Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton, distinguished scholars and prolific authors, edited a volume of papers prepared for a conference on the Golden Rule in 2008. Fourteen papers were collected in a book titled “The Golden Rule: The Ethics of Reciprocity in World Religions”, which is impressive in both breadth and depth of analysis.
I will address a number of issues raised in several of the papers in future posts specific to those papers but I want to revisit a point I’ve made previously, which is raised by a reference in the Neusner-Chilton book in a paper by Professor Mark A. Csikszentmihalyi titled “The Golden Rule in Confucianism”.
In that paper, the author cites two arguments by authorities who argue that the distinction between the “positive versus negative” versions of the Golden Rule or, stated differently, between the Golden Rule and the Silver Rule, are essentially illusory.
The author quotes Heiner Roetz from “Confucian Ethics in an Axial Age” as follows:
“…the ethically essential abstraction represented by the Golden Rule, the establishment of a reciprocal relation between the self and the other is also established by the negative version…”
And, an argument by the philosopher David S. Nivison who wrote in “Golden Rule Arguments in Chinese Moral Philosophy”:
“Not doing something to another is always, under another description, doing something to that person and conversely. Indeed, the conflict between the “golden” and “silver” rules seems to largely disappear once the need to assert the superiority of one system is put aside.”
(See pages 164-165 of Neusner-Chilton for specific source citations).
I would argue with these scholars, as I do with Harry Gensler, who makes the same point, that it is NOT true that the formulations we typically call the Golden and Silver Rules are simply logically reciprocal statements of the same principle.
While we might be able to make that case by manipulating symbols in a logic equation, the essential point that is missed, it seems to me, is that the counterparty specification must be different in the analysis of the two cases.
What do I mean by “counterparty”.
The position taken by Gensler, Nivison, Roetz and others, seems to me to imply a relationship between or among specific affected individuals. It is only if the definition of the parties affected is unchanged that the evaluation of the logic as they propose can be valid.
But the parties involved in any specific instance of application are not unchanged.
If I undertake to DO something, vis a vis another person or group, the effect is (unintended consequences aside) specific to that person or group.
On the other hand, if I undertake to withhold action as a general principle of behavior: for instance, I will not commit slander; the effect of my adopting that general principle of behavior is not specific to any person or group. The set of counterparties affected by my restraint from action is essentially all human beings.
It might be argued that my decision to refrain from slander will become relevant only when the opportunity to commit slander arises and I refrain from it. Therefore, the counterparty argument would fail, since a specific situation is required for my decision to have substance.
In effect, this argument would make my adoption of any moral or ethical restriction valueless in the absence of a specific opportunity to transgress.
I don’t think that is the appropriate analysis, though.
My decision to take action that affects another, based on what scholars of the Golden Rule generally concede is a self-referential standard; subject to both the risk of unintended consequences and the risk that the counterparty might be actually opposed to the action I take; is fundamentally different from my adoption of a decision to avoid, in general and unrestricted terms, a certain kind of behavior or action.
It is too easy, in my opinion, to say that the two rules are really the same thing in different language. One thing the collection of papers in the Neusner-Chilton book makes clear is that over the course of many centuries and across the globe, in both ethical and religious traditions, the “silver” rule is found much more frequently than the “golden” one.
I don’t think that is accidental.
I have yet to find an instance in which application of the “negative” formulation has caused the sort of damage that has sometimes resulted from the misguided actions of those who have assumed their right to impose their own values and views on their neighbors.
In the same paper, the author cites another scholar, Robert E. Allinson, as one who “argues that the ‘negative’ formulation is superior”:
“If I am to avoid harming another (Allison writes), it does not follow that I should attempt to impose a political system on him that I desire for myself.”
Allison was reacting in part to a “missionary imperative” he found in the writings of another philosopher who considered the “positive” statement superior.
My point here is not that one version is superior to another.
My point is that they are not the same.
They differ in a meaningful way and the difference should be acknowledged and considered in evaluating them and in evaluating potential action based on them.
©Charles R. Lightner