Title: From Family to the World under Heaven: The Confucian Doctrine of Filial Piety and Social Cooperation in Traditional Chinese Society
Lecturer: ZHU Jing (Professor, Department of Philosophy & the Institute of Logic and Cognition, Sun Yat-sen University)
Chairperson: LI Quanmin (Professor, Department of Philosophy, East China Normal University)
Date: 3:15 pm, May 19th, 2014 (Monday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
The phenomenon of social cooperation has been a puzzle for social sciences for several decades. Theories have been developed to address this issue in various ways, based on kinship, direct reciprocity, reputation-based indirect reciprocity, social norms, and ethnicity. China has been a large-scale cooperative society for thousands years. In this talk, I show that the Confucian doctrine of filial piety and its embodiment in political, legal, and moral institutions and norms played a key role in promoting social cooperation in traditional Chinese society. Being filial obedient and respecting to one’s parents and senior members of family, serves as a costly signal to indicate cooperative and pro-social characters of a person, and in turn to facilitate social cooperation in many ways.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer：
ZHU Jing is a graduate of University of Science and Technology of China (Bachelor of Engineering in computer science and technology), Graduate School of The Chinese Academy of Sciences (Master of Science in philosophy of science and technology), and University of Waterloo (Ph.D. in philosophy). He joined Sun Yat-sen University in 2006, as professor in Department of Philosophy as well as the Institute of Logic and Cognition. His main research areas include philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and action, cognitive science, and moral psychology. He has published articles in numerous international academic journals including Philosophical Studies, Synthese, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Consciousness and Cognition, Philosophical Psychology, Journal of Mind and Behavior and International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. In 2009, He was awarded Chang Jiang Distinguished Professorship by the Ministry of Education of China.