Rethinking Filial Piety: Filial Piety as Exchange of Caring Roles between the Parent and Child

This paper proposes a care-ethical conception of filial piety, which views filial piety as a process of role-exchange between parent and child. In contrast to the patriarchical understanding which confines itself to a typical moment of the filial relation which finds filial piety to be nothing but ‘the father father-s, the son son-s’, I argue that the filial relation is how and where the child, as the original care-receiver, gradually exchanges his role and position with his parents who were the initial caregivers. I then aim to find roots for this conception in traditional Chinese philosophical language and literature. The argument will be seen as showing a correlative Yin-Yang understanding and embodying a Daoist revision based on a loose thread of Dong Zhongshu’s writing of Chunqiu Fanlu. It is claimed that the idea of role-exchange is deducible from an ancient thread of Chinese thinking that construes the father as an absence and the son as a supplement. Finally, I contend that this care-ethical conception has implications for the concepts of equality and friendship in the contemporary discourse on filial piety.