The subject of this comment is out of order but it’s one that has been on my mind this week so I’ll interrupt the planned flow of posts on the Ethic of Three Metals to make a point.
Kant suggests (in loose paraphrase) that we judge all our actions against his proposed standard: is this action expressive of a principle that I would have universally applied in all times, places and situations?
As I’ve been working on this idea: the notion that the Silver, Gold and Platinum rules represent a progression that is, or should be, expressive of our degree of certainty regarding the desires or objective well-being of those affected; a phrase keeps coming to mind:
By what right?
Everything we do impacts someone, even if only ourselves. In some cases, we are aware that a certain person or persons will be affected: and that might well be our intention. In other cases, we might be affecting others without knowing or intending to affect them.
For the purposes of analyzing the larger question, I propose that we limit the issue to conscious acts taken with the knowledge that another person or persons will be affected.
I think that is consistent with the ideas of “doing unto others” and even of “not doing unto others” because, even in the negative Silver Rule formulation, the effect of an action on others is a critical element of decision-making.
So, having restricted the universe of actions in that way, how do we formulate the question in a way that is as global as Kant’s.
I think the question that needs to be asked when an individual contemplates an action that will affect others is:
By what right am I taking, or contemplating, this action?
A person might have the right to act in certain relationships because that person is a parent, for instance, or acting for or in the place of parent.
A person might attain the right to act in certain circumstances because of explicit agreement. Certain rights to influence others are conveyed by marriage, by employment, by accepting the conditions of a license from the state, by accepting the rules of a voluntary group, by contract, by election or selection, etc.
A person might attain the right to act in certain circumstance by implicit agreement. The rights to assist one in trouble or in danger are invoked by implicit societal right, for example. We acknowledge the right of a doctor to treat an unconscious patient, for example, or the right of an adult to help a child, or of a person to intervene to protect or assist one being attacked or otherwise imperiled.
Those rights, while not without complication and nuance, are relatively easy to identify and will be generally acknowledged as valid.
The question that concerns me arises in situations in which an individual or group determines to act in a way that they know will affect others, either directly or indirectly, in the absence of: a) the agreement of the affected party, b) a relationship that clearly conveys a right, c) an explicit grant of right, or d) an implicit but recognizable right.
My suggestion of an analysis based on the ethics stated or implied by three “metallic” rules is that our rights to act in a way that affects others will fall on a continuum. That continuum is defined by:
a) the Silver Rule, at one end, i.e. do not do to others that which is hateful to you, and
b) the Platinum Rule, at the other end, i.e. do unto others as they would have you do.
The Silver Rule can be followed in all cases; when the other is as close to us as a family member or as distant as a person across the continent whom we have never and will never meet.
The Platinum Rule can only be followed when we are so close to the affected person that we can be highly confident that we know what that person would want us to do, or the individual has made his wishes unambiguously known. No matter how close we are to someone, no absolute knowledge of another’s wishes, absent an explicit communication, can ever be assured. “Highly confident” still leaves room for error and that room for error should be cautionary.
The Golden Rule falls in the problematic center range of the continuum. The Golden Rule is formulated in the imperative “Do unto others” language, as is the Platinum Rule. But its reference point is the desire of the one “doing” rather than the desire of the one “done to”. Its implicit license to act on another without necessarily either consulting or knowing the other makes it a tricky rule to actually practice.
The question: “By What Right?” will be a central one as we resume the thread of this analysis.
©Charles R. Lightner