What is filial piety? In the Chinese ancient culture, respect for parents is called filial piety, and fraternity with brothers is called fraternal duty. Is filial piety born with human nature? Obviously, it does not exist in the human nature. If filial piety is human nature, it should be a common characteristic shared by all mankind of any nation or country. However, there is only the Chinese nation regarding filial piety as the criterion to distinguish right from wrong and good from evil. The Western countries that advocate freedom, democracy, and human rights take judging a man if he has filial piety or not as infringing his rights. Parents who interfere their children’s behaviours in the name of filial piety are reckoned to infringe the children’s rights of personal freedom.
However, in Chinese feudal society, filial piety played a great irreplaceable role in maintaining the stability of the society and country. Filial piety is also taken as a tool to rule the feudal society, a favourable tool for the country, society, and families. On the condition of productivity at that time, the Chinese ancient civilisation was superior to other countries over a thousand of years, thanks to the doctrine of Confucius and Mencius and filial piety.
We are talking about the relationship between filial piety and human nature here, so let’s talk about the contributions of filial piety later. Though filial piety has made undeniable contributions, it is not the human nature but the ethical culture concluded by the Chinese ancient wise men, which had been advocated by the ruling classes of the past dynasties. Otherwise, there would not be the miracle of leading the ancient civilisation for over a thousand of years.
Since the basic grounds of the theory of original goodness of human nature is proved to be human reason, human nature can only be supported by the theory of original evil of human nature.
In fact, good and evil are relative. Since good does not exist in human nature, neither does evil.
The concept of good and evil is used to describe a man’s behaviour from the social perspective, commented by a third person. To do things for the good of others is good, and to do things for the bad of others is evil.
The human nature is inherently used to cope with the external world and society and meet one’s own needs. What is the external world? It’s society, nature, and other people.
Human nature is the attribute and instinct of animals. It is born to serve for oneself rather than society or other people. Society is not the service object of human nature, but the opponent to cope with.
When it comes to human nature, it is natural attribute rather than social attribute. Social attribute or reason is the accumulation of the analysis of experience in human’s brains, which is not human instinct or natural attribute, but concept or ideas formed in the postnatal life. A man’s living environment and experience decides what his reason would be. Different people in different living environments and with different living experiences will have totally different reasons.
In terms of human nature, i.e., the ego in Floyd’s theory, from the perspective of observation of social events, human’s ego is decided by genes. Different races of people share similar original impulses, but men and women have a quite large difference in original impulses. Actually, though the author has never studied the difference between the original impulses of people of different races, the author thinks that there is no big difference or they are almost the same. In the world, men are the same with men, and women are the same with women. However, men are completely different from women. These are the results of the author’s observation as well as the prediction and statement of Chinese ancient prehistoric civilisation.