Golden Rule introduction
1
The Golden Rule: One or Many, Gold or Glitter?
Children are taught to respect parents and other authorities. Adolescents are urged to control their impulses. Adults are told to conduct themselves in accord with certain moral and ethical standards. Morality may seem to be just an affair of imposition, a cultural voice that says No in various ways to our desires. To be sure, there are times when the word No must be pronounced and enforced. But time and again, people have discovered something more to morality, something rooted in life itself. The No is but one word of the voice of life, a voice that has other words. One of these other words is the golden rule--Do to others as you want others to do to you. This book is about the life in that principle.
One or many?
What could be easier to grasp intuitively than the golden rule? It has such an immediate intelligibility that it offers a ladder 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 rule calls me to be considerate of others rather than indulging in self-centeredness. 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 jury to put themselves in the shoes of her client. A manual of professional ethics, noting that particular rules and interpretations do not cover every situation, exhorts members to treat other professionals with the same consideration and respect that they want for themselves. Formulated in one way or another, the rule is tucked into countless speeches, sermons, documents, and books, on the assumption that that it has a single, clear sense, which the reader knows and approves. In an age where differences so often occasion violence, here, it seems, is something that everyone might be expected to agree on.
Promoting the notion that the golden rule is "taught by all the world's religions," advocates have collected maxims from various traditions, producing lists with entries like the following. "Hinduism: "Do not do to another what is disagreeable to yourself; this is the summary Law."[1] "Islam: 'None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself."[2] The point of these lists is evident: despite the differences in phrasing, all religions acknowledge the same basic, universal moral teaching.[3] Moreover, this principle may be accepted as common ground by secular ethics as well.
Under the microscope of analysis, however, things are not so simple. Different formulations have different implications, and differences in context raise the question of whether the same concept is at work in passages where the wordings are nearly identical. Is the meaning of the rule constant whenever one of these phrases is pronounced? There is persistent debate, for example, about the relative merits of the positive formulation and the negative formulation, "Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you." Nor can the full meaning of a sentence be grasped in isolation. For example, to point to "the golden rule in Confucianism" by quoting a fifteen-word sentence from the Analects of Confucius does not convey the historic dynamism of the rule's evolving social, ethical, and spiritual connotations. What do the words mean in their original context? How prominent is the rule within that particular tradition? Finally, how does the rule function in a particular interaction between the speaker or writer and the listener or intended audience? The rule may function as an authoritative reproach, a pious rehearsal of tradition, a specimen for analytic dissection, or a confession of personal commitment. Is the rule one or many? Can we even properly speak of the golden rule at all?[4] 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 within the brotherhood of Islam. Some Christians regard the rule as a shorthand summary of the morality of Jesus's religion. And countless people think of the rule without any religious associations.
Raising the question about the meanings of the golden rule in different contexts is not intended to reduce similarities to dust and ashes merely by appealing to the imponderable weight of cultural difference. Context is not the last word on meaning, because the sentence expressing the golden rule contributes meaning of its own to its context. Meaning does involve context, but the fact that contexts differ does not prove that there is no commonality of meaning. Language and culture, moreover, are not reliable clues for identifying conceptual similarity and difference, since conceptual harmony is experienced across these boundaries.[5]
The golden rule, happily, has more than a single sense. It is not a static, one-dimensional, flattened-out proposition with a single meaning, ready to be accepted or rejected, defended or refuted. Neither is its multiplicity chaotic. There is enough continuity of meaning in its different uses to justify speaking of the golden rule. 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.
Gold or glitter?
"Gold is where you find it," runs a proverb coined by miners who found what they were seeking in unexpected places. Certain appreciative remarks on the golden rule seem to bear witness to a discovery. Eureka! There is a supreme principle of living! It can be expressed in a single statement!
What sort of ore or alloy or sculpture is the teaching which has been called, since the seventeenth century, "the golden rule"? Is it gold or glitter? Theologian Paul Tillich found the rule an inferior principle: for him, the Biblical commandment to love and the assurance that God is love "infinitely transcend" the golden rule; the problem with the rule is that it "does not tell us what we should wish."[6] By contrast, early references to the rule as "the sum of righteousness" bear a ring of experiential testimony, witnessing to a personal synthesis, a discovery.
