines. Finally, we argue that due to the justifiability and universalizability of the requirement of “not harming,” the Mohists’ commitment to it as a prerequisite normatively justifies their other values in a way that was unprecedented at the time. (shrink)

The unique mix of modern Western and traditional Confucian values in Singapore presents young people with contradictory views on duties to aging parents. It remains to be seen whether the changing demands of modern life will result in new generations giving up Confucian family ethics or whether the Confucian dynamic will find a way to adapt to the new pressures. It is the opinion of this author that the Confucian family structure has mixed potential for the growing crisis of elder (...) care. Alone, both Confucian traditions and typical Western institutional approaches toward elder care fall short of what is necessary for intergenerational social justice, yet a hybrid of the two has great potential for the growing aging crisis. To demonstrate this, I first give a brief account of the history of filial piety in Confucianism as well as the social environment from which it originated. Then I turn my attention to the present issues of an aging population and elder care that face much of the developed world in the twenty-first century. Finally, I show how adherence to Confucian filial traditions can both help to address many of these issues and how it can potentially leave unjust gaps in elder care. Ultimately, I conclude that the crisis of elder care may be best dealt with through a hybrid of Confucian values and Western approaches. (shrink)