The Golden Rule

A good start on a moral life plan.

I introduced my last essay with a quote from my local school’s dubiously political “mission statement,” which reads in part: “To engage and equip all [students] to embrace anti-racism as a mindset and in practice.” As explained in a previous essay, the term “anti-racism” was popularized by author Ibram X Kendi, whose book How to Be an Antiracist described the practiced of anti-racism this way: “The only remedy to past [racial] discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

That sounds more like group vengeance than social justice. My previous essay on mission statements got me thinking about mission statements for life generally, which led me to Jeffrey Wattles’ book The Golden Rule.

As Wattles writes, the widely recognized “Golden Rule” (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) was a direct counter to the mindset of group vengeance embodied by Kendi’s advice that present and future discrimination based on race be used to somehow settle group scores over time:

Wars between Greek city-states were frequent, as were clashes between individuals within a given city-state. “A long-standing feud, year after year of provocation and retaliation, is a conspicuous phenomenon of … upper-class society. … It was not the Athenian custom to disguise hatred.” Edward Westermarck’s encyclopedic study of planetary evolutionary ideas of morality associates primitive retaliation with nonmoral resentment, personal hatred, and revenge … [T]he repayment principle is inconsistent with the principles of cosmic justice and prudence, since doing harm to others provokes a spiral of never-ending vengeance.

As Wattles points out:

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus dismisses the principle of retaliation. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

But as Wattles describes, Jesus was not the first to reject the principle of retaliation. That rejection came with the early formulations of the Golden Rule.

Wattles writes:

What could be easier to grasp intuitively than the golden rule? It has such an immediate intelligibility that it serves as a ladder that anyone can step onto without a great stretch. I know how I like to be treated; and that is how I am to treat others. The study of the rule, however, leads beyond conventional interpretation, and the practice of the rule leads beyond conventional morality … The rule is widely regarded as obvious and self-evident. Nearly everyone is familiar with it in some formulation or other. An angry parent uses it as a weapon: “Is that how you want others to treat you?” A defense attorney invites the members of the jury to put themselves in the shoes of his or her client.

Thinking just a bit more deeply about the Golden Rule makes clear that it’s really just a starting point for a sound moral foundation. As Wattles writes, “My own thesis is that the rule’s unity is best comprehended not in terms of a single meaning but as a symbol of a process of growth on emotional, intellectual, and spiritual levels.” Says Wattle:

“Eureka!” they seem to say. “There is a supreme principle of living! It can be expressed in a single statement!” By contrast, theologian Paul Tillich found the rule an inferior principle … The problem with the rule is that it “does not tell us what we should wish.” … Most professional ethicists rely instead on other principles, since the rule seems vulnerable to counterexamples, such as the current favorite, “What if a sadomasochist goes forth to treat others as he wants to be treated?” Technically, the golden rule can defend itself from objections, since it contains within itself the seed of its own self-correction. Any easily abused interpretation may be challenged: “Would you want to be treated according to a rule construed in this way?” The recursive use of the rule—applying it to the results of its own earlier application—is a lever that extricates it from many tangles. The counterexample does not refute the golden rule, properly understood; rather, it serves to clarify the interpretation of the rule—that the golden rule functions appropriately in a growing personality; indeed, the practice of the rule itself promotes the required growth. Since the rule is such a compressed statement of morality, it takes for granted at least a minimum sincerity that refuses to manipulate the rule sophistically to “justify” patently immoral conduct.

In essence, using the Socratic method to think through the many angles of the Golden Rule is one relatively easy way to start thinking through moral issues.

But as Wattles describes, there are many potential criticisms of the Golden Rule:

It has been objected that the golden rule assumes that human beings are basically alike and thereby fails to do justice to the differences between people … The golden rule may also seem to imply that what we want for ourselves is good for ourselves and that what is good for ourselves is good for others. The positive formulation, in particular, is accused of harboring the potential for presumption; thus, the rule is suited for immediate application only among those whose beliefs and needs are similar. In fact, however, the rule calls for due consideration for any relevant difference between persons—just as the agent would want such consideration from others … Another criticism is that the golden rule sets too low a standard because it makes ordinary wants and desires the criterion of morality. On one interpretation, the rule asks individuals to do whatever they imagine they might wish to have done to them in a given situation; thus a judge would be obliged by the golden rule to sentence a convicted criminal with extreme leniency. As a mere principle of sympathy, therefore, it is argued, the rule is incapable of guiding judgment in cases where the necessary action is unwelcome to its immediate recipient.