Is the rule golden? In other words, is it worthy to be cherished as a rule of living or even as the rule of living? The values of the rule are as much in dispute as its meanings. Most people, it seems, intuitively regard the golden rule as a good principle, and some souls have spoken as though there is within the rule a special kind of agency with the power to transform humankind.
It is understandable that the golden rule has been regarded as the supreme moral principle. I do not want to be murdered, therefore I should not murder another; I do not want my spouse to commit adultery, my property to be stolen, etc., therefore, I should treat others with comparable consideration. Others have comparable interests, and the rule calls me to treat the other as someone akin to myself. Moreover, I realize that I sometimes have desires to be treated in ways that do not represent my considered best judgment, and this reflection makes it obvious that reason is required for the proper application of the golden rule. Finally, in personal relationships, I want to be loved, and, in consequence, the rule directs me to be loving.[7] From the perspective of someone simply interested in living rather than in the construction and critique of theories, the rule has much to recommend it.
Some writers have put the rule on a pedestal, giving the impression that the rule is sufficient for ethics in the sense that no one could ever go wrong by adhering to it or in the sense that all duties may be inferred from it. Others have claimed that the rule is a necessary criterion for right action; in other words, an action must be able to pass the test of the golden rule if it is to be validated as right, and any action that fails the test is wrong. Some philosophers have hoped for an ethical theory that would be self-sufficient (depending on no controversial axioms), perfectly good (invulnerable to counterexamples), and all-powerful (enabling the derivation of every correct moral judgment, given appropriate data about the situation). They have dreamed of sculpting ethics into an independent, rational, deductive system, on the model of geometry, with a single normative axiom. However much may reason hanker for such a system, once the golden rule is taken as a candidate for such an axiom, a minor flexing of the analytic bicep is enough to humiliate it. A single counterexample suffices to defeat a pretender to this throne.
Many scholars today regard the rule as an acceptable principle for popular use but as embarrassing if taken with philosophic seriousness. 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 a tangle. Close examination of the counterexample of the sadomasochist (offered in chapter 13) shows that to use the rule properly requires a certain degree of maturity. The counterexample does not refute the golden rule, properly understood; it rather 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. Where that prerequisite cannot be assumed, problems multiply.
The objections that have been raised against the rule are useful to illustrate misinterpretations of the rule and to make clear assumptions that must be satisfied for the rule to function in moral theory.
It has been objected that the golden rule assumes that human beings are basically alike and thereby [8]fails to do justice to the differences between people. In particular, the rule allegedly implies that what we want is what others want. As George Bernard Shaw quipped, "Don't do to others as you want them to do unto you. Their tastes may be different."[9] 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 imperialism. 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 line of 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 the individual to do whatever he imagines he might wish to have done to him 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, the rule is incapable of guiding judgment in cases where the necessary action is unwelcome to its immediate recipient.
A related problem is that the rule, taken merely as a policy of sympathy, amounts to the advice, "Treat others as they want you to treat them," as in a puzzle from the opening chapter of Herman Melville's Moby Dick where Ishmael is invited by his new friend Queequeg to join in pagan worship. Ishmael pauses to think it over.
But what is worship?--to do the will of God--that is worship. And what is the will of God?--to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me--that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator.[10]
If the golden rule is taken to require the agent to identify with the other in a simplistic and uncritical way, the result is a loss of the higher perspective toward which the rule moves the thoughtful practitioner.
The next clusters of objections have a depth that a quick, initial reply would betray, so I defer my response altogether. If the rule is not to be interpreted as setting up the agent's idiosyncratic desires--or those of the recipient--as a supreme standard of goodness, then problems arise because the rule does not specify what the agent ought to desire. 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. The lack of specificity in the rule, its merely formal or merely procedural character, allegedly renders its guidance insubstantial.
