“Filial Piety” from the ancient fecundation belief to the contemporary civilized ethics

Abstract

The article deals on “Filial Piety” in the Eastern culture, ethics in general, and the Vietnamese ethics, culture in particular. “Filial Piety” has a natural bloodline origin. The bloodline consciousness is related to fecundation belief. Filial piety starts from a natural root, but at the same time it belongs to culture when it is separated from nature. It includes many meanings: the cult to express one’s remembrance of ancestors, the birth children to perpetuate the lineage, the duty of taking care of one’s parents. This culture based on bloodline relationship has been deeply embedded since thousands of generations, and still persists in the present time. The Confucianist filial piety belongs to the mundane culture, while Buddhist ethics belongs to the superhuman world. The filial piety belonging to the collective culture conception on filial piety has appeared long since to become an integral part of the Vietnamese cultural tradition. It however has undergone more or less the influence Chinese conception on filial piety. Ho Chi Minh was the first to speak of filial piety to the people. This conception of filial piety, therefore, has overstepped the narrow relationships to extend to the large bloodline relationship, from filial piety to parents it extends to filial piety to the people. Full text in Vietnamese Religious Studies 2005/4 pp.3-8