by Ho Keung-sing. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references. / Preface --- p.i / Abstract --- p.iii / Acknowledgements --- p.iv / Contents --- p.v / Detailed Contents --- p.vii / Maps --- p.xi / Photos --- p.xii / List of Tables --- p.xiii / List of Figures --- p.xv / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Profile of the Community --- p.5 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- What is Filial Piety --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Approaches to study Filial Piety --- p.9 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Methodological Debate in Sociology --- p.15 / Chapter 3.1 --- The Major Characteristics of Positivism --- p.15 / Chapter 3.2 --- The Rise of Positivism from the View of the Sociology of Knowledge --- p.19 / Chapter 3.3 --- Research Method and Instrument of Positivism --- p.20 / Chapter 3.4 --- The Major Characteristics of Anti-positivism --- p.22 / Chapter 3.5 --- Methodological Implications --- p.43 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Research Problems --- p.49 / Chapter 4.1 --- Definitions of Variables --- p.51 / Chapter 4.2 --- Hypothesis --- p.56 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Data Collection Methods and Methods of Analysis --- p.61 / Chapter 5.1 --- Data from Survey --- p.51 / Chapter 5.2 --- Methods of Analysis on the Survey --- p.65 / Chapter 5.3 --- Indepth Interview --- p.65 / Chapter 5.4 --- The Analysis of Indepth Interview-----Verbal Description --- p.68 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Findings --- p.71 / Chapter 6.1 --- The First Group Hypothesis-----Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and the Perception of Responsibility Fulfillment --- p.72 / Chapter 6.2 --- The Second Group Hypothesis-----Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and the Present Request on Children --- p.81 / Chapter 6.3 --- The Third Group Hypothesis-----Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and the Future Request on Children --- p.84 / Chapter 6.4 --- The Fourth Group Hypothesis-----The Effects of Parents' Perception on Respondents' Present and Future Request on Children --- p.104 / Chapter 6.5 --- LISREL Model and Some Alternatives --- p.115 / Chapter Chapter 7 --- Interpretation and Discussion --- p.125 / Chapter 7.1 --- Group One Hypothesis-----Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and the Perception of Responsibility Fulfillment --- p.127 / Chapter 7.2 --- Group Two Hypothesis-----Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and the Present Request on Children --- p.137 / Chapter 7.3 --- Group Three Hypothesis-----Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and the Future Request on Children --- p.139 / Chapter 7.4 --- Group Four Hypothesis-----The Effects of Parents' Perception on Respondents' Present and Future Request on Children --- p.142 / Chapter 7.5 --- Sex Role Effects on Elderly Care Perception --- p.143 / Chapter 7.6 --- The Relationship between Region and Elderly Care Perception --- p.147 / Chapter 7.7 --- Multi-variate Analysis --- p.147 / Chapter Chapter 8 --- Conclusion --- p.150 / Chapter Chapter 9 --- Limitation and Suggestion --- p.152 / Bibliography --- p.154 / Appendices

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published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Previous studies of the seven extant manuscripts of the seventeenth century Londoner, Nehemiah Wallington, have focused on the psychological effects of Puritan theology as the cause for his deep spiritual crisis and for his uncontrollable urge to document his inner mental and emotional experiences in a diary or journal. This thesis takes a somewhat different approach, starting from a prominent and recurrent theme in Wallington’s manuscripts: his thoughts of and experiences with death. From an early age, Wallington lost close family members to illness. Four of his five children died in early childhood. He lived through outbreaks of plague, and recorded into his manuscripts casualties wrought by civil war and inexplicable accidents that took place around him in the City of London. Evidence from what Wallington wrote about these events in his manuscripts indicates that he responded to his frequent encounters with human mortality through his understanding and practice of Puritan theology and piety. Responding to death through religious belief and observance was not an innovation: some have argued that the late medieval Catholic Church in England provided, through the Mass and the doctrine of purgatory, ways to respond to death that brought comfort and inspired fresh engagement with the world. Yet scholars have tended to see Wallington’s recourse to Puritan religion as something that made him want to throw his life away in suicidal despair, rather than as a means to ease his sorrows and encourage him to engage with society again (in other words, as a means to come to terms with death which in some ways paralleled the momentum of older Catholic devotion, but in a new and distinctively Reformed context). Studies of Wallington’s despair have focused only on a particular youthful episode. However, this thesis will look at the theme of death over Wallington’s lifelong pursuit of Puritan theology and piety. From an examination of his seven extant manuscripts, it will show not only how Wallington turned to Puritan theology and piety in the face of death, but also how his understanding and approach changed over time. His response developed from a compulsive emotional reaction to a clear strategy that involved reflecting on death in his own experiences of loss, as well as in the Bible and other printed materials, all of which he recorded in his manuscripts for others to read. Wallington’s decision to write down his reflections led him out of despair and the temptation to abandon his life, to express in his later manuscripts an active desire to engage with the world around him out of faith and trust in the vivifying power of Christ. The thesis starts with an introduction to Nehemiah Wallington and his context, and to the theme of death in his extant manuscripts (chapter one). Next, it explores how Wallington responded to his encounters with death by taking up writing, an activity that developed from an urgent need to keep a personal daybook of his sins to a more deliberate attempt to write for others (chapter two). After this, the thesis considers how Wallington’s early response to death inspired his attempt to construct a ‘self’ through his understanding of the Christian doctrine of mortification (chapter three). Then it provides a fresh account of Wallington’s suicide attempts: how his attempt to construct a ‘self’ through mortification initially led him to despair and to the temptation to negate his ‘self’ and his life in the world (chapter four). Following this, the thesis goes beyond the account of despair to argue that Wallington overcame his temptation to commit suicide and resolved to engage with the world around him, by meditating on and studying death (chapter five). Finally, the thesis shows how the evidence presented in earlier chapters gives a fresh perspective on Wallington, and suggests how this might contribute to a better understanding of continuity and change in the piety of seventeenth century Reformed Christianity (chapter six).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

