The Traditional Rule Of Fealty And Loyalty And Its Revelation Of Nomocracy

Filial piety is one of the most important and fundamental bases of traditional Chineseculture, it used to be an important foundation of traditional Chinese politics, economy andsociety. The traditional legal system of China’s past dynasties were invariably marked withthe concerns of filial piety and loyalty, the importance they attach to filial piety and loyaltyagreed with the psychology of the public well, thus the legitimacy and rationality of the legalsystem achieved a great unity, the goal and ideal of regulating society by law has also beeneffectively achieved. However, in contemporary China, following the extinction of thetraditional law and the adoption of the western law, the tradition of Filial Piety in the existinglaw is becoming increasingly weak, nomocracy assuming rational people of the Westerneconomy as premise gradually becomes dominant, modern law seems to be lack ofconsideration for the historical dimension of traditional law and the cultural psychology ofcivil law. The loss of traditional filial piety ethics will inevitably lead to a certain degree oflegal anomie and cause a series of social adverse effects and consequences.This paper tries to use two real cases as the starting point to interpret the implication andexisting basis of traditional filial piety and the lack of filial piety in modern nomocracy aswell as the practical need of it in modern society. The accomplishment achieved by themodernization of China’s nomocracy is undeniable, but the nomocracy is not complete andperfect and full of problems if disregard traditional filial piety and traditional ethics. We needto give some system considerations from different perspectives. China’s construction ofnomocratic society and harmonious society is inseparable from China’s indigenous traditionsand unique national literacy, The existing law should contain certain concerns of tradition,ethics and reason.Apart from the introduction and conclusion, this paper is divided into four parts:The first part is the presentation of problems. Through the analysis of two specific cases,we can see the lack of filial piety and moral decay in the modern society, then I will make acomparison of the different way how ancient and modern law treat the cases and point out theproblems of law in dealing with such cases: the tension between tradition and modernity;The second part is an analysis of the traditional rule of filial piety and loyalty. As anenduring code of morality in traditional society, there must be strong basis for the existence ofthe ethics of filial piety and loyalty. Through an analysis of the implication and features of traditional filial piety, this paper attempts to clearly demonstrate the presentation of the filialpiety and loyalty as well as its theoretical basis and practical basis, to discuss it from differentlevels of humanity, constitution and society. This section further points out the declining trendof filial piety ever since modern times: from its production, development, becoming ateaching aid of the despotic society til being thoroughly criticized and completely denied. Inthe didactic aspect of the traditional political system, there are problems of filial piety exist,but the function and influence of filial piety on social stability and cultural literacy isundeniable;The third part is the positioning of the rule of filial piety and loyalty in the modernsociety. In this section, I will elaborate the proper position of filial piety in modern societyfrom the two aspects of negative function and positive function. On the negative aspect, it canovercome the "unacclimatization" caused in the process of adopting western law, reduce thelegal authority and realize the resistance of the legal culture; On the positive aspect, it canmaintain the family ethics, keep social stability and solve the problem of social pension;The fourth part is about how to apply filial piety to the rule of law. In this section, I firstdiscuss the affirmation part and the deficiency part of filial piety and loyalty in the existinglaw, and then tentatively explore and discuss about how to strengthen the concern of filialpiety in law and put forward my assumptions.