Filial Ethics as Moral Governance: Navigating Feeling in Nineteenth-Century Javanese Court Literature

Abstract

This article examines Serat Pariminta, a nineteenth-century Javanese court text attributed to Sri Paduka Mangkunagara IV, as an articulation of filial ethics functioning as moral governance. Departing from readings that treat filial relations as domestic morality or cultural values, this study argues that Serat Pariminta configures the parent-child relationship as a regulatory infrastructure through which moral legitimacy and social order are produced. Drawing on theories of emotional regimes and the navigation of feeling, the analysis demonstrates how filial emotions, such as parental relief, genealogical honor, enduring shame, and ancestral disgrace, operate as evaluative mechanisms that guide conduct without recourse to juridical coercion. Methodologically grounded in modern philology, the study prioritizes close textual analysis over manuscript materiality, tracing how ethical authority is constructed through lexical choice, emotional evaluation, and discursive patterning within the text. By situating Serat Pariminta within global discussions on private and state emotion, this article contributes to the history of emotions and moral governance by showing how intimate familial relations can function as pre-institutional foundations of wise and legitimate authority. The findings affirm the relevance of non-Western court literature as a source of theoretical insight into the emotional infrastructures of governance.