The Research On The Family Eethic Thought In The Book Of Rites

In Chinese traditional society, family used to be the basic unit, so the family ethics todeal with the relationships among family members is the significant part of Chinesetraditional ethic thoughts. As the classic Confucian work, The Book of Rites reflected thesocial, political and cultural background of the period from Pre-Qin Period to the HanDynasties as well as the conditions of the family structure. Besides, it also gave a detailedinterpretation to the relationships among family members and their behavior norms. Itadvocated the application of rites to dealing with the family relationships, thus forming theunique family ethic norms.This thesis aims to study the family ethic thoughts in The Book of Rites from threeaspects. Firstly, it analyzes the forming process, social background and main contents of thebook to reveal the main spirits of benevolence and etiquette and foreground the importantstatus and role of family ethic thought in this book. Then it further interprets the maincontents and logical construction of family ethic thoughts in this book. The relationshipsbetween father and son, between brothers and between husband and wife are regarded as thethree main family relationships to maintain family stability. And the ethics of filial piety toregulate the relationship between father and son as well as the ethics of womenfolk’s norms toregulate the relationship between husband and wife became the main parts of the family ethicthoughts. The connotation, layers, reflections and functions of filial piety and thewomenfolk’s norms is analyzed to reveal the effort in The Book of Rites to regulate the ethicrelationships among family members from the horizontal and vertical points of view. Theinheritance and development of the Confucian family ethic thoughts of Pre-Qin Period is theorigin and main part of Chinese traditional family ethic thoughts since Han Dynasties. Theethic thoughts it constructed such as the views that the father is affectionate and the son isdutiful, we should respect the old and take good care of the young as well as men are superiorto women have become the main spiritual pillars for the feudal society. The comment on theinfluence of the family ethic thoughts in this book from both the positive and negative aspectshas very important theoretical and realistic meanings for sorting the developing process of thetraditional family ethic thoughts, unearthing the treasure of the traditional ethic thoughts andenriching the modern socialist moral connotations. It would provide the historical evidence and intellectual support for the construction of the present socialist core value systems andmoral civilization.