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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Confucian Filial Obligation and Care For Aged Parents I. Consent and Moral Obligation We may find a basic thesis that underline the Daniels/English rejection of adult children's moral obligation of taking respectful care for their aged parents.

It claims that filial obligation, if it is to be a moral obligation, should be based on the voluntary consent of all moral agents involved.(4) Obviously, the thesis expresses a meta-ethical principle which underlies not only Daniels/English argument but also some major accounts of the nature of moral obligation in the modern West. I call it the "principle of intentional consent." "Consent" is required because a moral action ought to be approved of by all the persons involved in the action.

It is "intentional" because an agreement or an approval ought to be reached voluntarily and without any kind of outside coercion or deceit. Very clearly, this principle gets its power from Kant's concept of a person as potentially an autonomous, rational, and free agent.(5) That is to say, intentional consent is simply an exercise of one's autonomy and rationality.

Therefore, as a free, rational, and autonomous moral agent, I am morally responsible only for the consequences of those actions which I have committed voluntarily, without any coercion and deceit. Otherwise I will not see myself behaving as a free and autonomous being. Living in modern society, it seems that few people can really deny the importance of the principle of intentional consent and that of the concept of autonomy in our consideration of the nature of morality.

However, is it the absolute and exclusive grounding of morality? That is to ask, is there any limitation of that principle in our moral practice, especially when we consider filial morality in dealing with the relationship between adult children and their aged parents? Let me try to answer the question by looking at the following example.

When Fred, a strong man and a good swimmer,(6) went by a swimming pool on his way home, he found a three year old child Sheila was drowning in a swimming pool with another young child John crying nearby. Does Fred have any moral obligation to jump into the pool to save Sheila? Most of us, I believe, would say "yes" according to our common moral sense. But what interests us in this example is not whether Fred ought to save Sheila but why Fred ought to try to save her.