Confucian family

On Monday, 27 2024 (incidentally, the 107th anniversary of my paternal grandfather), there was a roundtable on “Philosophy of family” chaired by Roger Ames and Wen Haiming. Roger introduced his intervention by the question of when differences are enriching and when they are fragmenting. (A very broad ontological topic indeed; I am about to embark on this same topic in relation to ecology.) Broadly speaking, family is the prototypical environment where our differences enrich us and where we grow in relationships. Roger also noted the broader use of the term translated by family, jiā 家, “everybody” (dàjiā大家, lit ‘big family’), “country” (guójiā 國家, lit. ‘country-family’), “person” (rénjiā 人家, lit. ‘person-family’), or also “school, fellowship” (mentioned by Daniel Coyle). Roger also reminded that family also involves relations and responsibilities to ancestors and progeny. The same was confirmed by Tamara Albertini in case of Arabic culture, where son’s name and those of father and father’s father are inscribed already in the person’s name. Joshya Mason emphasized that the feeling of family membership is not limited to humans but also involves pets: in case of fire, many would rescue their pet rather than a neighbor. Leah Kalmanson highlighted the structure of host-guest: family is a site of hosting friends, strangers, others. Several female presenters emphasized the fact that family may be, yes, fulfilling, but it is also the site of some of the worst violence, both physical and psychological. I would like to add to that discussion. We mostly discussed, and rightly so, the aspect how family offers security, intimacy, coziness, safety, familiarity, closeness, integration. And how it can also fail to do so in cases of family violence or negligence (discussed by Li Yong earlier in the day). Yet if we would only have this aspect, the Heim (home) would become unheimlich (uncanny), as Fabian mentioned. Because if we would only have this aspect of integration, the other would become too close. From time to time we need closeness for our feeling of security, but if it would be strictly all the time, then we would feel that we are losing our individuality, our borders, that the other is engulfing us, like literally eating us up (Lacan, if I’m not mistaken, once said that children are with their mother as if in the mouth of a crocodile: they never know when the jaws are going to slap together). In short, there is also danger in too much security, too much closeness that stifles, suffocates us. Therefore, I would say that the aspect of integration inevitably has to go hand in hand with an aspect of differentiation by which we explore, go into the unknown, become thrilled by novelty, risk, the unfamiliar, are on our own, engage in new interactions with our environment, without supervision. Of course, we could not have only this aspect either, because if there would be no stability, safety, secure and familiar “surface”, we become destabilized in the bad sense of the word (think of the problems of children who due to the work of their parents have to change living place and school very often: they do not have time to form strong bonds with others, secure friendships; or even worse, of children who do not have family at all, who have been abandoned, or extracted from their family – as thousands of Ukrainian children are in the occupied territories). Too much differentiation leads to fragmentation. One needs a secure ground, a “familiar” setting (that does not necessarily have to be that of biological parents) in order to be able to keep those differentiations together. Otherwise, you are going to disperse or perhaps explode (same thing in different time scale). Or implode, because it is this integration of differences that holds them apart in your own psyche as well. Without integration, they will collapse, and fall into mental problems and in some cases even suicide. So, family has to also foster differentiation, encourage exploration. Raising children is a paradoxical undertaking: you exert supervision over persons with the goal of them being able to act without supervision. If they have a secure place to come back to, children can feel “safe” in their explorations, safe in their risk, so to say: their inroad to the world may go wrong, but in that case they will have someone who would comfort them, rebuild their self-confidence. And if they are allowed to sometimes go on their own, they will not feel suffocated at home, the Heim will not become unheimlich. Rather, home will be reinvigorating, refreshing, restoring – so that you can integrate what you have been able to distinguish, differentiate, develop. With this in mind, we can also broaden the scope of “family”, as Chinn Meilin mentioned, I think (that we must have in mind “more than human”). The most common sources of security are parents and the physical home. But there will always be other familiar persons around, be relatives or non-relatives, other beings (pets, neighbor’s rooster), things (my table, my chair, my bed, my bag, my clothes). The role of “inanimate” things should not be underestimated. Some of them become part of my personality, and any damage to them is damage to myself. Imagine someone destroying the teddy bear of an infant. This scene would be as horrible as if physical harm was done. Indeed, the “physical” and “psychological” cannot be separated very neatly: the horror of the infant seeing its teddy bear ripped to pieces, could surely be investigated in its brain and body in terms of hormones and other chemicals. And of course, the reverse is also true, that physical damage has its psychological counterpart. Keeping these considerations in mind, we reach Zhang Zai’s conclusion in his “Western Inscription” that all people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions. Indeed, the familiarity extends all over the universe, and it is not so much of a dualistic separation between “home” and “not-home” but rather a difference of degree: some places and persons are more “familiar” and heimlich, others are more unfamiliar, unheimlich, risky, uncanny. This is what “safe risk” would lead to. And on the other hand, there will, in principle, be nothing that I could not explore. I would always be different and there is no danger of anything, even my home sucking me in and swallowing me down. I can relate in “harmonizing but not equalizing” (和而不同) way with others, including my close ones. I will have gone to the “end of the world”, and see my familiar world with new eyes.