Railing Codex

家的本意为指房屋之内或居所，在汉字演化的过程中，“家”逐渐有了居所之外的更多文化内涵。早在西周时期的诗歌总集《诗经》中这样记载：“天命匪解，桓桓武王，保有厥士，于以四方，克定厥家。”家初次具备了现代人所熟悉的“家庭”概念。家作为社会最小的政治单元，诞生于父权制下的婚姻制度，之后因儒家文化与封建王权的长期苟合而延续下去。儒家经典《大学》开篇便说：“古之欲明明德于天下者，先治其国；欲治其国者，先齐其家；欲齐其家者，先修其身”。“齐家”被视为治国的基础性训练，家庭是出仕前的试验场。在君主世袭制的传统下，家国同构，家成了缩略版的国，国是放大版的家。“家长”是子女的最高权威，亦是最重要的意识形态输出窗口，这种传统家庭结构对社会的影响直至今日，即便中国步入现代时期，政权仍是“大家长”式的，这与中国传统中治国与齐家的并置概念相通。

Originally the character _jia _meant “inside the house” or “dwelling.” Over the course of its evolution, it gradually took on other connotations. In the Book of Songs, an ancient collection of poetry from the Western Zhou dynasty, we read: “Heaven does not weary in its favor. The martial king Wu maintained [the confidence of] his officers, and employed them all over the kingdom, so securing the establishment of his Family [jia].” Here the character for house first took on the sense of “family,” which it has for modern people today. Society’s smallest political unit, the family originated in the patriarchal institution of marriage and persisted because of the long-term alignment of Confucian culture and feudal rule. As the opening of the Confucian classic The Great Learning says, “For the ancients, to shine bright virtue upon the world one must first rule the state; to rule the state one must first order the family; to order the family one must first cultivate the self.” “Ordering the family” is seen as basic training for rule, and the home is the testing ground for entering officialdom. Under the tradition of hereditary rule, family and state had the same structure: the family was a miniature state, and the state was a larger family. Parents were the highest authority for children, as well as the primary outlets for ideological dissemination. The influence of the traditional family structure persists until this day: even though China has joined the modern era, political authority is still “parental,” tied to its parallel traditional concepts of ruling the state and ordering the family.