This paper examines similarities between imagery of the countryside and the “country life” in both the poetry of Augustan Rome and contemporary American country music. It analyzes the themes of agriculture, poverty, family, and piety, and how they are used in both sets of sources to create an idealized countryside. This ideal, when contrasted with negative portrayals of urban life and non-idealized rural life, endorses an ideology that is opposed to wealth and that emphasizes the security and stability of the idyllic countryside. This ideology common to both may stem from the historical contexts of these two eras, revealing that Augustan Rome and modern America have unexpected similarities.

This thesis analyzes Books III and IV of Xenophon’s Memorabilia. The Memorabilia is Xenophon’s defense of Socrates or the philosophic life against Athens or the political community as such. In Book III, Xenophon presents six portraits of ambitious young men. These portraits, read closely, unveil the psychological nature of ambition and convey important lessons about the Socratic understanding of healthy politics, as a realm that is necessarily pious. Book IV’s four Socratic conversations with a dim-witted youth named Euthydemus both underscore the lessons of Book III and explore piety itself, as a phenomenon that is necessarily political. These sections of the Memorabilia may be read as an argument for the necessity of a fissure between healthy politics and philosophy – and as a bridge from the one to the other. / text

Most people place their sincerest hopes for emotional fulfillment on a rewarding family life. The "loved ones" that constitute our nuclear and extended familial worlds are the primary beneficiaries of our affections and of the fruits of our labors. In return for the primacy we accord our family members, we expect their behavior to demonstrate their loyalty to the clan. However, at a certain point obligations to the family can conflict with the needs of the individual. In this thesis I examine how filial duties influence the plights of the tragic heroines in Sophocles's Antigone and Shakespeare's King Lear. Both Antigone and Cordelia organize their lives around the virtue of family honor, and yet the strength of these commitments is not sufficient to spare them from their respective, calamitous ends. Their unwavering dedication to the sanctity of family bonds leaves them susceptible, as individuals, to great harm.

Filiality (xiao) has been a significant concept in Chinese culture. Its significance is shown by the fact that its idea was elevated to a system of philosophy by Confucians in the Zhanguo period (475-221 B.C.E.). The purpose of this study is to clarify why filiality was important and what the philosophy of filiality essentially meant. Filiality was not merely a familial ethic. In the Western Zhou period (the 11th c. to 770 B.C.E.), it meant sacrifices to ancestors. Filiality toward fatherhood was essentially obedience to headship of lineage groups, and it was expressed in ancestor worship. When lineage gradually collapsed in the Chunqiu period (770-475 B.C.E.), its significance must have been restricted. In fact, however, filiality was given a new meaning by Zhanguo Confucians. First, Confucius emphasized the mental aspect of filiality, and then Mencius thought of filiality as the basis from which general ethics were generated. The various ideas of filiality were collected in a book: the Book of Filiality. This book, presenting the dichotomy between love and reverence, argued that a father-son relationship had an element shared by a monarch-retainer relationship and that filiality should be shifted into loyalty. The essential achievement of this philosophy was the recognition of the dualistic nature of human beings; any human relationship was a social relation between two social roles as well as an emotional connection between two characters. The former was the basis for culture and society. It was the aspect of culture inherent in human nature that should be developed to bring about social justice. This dualism was derived from the ambiguity of fatherhood in ancestor worship. As ancestor symbolized the social role of lineage headship, the philosophy of filiality symbolically connected fatherhood to the social role of authority in general. Filiality was identified with devotion to the absolute basis for humans and society that was symbolized by fatherhood. This thesis, analyzing ancient Chinese philosophy of filiality, presents a hypothesis concerning the essential structure of ancestor worship, which can be summarized as the symbolism representing higher levels of authority on the basis of parental authority.