By Nature Equal: How Are Men Created Equal? Identifying the Host Property, Part 2

LATERALITY IS A SIGNIFICANT CRITERION of human equality. To repeat with what we ended with in our previous blog posting, Coons and Brennan insist that the convention of human equality presupposes "a moral order that the self can freely embrace or reject as an ideal and thereby determine the degree of its own moral perfection." In addition, this order "precedes positive law and consists of correct treatments of other rational persons (and reflexively of the self)." (p. 54).

Coons and Brennan identify three orders in which man participates: a descendent moral order, a lateral moral order, and an ascendant moral order. The descendent moral order involves man's relationship with the order of creation beneath him (self/beast). The lateral moral order involves man's relationship with another of his kind (self/other). The ascendant moral order involves man's relationship with the Creator (self/God). (Coons and Brennan ignore the moral order of men with creatures above him, i.e., angels.)

Three Moral Orders: Ascendant, Descendent, and Lateral

For the purposes of identifying human equality, Coons and Brennan focus on the lateral moral order. There is no human equality between God and man, nor is there human equality between man and beast. "The relation of human equality can be ascribed only to human choosers who live in conscious interdependence with other human choosers." (p. 55)

Coons and Brennan turn to Chapter 1 of the book of Genesis to explain this laterality criterion. Before the creation of Eve, the only duties Adam had were ascendant and descendent. Adam had a duty to God, and he had his limited duties to animals associated with his dominion over them. He had not duty to any fellow human for the simple reason that there was no such other. In the lateral order, man was alone. But there existed in man--there had been created in man by God--a potential for accepting the duties to the lateral order. This quality remained dormant, as it were; it needed to be awakened, roused.

[S]o long as this one man stood "alone," his moral relationships, both ascendant and descendent, remained purely unilateral. Adam's moral capacity was dressed up for some other affair to which as yet he had received no invitation.

(p. 56) The creation of Eve, and even more specifically, the encounter of Adam with Eve after her creation by God, his recognition of her, rouses Adam's latent potency with respect to this lateral order. More, this arousal is reciprocal, since Eve's potency is likewise awakened by this mutual encounter and recognition.

Each awakens the other's latent potential for a lateral and reciprocal morality. . . . The ascendant and descendent duties to God and the lower orders remain, but, ever after the more immediate issue is what to do about her--and about him. And eventual about them.

(p. 57) In a manner of speaking, all of us share in this reciprocal encounter. It is more than a historical event: "It is a metaphor for the universal experience of the other."

Adam and Eve from the Escorial Beatus (ca. 950)

All who reach rationality bear the mark of engagement with other moral beings. The encounter becomes what we have called a "source relation" for "recognition," which is the second important aspect of the tale; it is the specific effect of the encounter as it generates the self's consciousness of a new form of moral relation. . . . Recognition is the grasp of the reality of lateral obligation.

(p. 57) Coons and Brennan call the lateral obligation reciprocity, that is to say, it engenders the Golden Rule. "The encounter triggers the recognition of [the lateral morality] of reciprocity." (p. 57) In understanding the moral obligation of reciprocity, one must reject any notion of a bargain-morality. The lateral moral obligation, the obligation of reciprocity, arises independent of any promise or bargain (it is in fact the source of the binding nature of of any promise made to the other, and so it pre-exists any compact or covenant between men). One must also not understand this in terms of "rights." This lateral morality is preeminently one of "duty."

It is not in rights but in our awakened capacity for moral self-perfection that we hope and expect to find the host property of the relation of human equality. Hence we speak of the capacity for reciprocity only as the power to accept or reject and order of duties we owe to one another.

(p. 58) It is a fact we modern ignore as we seem to have been more-and-more rejecting our inherited conventions: we shall never become perfect by demanding our right against others. Quite the opposite, we shall become perfect by demanding that we abide by our duty to others. Accepting this duty to the other, engaging in the duty of reciprocity, abiding and in pursuing this responsibility that the encounter with others engenders, living the life of within the strictures of the lateral order is an important component of self-perfection. It is, indeed, the root of the second of Christ's two great commandments, and is like unto the first commandment which relates to the ascendant order: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matt. 22:36) No one can say he loves God, and yet hate his brother. (1 John 4:20) The lateral order is thus inextricably intertwined with the ascendant order.

This capacity of the self to accept or reject the lateral moral order, to shoulder the duties attendant to reciprocity is what Coons and Brennan, by exploring the clues provided by convention, tentatively identify as the host property of human equality. The capacity of whether or not we accept the obligations stemming from the Golden Rule, that is to say the natural moral law, then, is what may be the basis of our human equality.

