a whole range of Confucian ideas:
At the heart of the Confucian political as well as moral theory was the concept of jen, frequently translated as "benevolence" or "humanity" but also signifying the ground for all other virtues, the condition of being fully human in dealing with others. A father should manifest jen toward his family, and a child in turn must be filial, giving parents whole-hearted obedience and genuine devotion. The relationship between father and son formed one of the classic Five Relationships of Confucianism. The four others--between ruler and minister, husband and wife, older brother and younger brother, and between friends--also emphasize the importance of reciprocal obligations between people of superior and inferior status. They illustrate the existence of these values at the family level, at the community level (friendship) and at the state level (ruler and minister).
It is at this point that the institutions developed to make Confucian ideas a principal feature of Imperial China become relevant. One must acknowledge that the kind of self-education or self-cultivation typical of Confucianism is aimed at the ruling and not the peasant class, of course. But it is important to observe that Confucian doctrine does not concern merely what later centuries would call the nuclear family. Rather, the family becomes a decisive metaphor for the whole of society, which in the ascendancy of Confucianism in China was the orderly feudal structure of the earlier dynasties; Schirokauer cites the hierarchical nature of Confucian culture. The purpose of Confucian doctrine is to educate the ruling classes, and the purpose of education is therefore in part to remind them of correct attitudes toward authority, toward fellow citizens, and toward the good of the whole. This begins in the family.
On one level, this is nothing more than a defense of feudalism and something like droit de seigneur amplified into a whole range of ...