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from Text 8b - Main Policy Recommendations on Filial Revenge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2025
This chapter traces Qiu Jun’s use of Classical ritual texts, legal debates, and historical cases to discuss the political, emotional, and ritual dilemma of filial revenge, the ancient obligation of a child to avenge a parent’s murder. Legal and ritual precedents are given in order to find a balance between the Confucian tenets embodied in the central virtue of filial piety and ensuing ritual obligations, personal feeling, and popular sympathy, with legal sanctions and imperial power, while also elevating filial revenge to a cosmic principle. His chosen texts and commentaries urge leniency and sympathy and for individual filial revenge cases to be considered at the highest level. I argue that there is a palpable unease at the heart of Qiu’s discourses, in that his lifelong attachment to ritual studies and his filial piety complicate his responses as a loyal minister in handling the perennial problem of filial revenge.
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