I’ve been interested for a long time in the implications of the two principal statements of the Ethic of Reciprocity.
The Golden Rule is usually stated as:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
In western culture it is usually said to be based on the injunction in Leviticus 19:18: (and again in verse 34)
“…Love your neighbor as yourself…”
Or in the Christian tradition in Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31, etc.
But in one form or another, the Ethic of Reciprocity can be found in all major religions and ethical systems from the most ancient to the modern.
Golden Rule statements can be found in ancient Chinese writings, in the Sanskrit tradition, in Ancient Greece and Rome, in Islam and others.
It is interesting, however, that the more frequently encountered statement of the Ethic is not that in its Golden Rule form; the form of the western Christian tradition.
The Ethic of Reciprocity is more often found in its negative form.
Judaism’s typical version is attributed (BT Shabbat 31a) to Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who said:
“That which is hateful to you, do not do to another.“
Stated in the negative, the Ethic is sometimes called The Silver Rule.
Silver Rule statements can be found in the writings of Ancient Egypt, of Confucius, of Hinduism, Buddhism and in others including non-religious philosophies such as Humanism.
I have written and spoken about the implications of these two different approaches to the Ethic but I’ve been drawn back to the subject as I’ve thought about the polarization that is so evident and so potentially destructive in current political and social conversation.
It seems to me that the positive versus negative approaches to reciprocity can help to explain the conflict between progressive and conservative approaches to interaction at levels from the individual to the international. And that having an ethical vocabulary on which to base discussions of differences might help to cool the currently overheated discourse.
As I have continued to study the historical positions of various national, philosophical and religious groups, though, I’ve found two things that make this project both more complex and more interesting:
1. There are cases in which a given tradition includes both Golden Rule and Silver Rule statements.
In Christianity, for example, which is clearly a “Golden Rule” tradition, we also find (Tobit 4:15) “Do to no one what you yourself dislike”, which is a Silver Rule statement. (There are other examples.)
In Islam, a single saying of Muhammad contains both versions: “As you would have people do to you, do to them; and what you dislike to be done to you, don’t do to them.”
The ability of a single ethical system to embrace both the positive and the negative versions of reciprocity requires consideration of the situations in which each one might be appropriate. Could one approach be the “better” one in a certain kind of situation and the other preferable in a different case?
I think the answer has to be, yes.
2, There is a third approach to reciprocity that has come to be called the Platinum Rule. It was proposed in a 1945 book by the Austrian-British philosopher, Karl Popper, who wrote: “The golden rule is a good standard which can perhaps even be improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they would be done by…”
Or, as it has been restated:
“Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.“
This approach is not actually reciprocal. It doesn’t consider what the doer might want or find attractive; but it is the most purely altruistic of the three formulations.
It also requires a level of understanding of the other that neither Gold nor Silver requires. Gold requires only that I know what I would like. Silver requires only that I know what I would not like.
Platinum requires that I somehow know what you would like. And that adds a very different element to the analysis.
So, in this series of posts I want to investigate the possibility that a “three metals” approach can be useful in explaining the source of our current political and social polarization.
copyright: Charles R. Lightner, all rights reserved