30 Oct 2017

Direct Path Project, Judaic Topics
The Direct Path to knowledge of our true nature, which is often called enlightenment, is not actually a path. As the modern non-dual teacher and philosopher Rupert Spira points out, if we think we are on a path we have already missed the mark. The idea of a path suggests that there is a distance to be traveled. Stand up, he suggests, and take a step toward yourself. You can no more do...
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27 Oct 2017

Ethics Project
I’ve been working for some time on the question of the influence of afterlife beliefs because I have been struck by the lack of comment on that subject by Golden Rule scholars. Strongly held beliefs about the fate of person after death can have major influence on their actions, desires and motivations. If you have strong beliefs and I don’t know about them I might badly misunderstand ...
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26 Oct 2017

Ethics Project
Many scholars and, I suspect, many teachers and clergy have adopted an unfortunate means of distinguishing between the two statements that we can describe as “do” versus “don’t do”. The “do” statement is typically given in such terms as: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The “don’t do” statement is typically given in such terms as: “That which is hateful to...
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26 Oct 2017

Ethics Project
In the literature of Golden Rule thinking there are two principle points of departure. The first simply assumes an agreement between the author and his readers on what the rule actually is. We all just know, don’t we? The second approach implicitly acknowledges that the subject is more complicated than that and tackles the problem of specific definition. Assuming away the proble...
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13 Oct 2017

Ethics Project, Judaic Topics
The Five Books of Moses address the subject of the ger (the stranger) in dozens of passages. One passage among them is unusual: Deuteronomy 10:18 provides: “You (plural) shall love the stranger (singular) because you (plural) were strangers (plural) in the land of Egypt.” In this passage the injunction is love of the stranger, or the ger (spelled gimmel resh in Hebrew) This is and ...
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06 Oct 2017

Ethics Project
I’ve written on the issue of intention in several prior posts. I’ve just read a paper by Daniel Berthold of Bard College in which he compares the views of Kant, the Utilitarians and Freud on the Golden Rule. Berthold lays out the problems with the Golden Rule as seen by Freud and the answers to those problems as understood by Kant and by the original utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham and J...
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02 Oct 2017

Ethics Project
Bruce Chilton writes in his paper, "Jesus, the Golden Rule and Its Application": “Love of God and love of neighbor were basic principles embedded in the Torah. Jesus’ innovation lay in his claim that the two were indivisible. Love of God was love of neighbor, and vice versa” “He (Jesus) linked the Rule to the transformed society the prophets had predicted.” “Because the neighbor...
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28 Sep 2017

Ethics Project
Professor Csikszentmihalyi, now of UC Berkley, contributed the paper on Confucianism to the Neusner-Chilton volume. He makes it clear at the outset that the questions asked of the writers for this volume have no clear-cut answers in Confucian thought, history or interpretation. “The most commonly cited examples of the Golden Rule in China are from the Analects…of Confucius…Jesuit m...
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27 Sep 2017

Ethics Project
Richard H. Davis, prolific author and professor of religion at Bard College wrote the contribution to the Neusner-Chilton volume that addresses the Golden Rule in Hinduism. He is careful in titling his paper to signal that a single sentence that appears in a much larger and complex literary work must be viewed in the context in which it is found. Davis identifies a passage from the...
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25 Sep 2017

Ethics Project
The Neusner-Chilton volume contains two papers on the Golden Rule in Buddhism. The second is by Professor Charles Hallisey, then of the University of Wisconsin, who, like Scheible, concentrates on the south-Asia Theravada tradition. Hallisey prefaces his analysis with the acknowledgement that the historical and cultural diversity of the Buddhist tradition makes: “...a single genera...
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