Mao Zedong And Chinese Traditional Filial Piety

Filial piety originally reflects the moral and ethical relationship between Chinese family members.With the continuous progress and development in history,filial piety constantly absorbs some principles of contemporary social politics, economy, culture, religion, and morality in the process of transmutation.Therefore,the filial piety culture,reflecting the features of traditional Chinese society,is formed.Mao Zedong who has been under the influence of Chinese traditional filial piety discards the dross and selects the essence as well.He criticizes and transcends the feudal shackles and historical limitations of traditional Chinese filial piety.On the whole,the article is divided into five chapters.Chapter one is about the connotation of Chinese traditional filial piety.First of all,it gives a preliminary understanding of the meaning of "filial piety".Then,it introduces the origin and development of traditional Chinese filial piety.That is, people should take care of our parents, give birth to children, cherish lives, revere elders and care the young, live in harmony with others, make determinations and bring honors to their ancestors. According to the historical origins of traditional filial piety, the traditional filial piety is divided into the individual origin,social origin and faith origin. Chapter two analyzes the development of filial piety from the Shang Dynasty,the Western Zhou Dynasty to the modern society.Besides that, this chapter tells about the role of the Chinese traditional filial piety, which is divided into four aspects:the personal enlightenment social members,the maintenance of family harmony,maintenance of social stability and political function in ancient society.Chapter three and chapter four are the core of this paper.These two chapters discuss the influence of Chinese traditional filial piety on Mao Zedong and Mao’s criticism and transcendence of traditional filial piety. Firstly, it clarifies the inheritance of Chinese traditional filial piety of Mao on the basis of the connotation of Chinese traditional filial piety.Secondly, it illustrates Mao’s devotion and promotion of the filial piety through citing cases of taking care of parents and the olds, educating the children and abiding by the principles of filial piety. In terms of Mao’s criticism and transcendence towards the traditional filial piety, he pays attention to the personality independence and advocates individual liberty; he dedicates to the country, cares and serves people; he emphasizes the loyalty to the communist cause. Finally, The main purpose of this chapter is to sublimate the "filial piety" of Mao Zedong and combine his thought with the construction of socialism.This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section is the relationship between the harmonious culture and the society. It mentions the significance of the harmonious culture to the construction of the harmonious society. Section two mainly talks about the relationship between the filial piety of Chairman Mao and the construction of the harmonious society. First of all, it mentions that the filial piety of Mao exert a magnificent influence on harmonizing family life, enhancing the national cohesion and promoting the harmonious culture. Therefore, it plays an important role in promoting the construction of the harmonious society. At last,it is the summary of full text.We should not only promote filial piety of Chairman Mao, but learn the thoughts of this great man. Besides that, we should study Mao’s creative transcendence of traditional filial piety and learn Mao’s way to consider Marxism as our guide and deal with problems in a dialectical way.We should develop good parts of traditional Chinese filial piety and innovate the unreasonable parts on the basis of present needs.At personal level,we should perfect our own behavior and pay attention to individual moral standard. It is important to study Mao ’s filial piety in the face of interest of people,nation and state, on which foundation we can complete the grand blueprint of building a harmonious socialist society.