Topics Ethics

Question The golden rule teaches that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto you. To what aspects of life does the golden rule apply to? If a person believes that they would never ask for charity no matter how dire their situation justified according to the golden rule in not giving money to charity? Is it possible that an exaggerated belief in ones self-sufficiency is simply a way to hypocritically evade the demands of the golden rule?

Accepted:
February 16, 2011

Comments

The Golden Rule needs to be treated carefully, as you are in effect pointing out. As a formulation of a moral principle it's at best a rule of thumb. One obvious problem is that overly-specific interpretations don't work. An example: suppose John is terrified of public speaking. He would like never to be asked to give a speech. Does that mean that if John accepts the Golden Rule, he should never ask anyone to give a speech? Presumably not. After all, suppose Rachel loves giving speeches, is good at it, and John is part of a group of people who need a speech on a topic Rachel could talk about. It would be very odd to say that fidelity to the Golden Rule would call for John not asking Rachel to give the speech.

So the first point is that following the Golden Rule doesn't call for treating one's idiosyncrasies as having some general moral significance.

Now let's turn to the self-sufficient person of your example. Is their aversion to taking charity a mere psychological peculiarity? Or is it that they genuinely think there's something wrong with charity? If it's the second, then fidelity to the Golden Rule would call for them not to offer it to others -- whether or not that's a morally reasonable position. But notice: this is what Golden Rule thinking would have them say even if they suspect that they may not be as self-sufficient as they'd like to think.

And so the second point is that accepting Golden Rule reasoning is different from making predictions about how one might or might not act in a given situation. After all, I might think that the Golden Rule calls on me to act in a certain way, and I might also fear that I don't have the strength of character to do it.

So what's really at stake with the Golden Rule? The most promising way to think of it is as a sort of "shoe were on the other foot" principle. If you think it would be wrong for someone to treat you in a certain way, given your situation, then you should agree that it's wrong for you to treat others that way if they're in the same situation. The fact that John hates making speeches but Rachel loves it is a difference in their situations, and it might be relevant: asking John to give a speech might cause him needless distress. I think it would be wrong for someone to cause me needless distress, and so I agree that it's also wrong to do that to John. However, "thinking it wrong" is different from mere personal peculiarity. The fact that Sally has a quirky aversion to receiving charity might be a reason not to offer it to her. But Sally isn't violating the Golden Rule if she offers charity to Roger, who has no such aversion and who could really use the help.

The general point, then, is that Golden Rule thinking asks us to abstract from our own quirks. It's asking us to act in ways that we think would still be acceptable if the tables were turned. The "as you would have them do unto you" is about what you would find acceptable if you were in the situation of the person your actions will affect. In an important sense, it's not just about you.

The final bit is that it's even more abstract than this makes it sound. Presumably no one wants to go to prison, for example. That doesn't mean that sending someone to prison violates the Golden Rule. I think that it would be acceptable to send me to prison if I robbed a bank, even though I know I wouldn't like going to prison.

By now it should be clear that this is actually a very large topic. What's been said here skips over a good deal that a more careful discussion would have to address, and blurs some distinctions that matter. But I hope it throws at least some light on your question.