The

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

as a model for the organization of the

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

is a theory of

political philosophy Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and Political legitimacy, legitimacy of political institutions, such as State (polity), states. This field investigates different ...

. 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 (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

, who argued that the natural progression of human beings was from the family via small communities to the

polis Polis (: poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek. The ancient word ''polis'' had socio-political connotations not possessed by modern usage. For example, Modern Greek πόλη (polē) is located within a (''khôra''), "country", which is a πατ ...

. Many writers from ancient times to the present have seen parallels between the family and the forms of the state. In particular,

monarchists Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. C ...

have argued that the state mirrors the

patriarchal Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men. The term ''patriarchy'' is used both in anthropology to describe a family or clan controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males, and in fem ...

family, with the people obeying the

king King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

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 power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense economic, political, and social influence. In Western Christian co ...

rule.

Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...

records a laconic saying of the

Dorians The Dorians (; , , singular , ) were one of the four major ethnic groups into which the Greeks, Hellenes (or Greeks) of Classical Greece divided themselves (along with the Aeolians, Achaeans (tribe), Achaeans, and Ionians). They are almost alw ...

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).

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, based on the Latin phrase ''res publica'' ('public affair' or 'people's affair'), is a State (polity), state in which Power (social and political), political power rests with the public (people), typically through their Representat ...

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. Thus, the family forms the root of human relationships, but the city is the flower. Arius Didymus 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 (; pinyin: ; ; ), born Kong Qiu (), was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Much of the shared cultural heritage of the Sinosphere originates in the phil ...

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 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, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...

(e.g. the

emperor of China Throughout Chinese history, "Emperor" () was the superlative title held by the monarchs of imperial China's various dynasties. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was the " Son of Heaven", an autocrat with the divine mandat ...

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 Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

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, and is variously described as a tradition, philosophy, Religious Confucianism, religion, theory of government, or way of li ...

. For Confucius, ''xiào'' or

filial piety Filial piety is the virtue of exhibiting love and respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors, particularly within the context of Confucian ethics, Confucian, Chinese Buddhism, Chinese Buddhist ethics, Buddhist, and Daoism, Daoist ethics. ...

was a '' dé'' or

virtue A virtue () is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be morality, moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is Value (ethics), valued as an Telos, end purpos ...

. 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 '' lĭ'' were therefore acting in accordance with '' yì'' (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. 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 is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

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-American nobleman and polymath, whose areas of interest included philosophy, history, political science, economics, linguistics, art and theology. He oppose ...

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: '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 people, French Romanticism, Romantic artist who was regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: ...

'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 ...

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 is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property ...

people, the ideal is a patriarchical and moralistic family; for

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...

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. The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the 15th century. Originally a phrase (the common-wealth ...
as a family is close to
cliché A cliché ( or ; ) is a saying, idea, or element of an artistic work that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning, novelty, or literal and figurative language, figurative or artistic power, even to the point of now being b ...
; 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.

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)

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