On the basis of his predecessors, Confucius made a connotative innovation of filial piety. Proposing that filial piety stemmed from the inner heart and was a manifestation of benevolence, he turned it from an external norm to an internal requirement of human heart. He transformed patriarchal filial piety of the Western Zhou Dynasty into filial piety as family ethics. He expanded filial piety from domain of family ethics to that of social ethics, and thus enriched the meaning of filial piety, making it more socially significant. He thought sacrificial filial piety was able to play an educational role.
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