Charles R. Lightner

The so-called Platinum Rule was derived from a comment made by the philosopher Karl Popper in a footnote appearing in his book “The Open Society and Its Enemies” (1945, Routledge). In that note he comments that the Golden Rule might be improved upon by stating that we should “do unto others, wherever possible, as they would be done by..." Labeling that idea as platinum implies t...

Afterlife beliefs can powerfully influence human behavior. Actions that might seem inexplicable without knowledge of such beliefs can sometimes be easily understood, and even seem quite logical, when viewed in the appropriate context. The major golden rule scholars essentially ignore this issue. I suspect that is because they share the principal elements of a Christian afterlife belie...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...