The rule seems to exhibit the limitations of any general moral principle: it does not carry sufficiently rich substantive implications to be helpful in the thicket of life's problems. Even though most people live with some allegiance to integrating principles, action guides, mottoes, proverbs, or commandments which serve to unify the mind, the deficiency of any principle is that it is merely a principle, merely a beginning; only the full exposition of a system of ethics can validate the place of an asserted principle. An appeal to a general principle, moreover, can function as a retreat and a refusal to think through issues in their concreteness.
There is also criticism of a practice widely associated with the rule--imagining oneself in the other person's situation.[11] The charge is that this practice is an abstract, derivative, artificial, male, manipulative device, which can never compensate for the lack of human understanding and spontaneous goodness.
The rule has been criticized as a naively idealistic standard, unsuited to a world of rugged competition. The rule may seem to require that, if I am trustworthy and want to be trusted, I must treat everyone as being equally trustworthy. Furthermore, the broad humanitarianism of the golden rule allegedly makes unrealistic psychological demands; it is unfair to family and friends to embrace the universal concerns of the golden rule.
Last, some religious issues. The golden rule has been criticized for giving the appearance of a teaching which can be fully lived without faith. The rule is the tip of the iceberg whose center of gravity lies deeper, e.g., in Jesus' commandment, "Love one another as I have loved you." The point of spiritual living, moreover, is to get beyond the standpoint of rules. Finally, the golden rule's traditional links to religion have been criticized, since moral intuition and moral reason can operate without reference to any religious foundation.
For responding to objections, there are three possible strategies: abandon the rule, reformulate the rule, or retain the rule as commonly worded, while taking advantage of objections to clarify its proper interpretation. I take the third way.
The nature and scope of this book
To focus on the golden rule is not to begin at the beginning in a philosophy of living. Sound moral decision and action are based on a comprehension of the truth of the situation, and truth has multiple dimensions. To express ideals in a condensed circle, scientific processing of material-factual experience is linked with philosophic reflection on meanings and with spiritual experience of supreme values. Savoring truth in its repletness brings joy and liberty, which stimulate sensitivity to the beauties of nature and the arts (including humor). In the happy case, the artistic doer gains spontaneity by participating in divine goodness, which promotes service on a material level. The present study does not presuppose specific commitments from this broader philosophic context; nevertheless, genuine moral inquiry does presuppose that one reject false freedom, the claim that one has a right to do whatever self-will chooses.
This book is designed to erode familiarity with the golden rule. These chapters provide an evolutionary path to discovery, a series of historical studies of the golden rule in various cultural traditions and in contemporary psychology, philosophy, and religion. The writing of each chapter has been informed by issues at work in other chapters, so each chapter sets part of the background agenda for the others. Special attention is given to (1) the practice of imaginative perspective taking, putting oneself in the other person's situation; (2) the question of spontaneity and self-forgetfulness; (3) philosophical analyses, objections, and responses; (4) virtues associated with the rule; (5) and the theme of human kinship. The rule is usually linked, in one way or another, with the conviction that human beings are somehow akin; and exploring that link is the secondary theme of the book. The concluding chapters propose a revitalized ethics centered around the golden rule. Since the ultimate foundation of this ethics, differently manifest in these histories, is religious, this book is finally an essay in religious ethics.
I have not aimed at encyclopaedic coverage of everything published on the golden rule, but at an integrated look at materials relevant to the rule as a principle in the philosophy of living. The book is also selective in its examination of traditions. 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 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"[12]; "Great Spirit, grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins."[13] That the focus of the book is thus limited does not imply that the virtues symbolized by the golden rule are any less present in traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism that are not discussed here.
There remain possibilities for alternative accounts provided by science-based philosophies, humanistic philosophies, and religious philosophies. These approaches compete partly on their ability to produce an account of what the others emphasize and to include somehow within their own systems of thinking the others' cherished facts, meanings, and values. Thus, science-based philosophies aim to explain altruism in terms of biological and social-psychological categories. Humanists acknowledge the scientific factors and the sometime contribution of religion in motivating altruism, while insisting that human goodness is properly understood and evaluated in strictly human terms. Religionists acknowledge the truths of science and the meanings and values that humanists emphasize, while proposing faith as the access to supreme values and to the source of human kinship.[14] In ideally fair writing, each type of thinker will find the treatment reasonable.
