Confucius on Restoring Family Values

Thoughts from an ancient Chinese philosopher on how to cultivate harmony in families and societies

Chinese philosopher Confucius (c. 551–c. 479 BC). aphotostory/Shutterstock

To say a person believes in nothing but half-truths is another way of saying that person is wrong about everything. Many of the ideas floating around in the larger culture sound good and are often distantly rooted in some accurate fact or noble principle. But just as a debauched grandson has some of the same genes as an upright grandfather, something important has gotten lost along the route of transmission.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius had much to say about distinguishing truth from falsehood and the implications this has for life.

A Teacher in a Degenerate Age

The name “Confucius” is a Latin rendering of K’ung Fu Tzu, or “Master K’ung.” He was born in the middle of the sixth century B.C. in the state of Lu (present-day Shandong). He held several minor posts in his youth before rising to the position of prime minister. He was so effective as an administrator that a nearby state conspired against Lu, causing Confucius to resign.

He then spent 13 years wandering through various feudal states in China and learning about their different governments. In the last three years of his life, he returned to Lu, studied literature, and taught the disciples who had gathered around him.

“The Analects,” one of the most influential books in world history, is a collection of his sayings compiled by these disciples. Anyone vaguely familiar with Confucius, or traditional Chinese values more generally, has probably heard the term “filial piety,” the idea of showing respect to one’s elders. This is itself more broadly related to Confucius’s concept of virtue (“jen”), more accurately translated as “human-heartedness”—the act of denying ourselves and responding to what is right by showing sympathy to others.

Confucius believed himself to be living in a world like our own, where the order of things (“Tao”) had broken down. He saw his mission as reviving the old virtues once practiced during the early Zhou dynasty, an ancient culture steeped in myth and legend that, by the end of Confucius’s life, had fractured into warring states.

Calling Things by Proper Names

The basic problem of the age, Confucius diagnosed, was that people weren’t carrying out their appropriate duties. Why? To answer this, we need to delve into his theory of knowledge, which goes by the rather forbidding term, the “Rectification of Names.”

The idea itself is fairly simple. It’s perhaps best exemplified in Book XII (12), in which Confucius expresses his ideas on social organization:

“Duke Ching of Ch’i asked Confucius about government. Confucius answered, “Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, the father a father, the son a son.”

“The Duke said, “Splendid! Truly, if the ruler be not a ruler, the subject not a subject, the father not a father, the son not a son, then even if there be a grain, would I get to eat it?”

The implied answer to the Duke’s last question is, of course, no. The point of all this is that the names “ruler,” “subject,” “father,” and “son” each refer to something real in the world. These words have definitions: a thing is that particular thing, not something else. A name, in short, captures a thing’s essence. So when Confucius says, “Let the father be father,” the first term, “father,” refers to the flesh-and-blood man, while the second use of “father” represents the ideal version of this figure.

Just to clarify, the definition of “father” according to Merriam–Webster is “a man who has begotten a child.” So if a father carries out the duty this definition implies—bearing the responsibility of raising the child he has begotten—then he will lessen disorder in the world.

The problem today, probably even more so than in Confucius’s time, is that fathers are not being fathers, sons not being sons, and rulers not being rulers. People are not fulfilling the definitions of their names. The crux of the transgender movement, and postmodernism more generally, involves deconstructing the essence of things. Nothing exists outside “the text,” and reality is arbitrary.

This breakdown of language has resulted in a corresponding breakdown of the world at large. So a man becomes a “woman,” a father abandons his children to a welfare state, young people barely out of school tell their elders how they should be running their Fortune 500 companies, and elected leaders launder public funds into their private bank accounts. The result is that the basic elements of political economy are neglected, and we all find ourselves asking, like the Duke of Ch’i, “If there is a grain, why can’t we eat it?”

Surface and Substance

There is one Confucian idea that the transgender movement does seem to apply: his concept of “li,” which may be translated as “good form” or “propriety.” Politically correct people say all the right things. They are very “nice.” But there is nothing behind the performance. The following parable from Book III (8) of “The Analects” illustrates this idea:

“Tzu-hsia asked,

“'Her entrancing smile dimpling,

“'Her beautiful eyes glancing,

“'Patterns of color upon plain silk.’

“What is the meaning of these lines?”

“The Master said, “The plain silk is there first. The colors come afterwards.”

If one lacks a foundation to work upon, in other words, there can be no painting. A surface needs substance. Social rituals must be carried out with genuine human-heartedness to be meaningful. As Confucius said, “What can a man do with the rites who is not benevolent?” (Book III, 8).

“All the nice talk that people espouse is, at bottom, empty of meaning if words and definitions do not refer to anything real.

Correcting Disorder

The “rectification” part of the Rectification of Names theory involves, simply, conscientiously performing one’s role in life. The basic unit of society, Confucius taught, is the family. Sadly, the trend we are seeing today in American society, mirroring Confucius’s own native China in modern times, is a move toward communism. The principle behind this pernicious ideology is the shifting of responsibilities from the family to the state. And, as things held in common are valued less, the end result is a dilution of human-heartedness that not only saps the personal motivation to achieve, but also leads to evil atrocities.

The way to get back on the correct path is, as Confucius understood, to combat the left’s systematic manipulation of language and restore the proper meanings to our words. By doing this, we will also restore the ethical standards those meanings imply: to value children as children, mothers as mothers, and fathers as fathers. And to carry out our duties because it is the right thing to do, not abandoning them for the sake of social pressure or promotion. As the Master said, “The gentleman is versed in what is moral. The small man is versed in what is profitable.” (Book IV, 16).