But one benefit of the Golden Rule is that it at least requires moral consistency on the part of the rule’s adherent. As Wattles writes, “The rule merely requires consistency of moral judgment: one must apply the same standards to one’s treatment of others that one applies to others’ treatment of oneself.” In that sense, it’s akin to the Socratic method. Ward Farnsworth, in his book “The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook,” introduces the Socratic method as follows:

It is natural to imagine that a philosopher—a Socrates—would try to talk you into accepting his beliefs as your own. But that isn’t the Socratic method. Or if Socrates wants to show that you’re wrong, you might expect that he would attack what you’ve said as inconsistent with the facts or as morally repellent. That isn’t quite the Socratic method, either. The Socratic method, in its classic form, consists of internal critique. It tests whether you’re being consistent with yourself and believe all that you think you do. Socrates doesn’t tell you that you’re wrong; he shows you that you think you’re wrong.

The basic idea of the Golden Rule has popped up many places around the world going back thousands of years. But, as Wattles writes:

Despite the fact that the golden rule has been expressed, in some form, in most or all of the world’s religions, only in the Confucian and Judeo-Christian traditions did the rule become a prominent theme for sustained reflection. The emergence of the golden rule in some traditions is incomplete: a phrase is all that may be found, such as “If your neighbor’s jackal escapes into your garden, you should return the animal to its owner; this is how you would want your neighbor to treat you” [Bush Tribes of Tropical Africa]; “Great Spirit, grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.” [Indians of the Northern Plains] … Hinduism: “Let no man do to another that which would be repugnant to himself.” [Mahabharata, book 5, chapter 49, verse 57] … Islam: “None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” [from the Hadith, a lesser authority than the Koran] … Some Hindus interpret the injunction to treat others as oneself as an invitation to identify with the divine spirit within each person. Some Muslims take the golden rule to apply primarily to the brotherhood of Islam.

Even back in ancient Greece:

No author used a golden rule maxim as a hub around which to gather great themes. None proposed the rule as the leading principle of morality. Even at the close of this period (prior to the Christian invasion of the Mediterranean world) golden rule thinking functioned primarily through specific maxims, for example, about the treatment of slaves … [But] [t]he golden rule thinking coming to birth in various expressions and maxims includes an idea, a recommendation, and a command: Those affected by your actions are comparable to you. Imagine yourself in the other person’s position as an aid to discovering how to apply to yourself the same high moral standard that you apply to others. Do not treat others as you do not want to be treated … The rule evolved unconsciously as a by-product of deliberate effort on two issues: How is the maxim of helping friends and harming enemies [the vengeance or retaliatory approach] to be judged? And should we extend beneficence only to those who are dear to us or to all humankind?

Interestingly, the earliest Greek expression of “golden rule thinking” appears in Homer’s Odyssey, from the eighth century B.C. As Wattles writes:

Calypso is the goddess who has kept Odysseus as her love prisoner, and she has just received a message from Zeus that she must release her beloved and speed him homeward on pain of (un)godly retribution. Odysseus, who does not love Calypso, distrusts her offer to let him go. He demands that she promise not to harm him covertly, and Calypso reassures him: “Now then: I swear by heaven above and by earth beneath and the pouring force of Styx—that is the most awful oath of the blessed gods: I will work no secret mischief against you. No, I mean what I say; I will be as careful for you as I should be for myself in the same need. I know what is fair and right, my heart is not made of iron, and I am really sorry for you.”