This book presents scientific perspectives in two senses. First, chapter 9 surveys research in psychology. Second, in Part II, Histories of the golden rule, the chapters presenting philosophical and religious interpretations are themselves histories, and the discipline of history functions here as the all-embracing science. These histories aspire to historical objectivity in the following senses. I have tried to keep my redescriptions within bounds acceptable to those whose work is being described, to stay within the ballpark of what specialists in the area could regard as fair (however much they may disagree), and to give information in such a way that the reader who differs can use it to tell a better story. Likewise, the book presents philosophic perspectives in the very structure and texture of the book, by chronicling the ideas of philosophers, by intruding occasional comments in the histories (which are surely, from the standpoint of a professional historian, philosophic histories) and in the concluding exposition, Part III. The same may be said about the religious perspectives discussed and active in the book. I have tried to present information for a general audience in such a way as to facilitate independent judgment. Though the perspective of Christianity is featured more than others, on every key point I give analogous illustrations from other religions as well.
If religious perspectives in ethics are to have a widely acknowledged place in the field of ethics generally, the currently predominant conception of ethics must open up. According to that conception, the purpose of ethics is to help individuals in conflict come to reasoned agreement about moral issues; and since convictions about religion are so intractable, the quest for universal agreement must operate independently of religion. But how can universal agreement be secured on a secularist premise with which a majority of the world's population disagree? All voices, religious and non-religious, need to be part of public dialogue in ethics, since one never knows from what voices the next idea will come to benefit us all.
This book works with concepts of levels of living--emotional, intellectual, and spiritual--and this practice requires a caveat. Talk of levels is justified by the discontinuities in human experience, such that each breakthrough to a new and "higher" level yields new perspective on previously achieved levels. There is an asymmetry, such that from one level one can comprehend lower levels, but not vice-versa. The interrelation of levels, however, is so thorough that one must take care to avoid overemphasizing level talk and to retain a profound sense of the unity of the personality and of the equality of all men and women.
In gathering materials for this inquiry, I searched electronic data bases and indexes for books and articles on the golden rule in English, German, and French, in philosophy, religion, and the social sciences. In psychology I sought out literature on empathy, sympathy, and altruism. Even within the traditions on which I have focused, the reader will notice gaps which, in part, reflect the gaps in the literature on the golden rule that I have been able to locate and read.[15]
Concerning the practice of reforming language to make explicit the essential truth of the equality of women and men, though I have migrated from the complacent habits of an earlier generation, I make occasional use of the phrase, "the brotherhood of man." "The siblinghood of humankind" has the necessary familial connotations, and I use it occasionally to break down the reader's sense of the artificiality of the term. "The kinship of humankind" comes close; but I do not banish the older phrase, which elicits intuitive understanding and much favorable recognition around the world. Nor do I hesitate to reproduce the terminology of an earlier period, whatever its conscious or unconscious associations with sexism may have been, though I try to avoid "languageism"--taking an author's terminology as sufficient ground for accusation.
Overview
This study gathers meanings of the golden rule by examining it in the contexts of issues focused on by particular cultural traditions and academic disciplines. The histories in Part II are organized roughly in chronological sequence. The evolution traced here is not a simple progression from inchoate barbarism to civilized magnificence. Origins are not so crude as may be imagined. Some of the steps along the way are ambiguous. And by the end of a story, much of the best is in the past. Nonetheless, a synoptic perspective may discern progress underway. Part III, containing the last two chapters, proposes a reconstructed ethics organized around the rule.
Chapter 2 tells of the Confucian golden rule, embedded in an ethics of character achievement, where the virtues are relational and centered in the family. On this foundation, beneficence extends, ultimately, to all humankind. The ideals are clear, and keen self-discipline is mobilized in pursuit of these ideals. The goal, however, is not conscientious conformity to norms but spontaneous living. This chapter focuses on the role of the golden rule in the movement to spontaneity.
