Filial Piety

Abstract

Filial piety is an essential aspect of ancestor worship. The Confucian doctrine of Filiality dictates that children honor their parents in both the material world while they are alive and the spiritual world when they are dead. Ancestor worship comes into play when the parents are dead and filial piety becomes ancestor worship as children venerate their dead parents. Filial piety is the embellishment of the central tenet of the Confucian system of ethics recorded in the most important cultural and scholarly books, taught by the sages, and obeyed by the people. Filial piety is perhaps the single most consequential scheme of sociopolitical and administrative control to ever have been envisioned and effectuated upon a people in the history of civilizations. Although the notion of filiality has evidently been practiced in virtually all civilizations and cultures, Confucius described filial piety as the most important virtue, which ensures the preservation of family lineage.