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The
family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideal ...
as a model for the organization of the
state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
is a theory of
political philosophy Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, ...
. It explains the structure of certain kinds of state in terms of the structure of the family (as a model or as a claim about the historical growth of the state), or it attempts to justify certain types of state by appeal to the structure of the family. The first known writer to use it (certainly in any clear and developed way) was
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
, who argued that the natural progression of human beings was from the family via small communities to the polis. Many writers from ancient times to the present have seen parallels between the family and the forms of the state. In particular, monarchists have argued that the state mirrors the
patriarchal Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males ...
family, with the people obeying the
king King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the t ...
as children obey their father.


Ancient Greek thought

The family-state model was first expressed in ancient times, often as a form of justification for
aristocratic Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'. At the time of the word ...
rule.
Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for h ...
records a laconic saying of the
Dorians The Dorians (; el, Δωριεῖς, ''Dōrieîs'', singular , ''Dōrieús'') were one of the four major ethnic groups into which the Hellenes (or Greeks) of Classical Greece divided themselves (along with the Aeolians, Achaeans, and Ionians ...
attributed to Lycurgus. Asked why he did not establish a democracy in the Lacedæmon, Lycurgus responded: "Begin, friend, and set it up in your family." The Dorians of Crete and Sparta seemed to mirror the family institution and organization in their form of government (see Plutarch's ''The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans'' — Lycurgus, p. 65).
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
often describes personal and domestic relationships in terms of different forms of government. He gives examples such as men and their domestic animals, wives, slaves, and children. He says, for example: "the government of a household is a monarchy, since every house is governed by a single ruler."(2)/ "The rule of a household is a monarchy, for every house is under one head" Later in the same text, he says that husbands exercise a
republic A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
an government over their wives and monarchical government over their children, and that they exhibit political office over slaves and royal office over the family in general. (''Politics'' Bk I, §v, 1–2; 1259a 35–1259b 1) However, while he is prepared to use political terms as metaphors for domestic relationships, he is equally clear that such metaphors are limited:
Some thinkers, however, suppose that statesman, king, estate manager, and master of a family have a common character. This is a mistake; they think that the distinction between them is not a difference in kind, but a simple, numerical difference.” (''Politics'' Bk I, §i)
"The rule of a father over his children is royal, for he rules by virtue both of love and of the respect due to age, exercising a kind of royal power"
After discussing the various domestic relationships, he concludes: “mastership and statesmanship are not identical, nor are all forms of power the same, as some thinkers suppose. (''Politics'' Bk I, §vi)
Aristotle's main notion is that the ancient Greek ''polis'', or city-state, is the natural end of human beings; they start in family groups, progress naturally to forming villages, and finally come together in cities. Thusm, the family forms the root of human relationships, but the city is the flower.
Arius Didymus Arius Didymus ( grc-gre, Ἄρειος Δίδυμος ''Areios Didymos''; fl. 1st century BCE) was a Stoic philosopher and teacher of Augustus. Fragments of his handbooks summarizing Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines are preserved by Stobaeus and E ...
in Stobaeus, 1st century CE, writes: "A primary kind of association (politeia) is the legal union of a man and woman for begetting children and for sharing life." From the collection of households a village is formed and from villages a city, " /nowiki>o just as the household yields for the city the seeds of its formation, thus it yields the constitution (politeia)." Further, he claims: "Connected with the house is a pattern of monarchy, of aristocracy and of democracy. The relationship of parents to children is monarchic, of husbands to wives aristocratic, of children to one another democratic." (''Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament'', edd Boring, Berger, & Colpe)