Chapter 3 traces the gradual emergence of the golden rule in ancient Greece and Rome, where the first problem was to disentangle the rule from the popular sophistry of common practices and maxims of reciprocity and retaliation, helping friends and harming enemies. This chapter tells how, as the popular and sophistic use of the rule was set aside, the universal scope of the golden rule gained recognition.
Chapter 4 deals with occurrences of the golden rule in early Jewish literature. By the first century, Rabbi Hillel could propose the rule as a summary of the entire Torah. This chapter explores the evolution that made it possible for the rule to function in that way.
Chapter 5 explores the rule in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The writers of the New Testament faced the problem of distinguishing the rule from conventional notions of reciprocity and retaliation and the problem of connecting the rule with the elevated standards of Jesus' life and teachings. This chapter shows why the most reasonable understanding of the rule in these contexts distinguishes different levels of interpretation.
Chapters 6 and 7 discuss the European middle ages and early modern period, highlighting theologians Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther; English religious writers of the seventeenth century; and philosophers Samuel Clarke, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill. At the beginning of the period, the golden rule was widely regarded as an important statement of "natural law," recognized by the human mind without having to rely on special revelation or divine grace. Two problems with the golden rule begin to stimulate writers during this period. First, what difference does the presence or absence of religious faith make to the practice of the rule? Second, how is one to respond to objections to the golden rule?
Chapter 8 tells of the heyday of the golden rule as a popular slogan in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the religious leaders, politicians, and businessmen highlighted in this chapter, the challenge to the golden rule was not theoretical. Rather, in the rough competition of the age, when need for reforms was obvious and uncertainties about wealth and poverty were pressing, what sort of human response would prevail? Amid the spectrum of possible answers, ranging from ruthless self-aggrandizement to mystic renunciation, Social Darwinism posed a vigorous challenge to Christianity. In what cases would the golden rule, cherished by many as the principle of the practice of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, validate itself as a superior principle of evolution, rather than a naive recipe for economic and political suicide?
Chapter 9 brings together psychological perspectives on the golden rule. Several theorists, including Piaget, Kohlberg, and Erikson, discuss the golden rule as part of a theory of a developmental sequence of stages. In addition, clinical and experimental psychology has generated results that are helpful in the application of the rule.
Chapters 10 and 11 examine the golden rule in twentieth century philosophy, focusing on a number of related questions. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the rule taken strictly as a principle of consistency in moral judgment? What do philosophers have to say about empathy and the imaginative role reversal? What implications for interpreting the rule are there in the contemporary heightening of awareness of the otherness of the other person?
Chapter 12 relates contemporary interpretations of the rule in religious philosophy and theology. How is practicing the rule to lead to the positive transformation of one's desires? What levels of meaning are implicit in the rule? Does the spiritual practice of the rule aid in the solution of moral problems? How does the rule function--ideally--within the Christian community? The chapter closes with a contemporary Baha'i interpretation of the rule.
Part III, The golden rule in ethics, sets forth a philosophical and religious context for the replete practice of the rule. The resulting ethics honors moral intuition, sharpens intuition through moral thinking, acknowledges the complex, social context of interaction, and leads the practitioner beyond duty-conscious rule-following to loving spontaneity.
[1]. This passage is found, according to an internet communication from Julian Woods, in Mahabharata 5.39.57. Woods records that a second and third occurence are found in the Shantiparvan at 12.251: "Knowing how painful it is to himself, a person should never do to others which he dislikes when done to him by others"; in the same section there is, "A person should not himself do that act which, if done by another, would call down his censure." Finally, at 13.113 "One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one's own self."
In addition, the works of Leonidas Johannes Philippidis (1929, 1933) remain fine resources for interpreting the various meanings of the golden rule in the contexts of the major world religions. Philippidis 1929 cites the German translation by Paul Deussen and Otto Strauss with their own system of numbering. "Do not do to anyone what you would not like another to do to you; that is the sum of the law; every other law is valid as you like" (gilt nach Belieben) (Book 5, verse 1517-1518). "The knowing person is minded to treat all beings as himself" (12.9923; p. 483,10). "He who loves life himself, how can he kill another? What he wishes for himself, let him care also for the other in this regard (dafuer sorge er auch bei den anderen). How can a person who lies with another man's wife reproach anyone?" (Book 12, 9250-51; p. 415,22). "Let no one do to another what he does not want done to himself; this is the sum of righteousness" (13.5571). Philippidis also gives Yajnavalkya III, 65: "The cause of virtue is not partiality; virtue only arises when practiced. Therefore, let no one do to another what he would not welcome." I have also found references to Anusasana Parva 113.8 and Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2.2.
