| Summary/Abstract |
Filial piety is a central virtue of Confucian ethics and widely viewed as an important part of what it means to be(come) Chinese. Confucian scholars emphasize the cultivation of filial piety (love and respect for parents) while assuming that parental love for children is innate. But this traditional view has led to the deformation of filial piety and twisted requests for parental love in both past and present-day China. In contrast, I will argue that long-lasting parental love also requires moral effort to become a virtue and that filial piety for the modern world cannot be morally justified without this form of parental love.
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