Subsequent Greek writers took up the broader principle:

Thales, according to Diogenes Laertius, is reputed to have said that men might live most virtuously and justly, “if we never do ourselves what we blame in others.” … According to Diogenes Laertius, when asked how to behave toward friends, Aristotle replied, “As we should wish our friends to behave to us.” … Another general formulation occurs in Herodotus (ca. 484–424) where he recounts the story of King Maeandrius of Samos in the days just prior to the Persian invasion of that island. Meandrius made a radical attempt to inaugurate a just political order in place of the former kingship. His proposal, soon to be frustrated by the suspicion and treachery of his associates, begins thus: “You know, friends, that the sceptre of Polycrates, and all his power, has passed into my hands, and if I choose I may rule over you. But what I condemn in another I will, if I may, avoid myself. I never approved the ambition of Polycrates to lord it over men as good as himself, nor looked with favour on any of those who have done the like. Now therefore, since he has fulfilled his destiny, I lay down my office, and proclaim equal rights.” … The association of the golden rule with equal rights was radical; Maeandrius’ gesture of fairness made him vulnerable in an environment where the prevailing ethic was, as we are about to see, very different … Ancient Greece was awash with the practice of doing good to one’s friends and harm to one’s enemies—cardinal virtues of the age.

But eventually, processes like jury trials and legislative deliberations encouraged lawyers of the day to suggest golden rule thinking, such as the Sophist Isocrates:

At the close of a speech to the jury that will decide a lawsuit he has brought, Isocrates exhorts the jurors to “give a just verdict, and prove yourselves to be for me such judges as you would want to have for yourselves.” … In the Laws Plato considers in detail the legislation appropriate to a well-ordered state. Regarding business transactions, the Athenian, using a piece of reasoning clearly akin to the golden rule, proposes a “simple general rule”: “I would have no one touch my property, if I can help it, or disturb it in the slightest way without some kind of consent on my part; if I am a man of reason, I must treat the property of others in the same way.”

Adherents to the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism led the way in broadening the application of golden rule reasoning:

The universal scope of the golden rule in Stoicism was based on the affirmation that human beings are the offspring of God (Zeus), the universal logos (principle, reason) governing the entire cosmos … Golden rule thinking appears a few times in the writings of Seneca (4 b.c.e.–65 c.e.), the Stoic philosopher and assistant to the emperor Nero. Seneca’s On Anger rehearses at length the cruelties and follies of anger, its deceptive rationalizations, its causes, and strategies for its cure. One’s tranquility of soul is too valuable to be squandered in anger. The text is full of the wisdom of psychological and social and historic experience. It is in the context of this perspective of seasoned reason that Seneca advocates imaginative perspective taking: “Let us put ourselves in the place of the man with whom we are angry; as it is, an unwarranted opinion of self makes us prone to anger, and we are unwilling to bear what we ourselves would have been willing to inflict.” Seneca applies interpersonal moral comparison to the question of the treatment of slaves: “I do not wish to involve myself in too large a question, and to discuss the treatment of slaves, towards whom we Romans are excessively haughty, cruel and insulting. But this is the kernel of my advice: Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.” … Epictetus, the freed Roman slave [who became a Stoic] [said] “What you avoid suffering, do not attempt to make others suffer. You avoid slavery: take care that others are not your slaves.”

Judaism contains references to golden rule reasoning:

[I]t happened that a certain heathen came before Shammai [the leader of the school competing with that of Hillel] and said to him, “Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Thereupon he [Shammai] repulsed him with the builder’s square which was in his hand. When he went before Hillel, he said to him, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary thereon; go and learn it.” … Some scholars hesitate to ascribe the golden rule to Jesus, since the rule was already part of popular Jewish and Hellenistic culture and could have been inserted into the texts from sources other than the teachings of Jesus.

But the teaching of Jesus probably did the most to spread golden rule reasoning:

