Note: This is part 2 of a series on morality and ethics. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7 (plus additional posts on hypocrisy and free will). The entire series makes up the fourth chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).

 

The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule has been around for thousands of years, with forms of it being taught in Ancient Egypt,1 Greece,2 and China.3 The negative form frames the rule in terms of what you should not do:

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.4

Jesus taught the most famous version of the positive version, telling us what we should do:

Do to others as you would have them do to you.5

The negative form of the rule, though, is contained within the positive. Doing to others also includes not doing to others.

George Bernard Shaw criticized the Golden Rule because it does not take into account that our preferences might be different from others’.6 This is a valid criticism, but most people really following the Golden Rule will already take into account others’ preferences because they will want others to take their preferences into account.7 This is not always obvious just from hearing the Golden Rule, though, and philosopher Karl Popper offered an interesting reformulation of it to make this point clearer:

[Do] unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by.8

The Golden Rule is a major part of how we think about ethics and morality, and has been for more than 2,000 years. But Popper’s inclusion of “wherever possible” hints at a flaw: what if you (or the other person) desire evil or immoral things? In a vacuum, the Golden Rule would appear to require immoral acts toward others, so long as the other person desired it. What if Alice wants Bill to kill her? And what if Bill wants to kill Alice too? Does this magically make it moral for Bill to kill Alice? Can the Golden Rule transform murder into a moral act?

Thus, Immanuel Kant criticized the Golden Rule because “on this principle the criminal might argue against the judge who punishes him”.9 In other words, the convicted criminal being sentenced could argue to the judge that the Golden Rule requires his release, since the judge himself would not want to be sentenced to prison. Even if the judge were a deeply moral person who would want to be sentenced for a crime he had committed, Shaw’s and Popper’s reformulation would appear to require respect for the criminal’s preferences and thus compel his release.

Another problem with the Golden Rule is that it does not mention the need for reciprocity in our altruism. We briefly discussed in the last chapter the problem of freeriders and sociopaths taking advantage of the altruism of others. In the face of repeated attempts at exploitation from free­riders, how can altruistic behavior persist in human populations? The answer is reciprocal altruism. We start out with a default of guarded benevolence—our initial inclination is generally to respond to someone kindly, but if that person mistreats us or takes advantage of us, we reciprocate. We cease our altruistic behaviors, and we respond to that person’s mistreatment in kind with our own defensive negative and selfish behavior. If, however, the other person responds positively to us, we also respond in kind again, and we enter a cycle of increasing, and then eventually stable, altruism towards each other. In this way, we can punish freeriders, prevent them from taking advantage of our generosity, and ensure that only those people who are also willing to act with altruism will get the benefit of our own continued altruism.

In simulations and games designed to test human interactions, people who engage in reciprocal altruism do better than those who play entirely selfishly or those who play entirely selflessly. Reciprocal altruism is usually the best strategy in most human interactions. Yet, the Golden Rule fails to explicitly take into account the need for reciprocal altruism.

The requirements of the Golden Rule thus must be limited by other moral considerations. It cannot stand on its own as the only foundation of all morality. It is most definitely one of the foundations of morality, but not the only one. In day-to-day life, reasonable people implicitly understand that there are limits to the Golden Rule such that judges can still sentence criminals to prison; that murder is still wrong, even if the murderer and the victim consent to it; and that there are limits to our moral obligations to others.

Any reasonable person practicing the positive formulation of the Golden Rule takes into account all of these criticisms. The Golden Rule is really a shorthand for something like this:

Do to others as you would have them do to you, including doing to others, where possible and moral, what they would want done to them. Cease so doing to others who fail to reciprocate. Do not do to others that which is harm­ful to them, that which wrongfully interferes with their autonomy or accountability, that which would harm third parties or the community, or that which would cause you to act immorally.

The Categorical Imperative and Deontological Ethics

The problems with the Golden Rule bring us to our first modern school of ethics. Kant’s solution to the Golden Rule’s shortcomings was his Categorical Imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”.10

In some ways, the Categorical Imperative improves on the Golden Rule, solving its problem with how to deal with the immoral idiosyncratic preferences of individuals. Kant’s rule has its own problems, though, such as the “lying to the murderer” scenario French philosopher Benjamin Constant proposed: the Categorical Imperative would appear to demand that you always tell the truth, no matter what. This would make it immoral to lie to a murderer about the whereabouts of his intended victim, even if doing so would protect the victim.

Or what about sheltering an innocent family condemned to the gulag? When the secret police come knocking, the Categorical Imperative would seem to require that you tell the truth about the family’s presence in your house.

Constant’s solution to the “lying to the murderer” scenario is that we only owe a duty to tell the truth to someone who has a right to the truth. In the scenario, the murderer has no right to the truth about the whereabouts of his intended victim, and thus you would not have any duty to disclose it to him.

Kant wrote an essay responding to Constant’s criticism in which Kant maintained that if remaining silent was not possible for some reason, then the Categorical Imperative require telling the murderer where to find his victim.11

Similar to the Golden Rule, the Categorical Imperative has a problem in not accounting for the need for reciprocity. If everyone followed the Categorical Imperative, then maybe you could blindly follow it too, but when others do not and you still do, they can take advantage of you. An ethical system with real-world applicability needs to take into account that some people cheat when they can get away with it, or even ignore the rules altogether. It is foolish to pollyannishly proclaim the importance of having universal duties or rules that would expose those who respect them to exploitation or even ruin. Thus, reciprocal altruism must be a clear and explicit part of the foundation of human morality.

Kant’s theory of ethics (and Constant’s response) was deontological, which is an approach to ethics that considers the morality of an action based on duties and rules and on whether the act itself is right or wrong, regardless of the outcome. He opposed consequentialism.

In the next part, we’ll continue our discussion of the different schools of thought on ethics and morality, starting with consequentialism.

 

Footnotes

1. Richard Jasnow, A Late Period Hieratic Wisdom Text: P. Brooklyn 47.218.135, 1992, p. 95. “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do it to another.”

2. Isocrates (436-338 BC), 1:14 (Democritus), “Conduct yourself toward your parents as you would have your children conduct themselves toward you.”; Isocrates, 2:24 (Nicocles), “Deal with weaker states as you would expect stronger states to deal with you.”; Isocrates, 3:61 (Nicocles or the Ciprians), “Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.”

3. Confucius, Analects, 15:24; Confucius, Analects, 5:12, “What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men”; Confucius, Analects. 12:2, “[Virtue is] not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.”

4. Confucius, Analects, 15:24.

5. Matthew 7:12 (NRSV).

6. George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903.

7. Walter T. Stace, The Concept of Morals, 1937, p. 136. “‘[D]oing as you would be done by’ includes taking into account your neighbour’s tastes as you would that he should take yours into account.”

8. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II, 5th ed., 1966, p. 501 (2011 printing).

9. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, 1785, Second Section.

10. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785, 3rd edition.

11. Immanuel Kant, On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies From Benevolent Motives, 1798.