Confucian thought

Confucius Confucius ( ; zh, s=, p=Kǒng Fūzǐ, "Master Kǒng"; or commonly zh, s=, p=Kǒngzǐ, labels=no; – ) was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. C ...
believed the child should be subordinate to the parent, younger brother to the older, wife to husband, and subject to the sovereign who is to be regarded as the
father of the nation The Father of the Nation is an honorific title given to a person considered the driving force behind the establishment of a country, state, or nation. (plural ), also seen as , was a Roman honorific meaning the "Father of the Fatherland", best ...
. The state as the family writ large was the most harmonious, orderly, and natural form of government. This was later expanded to cover
international relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the Scientific method, scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities betwe ...
(e.g. the
emperor of China ''Huangdi'' (), translated into English as Emperor, was the superlative title held by monarchs of China who ruled various imperial regimes in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was considered the Son of Heave ...
is treated as the older brother of the Korean king). Confucian family theory is still espoused in
North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and ...
to justify their method of leadership succession. The concept of family is important in classical
Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...
. For Confucius, ''xiào'' or
filial piety In Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism, and Daoist ethics, filial piety (, ''xiào'') (Latin: pietas) is a virtue of respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors. The Confucian ''Classic of Filial Piety'', thought to be written around the late ...
was a '' '' or
virtue Virtue ( la, virtus) is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. In other words, it is a behavior that shows high moral standards ...
. The character representing ''xiào'', 孝, itself represents a basic family structure, with the upper component representing elders (''lao'', old), and the lower representing children (''zi'', son). Those acting with filial piety, such as through the performances of '' '' were therefore acting in accordance with '' '' (righteousness, or fulfilling one's proper roles or acting in harmony with one's station). The relationship of this concept to the state is discussed at length in the ''Xiàojīng'', or
Classic of Filial Piety The ''Classic of Filial Piety'', also known by its Chinese name as the ''Xiaojing'', is a Confucian classic treatise giving advice on filial piety: that is, how to behave towards a senior such as a father, an elder brother, or a ruler. The tex ...
. In politics, ''xiào'' is not simply loyalty on the part of subordinates and citizens, but also an expectation for the king to provide for his subjects with "paternal love"; just as the people were expected to act with respect for the king's law, the king was expected to make those laws out of kindness for the people. The American diplomat Edmund Roberts in his description of Canton City, which he visited in 1832, included a quote on this for which he gives no source, but it was subsequently include in latter 18th-century publications, again without a source:
The sovereign of men, say they, "is heaven's son; nobles and statesmen are the sovereign's children; the people are the children of nobles and statesmen. The sovereign should serve heaven as a father, never forgetting to cherish reverential thoughts, but exciting himself to illustrate his virtues, and looking up to receive from heaven, the vast patrimony which it confers; thus the emperors will daily increase in felicity and glory. Nobles and ministers of state should serve their sovereign as a father, never forgetting to cherish reverential thoughts, not harbouring covetous and sordid desires, nor engaging in wicked and clandestine thoughts, but faithfully and justly exerting themselves; thus their noble rank will be preserved. The people should never forget to cherish reverential thoughts towards the nobles and ministers of state, to obey and keep the laws; to excite no secret or open rebellion; then no great calamity will befall their persons."


Modern thought

Louis de Bonald wrote as if the family were a miniature state. In his analysis of the family relationships of father, mother and child, he related them to the functions of a state: the father is the power, the mother is the minister and the child as subject. As the father is “active and strong” and the child is “passive or weak”, the mother is the “median term between the two extremes of this continuous proportion”. De Bonald justified his analysis by quoting and interpreting passages from the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of ...
:
t/nowiki> calls man the ''reason'', the ''head'', the power of woman: ''Vir caput est mulieris'' an is head of womansays St Paul. It calls woman the helper or ''minister'' of man: "Let us make man", says Genesis, "a helper similar to him." It calls the child a ''subject'', since it tells it, in a thousand places, to obey its parents. (''On Divorce'' pp. 44–46)
Bonald also sees divorce as the first stage of disorder in the state (the principle of macrocosm/microcosm). He insists that the ' of the family brings about the of state, with “ The Kyklos” not far behind. (''On Divorce'', pp. 88–89, 149.)
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (; 31 July 1909 – 26 May 1999) was an Austrian political scientist and philosopher. He opposed the ideas of the French Revolution as well as those of communism and Nazism. Describing himself as a "conserv ...
draws a connection between the family and monarchy:
Due to its inherent patriarchalism, monarchy fits organically into the ecclesiastic and familistic pattern of a Christian society. (Compare the teaching of Pope
Leo XIII Pope Leo XIII ( it, Leone XIII; born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 2 March 1810 – 20 July 1903) was the head of the Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 to his death in July 1903. Living until the age of 93, he was the second-old ...
: 'Likewise the powers of fathers of families preserves expressly a certain image and form of the authority which is in God, from which ''all paternity in heaven and earth receives its name'' — Eph 3.15') The relationship between the King as 'father of the fatherland' and the people is one of mutual love. (''Liberty or Equality'', p. 155)