Matthew 7.12 reads, “panta oun hosa ean thelete hina poiousin humin hoi anthropoi, houtos kai humeis poieite autois; houtos gar estin ho nomos kai oi prophetai.” All things [panta hosa] therefore [oun] which you want/wish/will [ean thelete] that [hina] people [hoi anthropoi] do [poiousin] to you [humin], do [poiete] thus [houtos kai] to them [autois] for [gar] this [houtos] is [estin] the law [ho nomos] and [kai] the prophets [ho prophetai]. The plural “you” in the third line suggests that the golden rule is given not only to the individual but also to the community … The Matthean context of the golden rule, however, introduces another level of meaning. The rule is given immediately after the remark about the good gifts that the Father in heaven gives to those who ask … Placing the golden rule in the context of fatherly love (Matt. 7.7–11) gains for it a new level of meaning … To love in this context means to love as the Father loves, and that means doing the Father’s will. That Matthew then refers to the golden rule as “the law and the prophets” attributes a special status to the rule and suggests a link between the golden rule and Jesus’ mission: Jesus will demonstrate a new fulfillment of the golden rule. “The law and the prophets” was a twofold designation of the entirety of the Hebrew scriptures … The golden rule governs relations with all people (anthropoi), not just relations within the fellowship of believers … [T]here are reasons in favor of a positive formulation: it calls the one who would follow the golden rule to be morally active; it is psychologically more effective to command the good than to prohibit evil; and positive expressions, such as the law of love, are more directly expressive of the values that are presupposed by prohibitions … In sum, though the golden rule was not part of the written Torah, it may be said to be fulfilled in Jesus’ life and teachings. The traditional golden rule is preserved, adjusted from a negative to a positive formulation, deepened in context, and associated with the overturning of the principle of retaliation.

As explored in a previous essay series using Larry Seidentop’s Inventing the Individual, principles of Christianity went on to significantly develop the Western tradition of respecting individual rights. And as Wattles writes:

In a 1530 sermon, Luther returns to Matthew 7.12 … Luther’s sermon gives assurance that it is no longer necessary for a person to rely on legal books and moral experts to know what Jesus requires, since the hearer’s sense of how he or she wants to be treated serves as a continuous fountain of teaching and preaching: “I am convinced … that [the rule] would be influential and productive of fruit if we only got into the habit of remembering it and were not so lazy and inattentive. I do not regard anyone as so coarse or so evil that he would shirk this or be offended at it if he really kept it in mind. It was certainly clever of Christ to state it this way. The only example He sets up is ourselves, and He makes this as intimate as possible by applying it to our heart, our body and life, and all our members. No one has to travel far to get it, or devote much trouble or expense to it. The book is laid into your own bosom, and it is so clear that you do not need glasses to understand Moses and the Law. Thus you are your own Bible, your own teacher, your own theologian, and your own preacher.”

Wattles also notes that Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the English author of The Leviathan “used the golden rule as a basic principle of a peaceful society”:

For Hobbes, human motivation is predominantly egoistic, and in a “state of nature” (prior to the establishment of government), which is a war of all against all, each person has a right to defend himself by any means whatsoever. But there is also an obligation to seek peace, to enter a “civil society,” in which peace is secured and contracts enforced by a sovereign power with a monopoly on the use of force. In giving up unlimited individual sovereignty, what rights should the individual seek to retain in the social contract establishing the new order? One should “be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself,” a principle that Hobbes equated with the golden rule.

John Locke (1632-1704), who helped inspire the American Revolution, also pointed to the Golden Rule:

Regarding ethics, he claimed, “… Should that most unshaken rule of morality and foundation of all social virtue, ‘That one should do as he would be done unto,’ be proposed to one who never heard of it before, but yet is of capacity to understand its meaning; might he not without any absurdity ask a reason why? And were not he that proposed it bound to make out the truth and reasonableness of it to him? [I]f it were [innate] it could neither want nor receive any proof … [T]he truth of all these moral rules plainly depends upon some other antecedent to them, and from which they must be deduced.”

As did Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), the co-inventor of calculus:

Leibniz … offers his interpretation of the true meaning of the rule: “One would wish for too much, if one were the master; do we therefore owe too much to others? Someone will reply to me that the rule assumes [s’entend] a just will. But then the rule, far from being sufficient to serve as a standard [mesure], will need a standard. The veritable sense of the rule is that by putting oneself in the place of the other one gains the true point of view for judging equitably.” Leibniz thus finally brings into focus the question of whether the rule furnishes or presupposes a standard for right conduct … [I]t becomes clear that proposing the golden rule as a supreme moral principle presupposes that the agent’s desires are acceptable.

John Stuart Mill, the founder of the philosophy of utilitarianism -- according to which society should aim to maximize the happiness of the people generally – embraced golden rule reasoning. As Wattles writes:

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) defined right action in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number of those affected by the action; he further defined good in terms of happiness and happiness in terms of pleasure. Since the golden rule speaks of what the agent wants, it was easy for Mill to embrace: “As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.”

