1st Edition
The Evolution of Chinese Filiality Insights from the Neurosciences
1. Introduction 2. SEEKING a Chinese Filial Mind Module 3. The Evolution of a Chinese Nervous System 4. Ecological Inheritance, Prestige and the Evolution of a Chinese Leadership Mindset 5. The Deep History of the Western Zhou Ritual Reform 6. Neurohistory, Filiality and Historical Change in China
Biography
Deborah Porter is Professor of Global Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies. Her interdisciplinary research on the impact of shameful secrets on cultural production spans a wide swath of time and geography, including Early China, and fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Western Europe, Russia and Korea.
"This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining social neuroscience, cultural evolution, cognitive archaeology, and historical analysis, to investigate the origins and evolution of filial piety, a central concept in the ethical system of Confucius. Starting from an analysis of the psychological depiction in Confucian doctrine of a paradigmatic filial son as reflected in the Analects, the author reveals an implicit dissonance between the presumed positivity of filial behavior and the unbearable grief entailed by enacting the prescribed filiality demanded by tradition. Borrowing from neuropsychological concepts, Porter (Jackson School of International Studies, Univ. of Washington) turns to the evolutionary conditions that would account for the prominence of this structure of emotions and behaviors as embedded in the concept of filiality. She establishes a line of pre-Confucian cultural evolution deeply rooted in the ancestral past, from the Neolithic way of thinking—developed by China's earliest farmers on the basis of their experience of agriculture and relationship with the constellations—through the dynastic culture of the Shang state, where the links between astronomical knowledge, prestige status, and kingship become stronger, to the Western Zhou state, where Porter explains the dynastic Ritual Reform on the basis of the same emotional structure. Porter argues that the filiality later elevated by Confucius resulted from this line of evolution."
--X. Li, University of Colorado