[2]. This quotation is taken from the Hadith, or Traditions, records of the sayings and practices of Mohammad and his earliest followers. These traditions have a lesser authority for Muslims than that of the Qur'an; the Hadith cited here (by H. D. T. Rost) is from the collection, An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith 13, p. 56). Rost also cites the following passage from the Qur'an: "Woe to those . . . who, when they have to receive by measure from men, exact full measure, but when they have to give by measure or weight to men, give less than due" (Surah 83, "The Unjust," verses 1-4). The Qur'an also celebrates those who "show their affection to such as came to them for refuge and entertain no desire in their hearts for things given to the (latter), but give them preference over themselves . . ." (Surah 59, "Exile," verse 9). In addition, he records that tradition attributes these statements to Mohammad (1) "Seek for mankind that of which you are desirous for yourself, that you may be a believer; treat well as a neighbor the one who lives near you, that you may be a Muslim [one who submits to God]." (2) "That which you want for yourself, seek for mankind." (3) "The most righteous of men is the one who is glad that men should have what is pleasing to himself, and who dislikes for them what is for him disagreeable." According to Rost, the last four quotations are numbers 14, 21, 63, and 306 in the Sukhanan-i-Muhammad (Teheran, 1938, cited in Donaldson 1963, 82).
I am grateful to Abrahim H. Khan of the University of Toronto for sharing an unpublished paper, "The Golden Rule as Moral Bedrock in Religious History?" including a section on Islam. Following Alvin Gouldner's functionalist approach, Khan proposed that the golden rule has conduced to social cohesion in religous communities whose forms of life are so different that the rule cannot be regarded as a universal principle with common meaning. Nevertheless, the rule promotes social cohesion in all societies, which require reciprocity (the exchange of benefits), beneficience (to those, such as the very young and the very old, who cannot repay benefits), and moral absolutism (the dangerous demand for conformity with the social norms). Khan finds the functions of the golden rule expressed in the moral institution of Hisba, integral to socio-economic fairness in Islamic society. He also cites the constitution that Muhammad worked out in Medina for all groups, Muslim and Jewish, to have rights and responsibilities to cooperate in the defense of their city; and he cites Muhammad's last testament to his community, given shortly before he died, in which he concluded with a reminder that Muslims are all brothers. Islamic morality, however, is first and foremost an affair of obedience to divine command, and he cites from Ibn al-'Arabi's "Instructions to a Postulant," "All the commandments are summed up in this, that whatever you will like the True One to do to you, that do to His creatures, step by step" (found in Jeffery 1962, 647).
[3]. One example of the golden rule from Buddhism is, "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful" (Udana-Varga, 5.18). Additional references include the Sutta Nipata 705; Samyutta Nikaya 353; the Dhammapada 129-130; the Acarangasutra 5.101-2; Majjhima Nikaya i.415.
The Jainist Sutrakritanga, 1.10.13, contains the admonition that one should "treat all beings as he himself would be treated."
The standard citation from Zoroastrianism is from the Dadistan-i-Dinik (94.5): "That nature only is good which shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self."
A Christian writer, Garcilaso de la Vega (1961, p. 9) reported of the Inca leader, Manco Capac, that he taught his subjects that "each one should do unto others as he would have others do unto him" (cited in Alton 111).
[4]. I owe the sharp recognition of this problem to Bruce Alton, An Examination of the Golden Rule, pp. 14-19. This unpublished dissertation (Stanford University, 1966) is outstanding in both comparative historical and analytic philosophic virtues. Alton, now at the Trinity College in the University of Toronto, has in many ways been of help to my own work.