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) also drew from the appeal of golden rule reasoning, but made several criticisms of the Golden Rule itself:

[Kant] set forth morality as primarily an affair of rationally chosen universal principles, not desires, not even well-regulated or benevolent desires. He proposed three rational principles as formulations of one supreme moral principle, “the categorical imperative” (unconditional command). The first principle is that one should act only on principles that one can rationally will for everyone to act on (“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”). The second principle affirms a certain respect for humanity: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.” The third principle invites the agent to imagine himself as a citizen of and legislator for a conceivable advanced civilization, a worldwide, even a universal community of truly moral agents; this principle voices “the idea of the will of every rational being as a will that legislates universal laws,” that is, laws for a union (“kingdom”) of all rational beings … Kant’s categorical imperative differs from the golden rule in at least three ways. First, the categorical imperative focuses on principles of the will rather than on actions we want to have done to us or on how we want to be treated. Next, it focuses explicitly on the logical generality of our decisions, on maxims or rules for action. Third, it focuses on a rational criterion for judging those rules. Not what you want, but what you rationally judge to be an appropriate universal law is the standard of duty … How can we tell which maxims stand up under rational scrutiny? Kant’s leading criterion is whether the agent can consistently will for everyone to act on the same maxim. We sometimes initiate critical reflection by asking, “What if everyone did that?” As a first approximation, that question unlocks the door to Kant’s idea of moral rationality; but the categorical imperative does not merely appeal to the desirability of the consequences of making a given maxim into a rule for everyone. He notices that in some cases it would be logically incoherent for a person to will that his maxim be universal law. To make a deceptive promise to borrow money, for example, involves a maxim that, if made universal law, would render impossible the very practice of borrowing and lending in which the deceptive person is engaging. In contemporary terms, the universalizability test shows that such an immoral maxim cannot be universalized, cannot be coherently willed as a principle for everyone to act on. Regarding duties of love to others, as quoted above, Kant says that a man initially willing to universalize his maxim about not benefiting others must reflect that he will one day stand in need of others’ help, and so recognize that to universalize his maxim would bring him into contradiction with his own desire for help … Each rational being is to think for himself or herself and to exercise self-determination—not to let external authorities or emotions determine one’s decisions and actions. The point is not that one is forbidden to get ideas from others, or that emotions are evil, but that one must not act on such ideas or motives unthinkingly … In the course of his discussion of respect for persons in the Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant attached a notorious footnote criticizing the golden rule. He gives several reasons why the conventionally formulated rule cannot be the supreme principle of morality: “Let it not be thought that the trivial Quod tibi non vis fieri, etc. [what you do not will to be done to you] can here serve as a standard or principle. For it is merely derived from our principle, although with several limitations. It cannot be a universal law, for it contains the ground neither of duties to oneself nor of duties of love toward others (for many a man would gladly consent that others should not benefit him, if only he might be excused from benefiting them). Nor, finally, does it contain the ground of strict duties toward others, for the criminal would on this ground be able to dispute with the judges who punish him; and so on.” … Kant … implied that if a judge were to follow the golden rule in sentencing criminals, it would lead to unjust leniency. If the golden rule makes morality depend upon what the agent imagines he would want if he were in the other’s situation, Kant insisted that morality depends rather on what the agent rationally does judge to be right (e.g., to punish the criminal). The very concept of moral duty, which all recognize, implies that duty is distinct from what one feels like doing, or from what one wants others to do to oneself. Not desire, but principled thinking determines what is right … According to Kant, the golden rule cannot be a supreme moral principle, first, because … [t]he categorical imperative pertains to laws of how everyone should treat everyone (including themselves), whereas the golden rule apparently pertains only to the way agents should treat their recipients … The simplest of Kant’s objections is that the golden rule does not cover the category of duties to oneself, for example, the duty to cultivate one’s potentials toward perfection or to respect oneself in one’s actions.

Crucially, Wattles writes, “Kant was not altogether content with simply affirming human dignity as an axiom, and his proof of human dignity may be challenged … [T]he fact that I respect myself and the fact that you respect yourself do not, taken together, prove that I should respect you.”

So under what circumstances should people’s individual actions and larger life projects be respected? And how should the answer to that question affect government powers and policy? That will be the subject of my next essay.