Politics and the family

In her book, ''Delacroix, Art and Patrimony in Post-Revolutionary France'', Elisabeth Fraser analyses
Eugène Delacroix Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
's famous “Massacres of Chios” (1824), which helped galvanise philo-Hellenism in France. Delacroix's symbol for the oppressed Greek nation was a family employed as a conceptual and visual structuring device. A reviewer encapsulated Fraser's argument:
Equating patriarchal family metaphor with government paternalism and imperialist protectionism, the chapter argues that such familial intimations, heightened by acute emotionalism and hints of a Western culture soiled by Eastern penetration, corresponded to and reflected a paternalistic government urge to protect the victimized Greeks, a thinly veiled justification for French colonial intervention in the Mediterranean.
More recently,
George Lakoff George Philip Lakoff (; born May 24, 1941) is an American cognitive linguist and philosopher, best known for his thesis that people's lives are significantly influenced by the conceptual metaphors they use to explain complex phenomena. The conc ...
has claimed that the left/right distinction in politics comes from a difference between ideals of the family in the mind of the person in question; for
right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that view certain social orders and Social stratification, hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this pos ...
people, the ideal is a patriarchical and moralistic family; for
left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political%20ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically in ...
people, the ideal is an unconditionally loving family. As a result, Lakoff argues, both sides find each other's views not only immoral, but incomprehensible, since they appear to violate each side's deeply held beliefs about personal morality in the sphere of the family. Such a model is not a recent addition to modern discourse; J. Vernon Jenson discussed “British Voices on the Eve of the American Revolution: Trapped by the Family Metaphor” in the ''Quarterly Journal of Speech'' 63 (1977), pp. 43–50. The idea of the
commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...
as a family is close to
cliché A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...
; it permeates political discourse at every level:
There is an historic American National Family metaphor .. That American National Family frame is like any real extended family-fractious but in the end functional. There are people in it who aren't just like you, but they are still family and we still have to try to solve our problems together, despite our differences.


See also

*
Paternalism Paternalism is action that limits a person's or group's liberty or autonomy and is intended to promote their own good. Paternalism can also imply that the behavior is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also that the behavior expres ...
* ''
Pater patriae ''Pater Patriae'' (plural ''Patres Patriae''), also seen as ''Parens Patriae'', is a Latin honorific meaning "Father of the Country", or more literally, "Father of the Fatherland". It is also used of U.S. President George Washington, the Swedi ...
'' *
Patrimonialism Patrimonialism is a form of governance in which all power flows directly from the ruler. There is no distinction between the public and private domains. These regimes are autocratic or oligarchic and exclude the lower, middle and upper class ...
*
Fatherland A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethn ...
*
Robert Filmer Sir Robert Filmer (c. 1588 – 26 May 1653) was an English political theorist who defended the divine right of kings. His best known work, '' Patriarcha'', published posthumously in 1680, was the target of numerous Whig attempts at rebuttal, ...
*
Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...
*
Peripatetic school The Peripatetic school was a school of philosophy in Ancient Greece. Its teachings derived from its founder, Aristotle (384–322 BC), and ''peripatetic'' is an adjective ascribed to his followers. The school dates from around 335 BC when Aristo ...
for Aristotle's Hellenistic school *
Aristotelianism Aristotelianism ( ) is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the socia ...
for Aristotle's wider legacy


References

* Aristotle ''Politics'' (Loeb Classical Library) * Louis de Bonald ''On Divorce'' trans. Nicholas Davidson (1993, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers) * M. Eugene Boring, Klaus Berger, & Carsten Colpe dd/nowiki> ''Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament'' (1995, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press) * Elisabeth Fraser ''Delacroix, Art and Patrimony in Post-Revolutionary France'' (2004, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) * von Kuehnelt-Leddihn ''Liberty or Equality'' * George Lakoff ''What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't'' * Plutarch ''The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans'' trans. John Dryden and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough (The Modern Library: div. of Random House)


External links


Patriarcha
by
Robert Filmer Sir Robert Filmer (c. 1588 – 26 May 1653) was an English political theorist who defended the divine right of kings. His best known work, '' Patriarcha'', published posthumously in 1680, was the target of numerous Whig attempts at rebuttal, ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Family As A Model For The State Political philosophy Family Corporatism Philosophy of Aristotle Confucianism