[5]. Indeed, the very effort to make clear the importance of differences presupposes that differences can be understood. The cultural barriers are explained in a single language, and the listener/reader is expected to understand both sides of the "divide." Moreover not every intercultural discovery is a discovery of difference. These ideas are developed in several essays contained in Larson and Eliot's Interpreting Across Boundaries. In the interfaith dialogue movement, participants have sometimes remarked that they feel more in common with kindred minds or kindred spirits of other religions than with those in their own tradition who are resistant to dialogue.
[6]. Paul Tillich, The New Being, 30-32, cited in William E. Phipps 1982.
[7]. Some writers, alienated by the sentimental or Christian connotations of the word love, prefer the term "caring"; others speak of doing good to others.
[9]. Shaw 1930, 217. From the appendix to Man and Superman, "Maxims for Revolutionists."
[10]. Melville 1979, 54. As Bruce Alton pointed out, a deeper problem is raised by this story on account of the wide cultural difference between the two characters. How is it possible to apply the golden rule across such a barrier without falling either into cultural imperialism or naive cultural relativism? The progressive interpretations of the rule provide a bulwark against both extremes, but it would be folly to claim that even a marvelously conceived principle would, in and of itself, dissolve such knotty problems.
[11]. To clarify imaginative perspective-taking, a couple of examples will serve. "Remember, our Indian colleague coming for dinner is a Hindu; think how she would feel if we served beef." Immediately one grasps the point. Oh, yes, of course, one will not serve beef. No foray of imaginative speculation has been undertaken about how one would feel about being served objectionable food. Given the habit of consideration for friends, what suffices is a simple reminder about the Hindu restriction on beef. The thinking is in accord with the golden rule, though no reversal of roles has occurred.
In a second case, Alicia promises Margo that she will call her after work. By the time she gets home, Alicia is very tired and doesn't feel like calling Margo. As she sinks down on the couch, she takes a moment to rethink her disinclination to call her friend. She realizes that Margo will worry that something may have happened to her on the way home, and she thinks to herself, "I know how I would feel if Margo didn't call me after having promised to do so." Alicia thus momentarily imagines a sketch of such a scenario and lets herself experience, in a preliminary way, the feelings associated with the imagined situation. This imagining, which only lasts a few seconds, brings to mind thoughts of the uncertainties of urban life and the vulnerability of women. Margo's probable concern becomes vividly understandable. Alicia gets up and places the call. In a third case, Alicia knows that Margo is easily provoked to extreme worry; here the role reversal might involve Alicia's imagining, not how she herself would feel, but how upset Margo would be if the expected phone call did not arrive. These last two cases illustrate the two standard variations of the imaginative role reversal used with a single recipient.
[12]. Cited in Hertzler 1934, 419, quoting C. C. Claridge, Wild Bush Tribes of Tropical Africa (no publication data given), pp. 248 and 259; included in Alton 1966, 111. Claridge also relates that the Ba-Congo have a general formulation of the golden rule: "O man, what you do not like, do not to your fellows." An internet search by Harry Gensler turned up a Yoruba proverb from Nigeria: "One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts."
[13]. I am grateful to Sioux Harvey for gathering this information. There are many versions of this prayer or motto, and no original author can be identified. The quotation given in the text derives from the St. Francis Indian Mission, where Rev. R. M. Denmaier has testified that this statement is important especially among the Indians of the northern plains. The World Treasury of Religious Quotations includes, "Great Spirit, Help me never to judge another until I have walked two months in his moccasins." Another version, cited in the International Thesaurus of Quotations, and provided by the National Council of Churches, Indian Committee, runs as follows: "Don't judge any man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins"--a quotation free of "miles" and "months," both European measures. A final version contains variables: "Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile (or a hundred miles) in his shoes (or moccasins)."
[14]. It is not my intent to suggest a limited model of religion here, at least in terms of my use of the term "faith." Wilfrid Cantwell Smith in Faith and Belief has adequately shown the significance and operation of faith in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity.
[15]. I have located, but not been able to read, writings in Hebrew and Finnish.