The Evolution of Chinese Filiality

Insights from the Neurosciences

Deborah Lynn Porter (University of Washington, USA)

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English

Routledge
11 March 2022

Archaeology; Confucianism; Neurosciences

This unique book brings a fresh interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of ancient Chinese history, creating a historical model for the emergence of cultural mainstays by applying recent dramatic findings in the fields of neuroscience and cultural evolution.

The centrality in Chinese culture of a deep reverence for the lives of preceding generations, filial piety, is conventionally attributed to Confucius (551-479 B.C.), who viewed hierarchical family relations as foundational for social order. Here, Porter argues that Confucian conceptions of filiality themselves evolved from a systemized set of behaviors and thoughts, a mental structure, which descended from a specific Neolithic mindset, and that this psychological structure was contoured by particular emotional conditions experienced by China’s earliest farmers. Using case study analysis from Neolithic sky observers to the dynastic cultures of the Shang and Western Zhou, the book shows how filial piety evolved as a structure of feeling, a legacy of a cultural predisposition toward particular moods and emotions that were inherited from the ancestral past. Porter also brings new urgency to the topic of ecological grief, linking the distress central to the evolution of the filial structure to its catalyst in an environmental crisis.

With a blended multidisciplinary approach combining social neuroscience, cultural evolution, cognitive archaeology, and historical analysis, this book is ideal for students and researchers in neuropsychology, religion, and Chinese culture and history.

By: Deborah Lynn Porter (University of Washington USA)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032103969
ISBN 10: 1032103965
Pages: 332
Publication Date: 11 March 2022
Audience: College/higher education , General/trade , Primary , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.