Claim. Because the universe has vertical order (moons-earth-sun-galaxy hierarchies), horizontal order (planets in coordinated orbits), and individuality, the family — its miniature — generates a corresponding tripartite system of vertical values (filial piety, loyalty), horizontal values (conjugal love, sibling love, neighborliness), and individual values (purity, honesty, self-control).
Elaboration. Lee makes the structural correspondence concrete (B. Philosophical Ground for the New View of Absolute Value). The universe exhibits vertical order — moons revolve around planets, planets around stars, stars around galactic centers, galaxies around the center of the universe — and horizontal order — coordinated planetary orbits. These are harmonious, non-conflictual systems. The family is the miniature of this cosmic order; therefore family has the same vertical and horizontal structure.
Vertical values (corresponding to vertical order): parents’ benevolence toward children, children’s filial piety toward parents. Extended to society: ruler’s clemency and good governance, people’s loyalty; teachers’ duty, students’ respect and obedience; senior’s protection, junior’s respect; superiors’ authority, subordinates’ obedience.
Horizontal values (corresponding to horizontal order): harmonious love between husband and wife, love among siblings. Extended outward: reconciliation, tolerance, duty, fidelity, courtesy, modesty, mercy, cooperation, service, sympathy — extending to colleagues, neighbors, compatriots, community, humankind.
Individual values (corresponding to the individuality of each being in the universe): purity, honesty, righteousness, temperance, courage, wisdom, self-control, endurance, independence, self-help, autonomy, fairness, diligence, innocence — values for self-cultivation.
Lee then directly addresses the Communist objection: these values are not feudal relics. They are universal norms because they correspond to the eternal law of the universe. The argument’s strength is its symmetry: it generates a comprehensive taxonomy of virtues from a few cosmic structural features, recovers the substantive content of classical Confucian and Christian virtue without arbitrary stipulation, and explains why traditional ethics felt right across cultures.
The vulnerability: the cosmological argument leans on a particular reading of physical order as fundamentally hierarchical and harmonious, which feminist critics and egalitarian thinkers will read as ideological projection — finding patriarchal hierarchy in the cosmos because that is what was assumed in the family. Worth a thread once a counter-atomic exists.
See also. family-as-miniature-universe-of-order, family-as-microcosm-of-the-way-of-heaven, social-ethics-as-extension-of-family-ethics