Gratian and the Natural Law: Concordance and Discordance in the Natural Law, Part 1

GRATIAN IS ONE OF THOSE CHARACTERS whose biography is wholly out of whack with his contribution to history. The fact is that we know precious little of the monk Gratian, Gratianus Monachus, or Master Gratian, Gratianus Magister. With a little more than speculation, based largely on tradition and no real contemporary evidence, we suppose that he haled from the village of Carraria, near Orvieto, that he was a Camaldolese monk of the monastery of Sts. Felix and Nabor in Bologna, and that he was a teacher at the famous law school in that city. He died sometime around 1160 A.D. His most famous work, the Concordia discordantium canonum (Concordance of discordant canons), also know as the Decretum, was published around 1140 A.D. plus or minus some years either way. His tomb has not been found; it is not among those tombs of many eminent jurists buried in Bologna where it might have been expected. As Katherine Christensen states in the introduction to the translation of part of the Decretum (the "Treatise on Laws" or DD. 1-20) published by the Catholic University of America: "Gratian's real monument is, and always has been, his 'harmony of discordant canons,' the Decretum." (xi)

Portrait of Gratianus Monachus

Gratian has another honor. He has the distinction of being honored by Dante, who, in his Paradiso, places him in the Circle (Paradiso, Canto X), along with others who have contributed to the natural law and who we have discussed in this blog: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Albert the Great, and St. Isidore of Seville.

Gratian and others in Dante's First Circle of Wisdom

Illustration by Giovanni de Paolo

Quell’ altro fiammeggiare esce del riso
di Grazïan, che l’uno e l’altro foro
aiutò sì che piace in paradiso.

That next effulgence issues from the smile
Of Gratian, who assisted both the courts
In such wise that it pleased in Paradise.

That smile of Gratian, which assisted the courts ecclesiastical and the courts civil so much so that it pleased Paradise and landed him among the Wise in Heaven, is his Decretum.

The Decretum was a private effort by a private man. Gratian had no official ecclesiastical sanction or charge or warrant when he poured over the numerous and splintered sources of law (Scripture, the Fathers, papal decrees, laws of synods, provincial councils and ecumenical councils, etc.) written or promulgated over the course of 11 centuries, many of the laws contradictory or seemingly so, and tried to make some sense out of them by harmonizing them, with greater or lesser success, in one convenient text for the good of his fellows. The Decretum was therefore, for canon law and canon lawyers, a gratia gratis data. But though a private effort, its effect on officialdom was massive:

From the time of its publication, and despite the fact that it was never officially recognized by the Church or enjoyed any juridical status greater than that of a private collection of canons, the Decretum Gratiani dominated the canon law of the Middle Ages and after . . .

Crowe, 73. Relying heavily on St. Isidore's Etymologies, which we explored in our last blog posting (see St. Isidore of Seville: A Natural Law Encyclopedist), Gratian's definition of natural law was to have significant influence upon the centuries that followed, and as a consequence, so were St. Isidore of Seville's definitions upon which Gratian so heavily borrowed.

Die Definition des jus naturale in den Etymologien des Isidor ist von Gratian übernommen und dadurch auch Gemeingut der Scholastik geworden.

M. Grabmann, "Das Naturrecht der Scholastik von Gratian bis Thomas from Aquin" in Mittlealterliches Gesitesleben, I, p. 69 (quoted in Crowe, 74, n. 7) (trans: The definition of ius naturale [natural law] in the Etymologies of Isidore was taken over by Gratian and through him also became common property of the Scholastics.)

Title Page from Gratian's Decretum

Gratian supplied not one, but two definitions of natural law. The first he expressly and verbatim obtained from St. Isidore's Etymologies. The second (which equates the natural law with the Law and the Gospel) appears to have been "Gratian's personal contribution to the subject." Scholars dispute its source. Some say Gratian relied generally upon the Augustinian tradition in fashioning it. Others (e.g., Rudolf Weigland) say it is a borrowing from Pope Urban II's (1088-99 A.D.) Epistolae et Privilegia n. 278 (151 PL 535) or at least the thought behind it. Others (e.g., Lottin) see its source in the teaching of the school of Anselm of Laon (see St. Anselm of Laon: Natural Law as Locus Spatiosus, a "Large Place" and St. Anselm of Laon: Glossing the Natural Law) and Hugh of St. Victor (see Hugh of St. Victor: Sacraments of the Natural Law). Crowe, 74, 79-81. Crowe explains this process:

What these theologians, the school of Anselm [of Laon] and Hugh of St. Victor, did was to take a commonplace of Patristic theology--the idea of the natural law as primitive law given to man and reiterated after the fall because of man's inability to obey or even to discovery it--and to add the New Law (represented by the phrase of Matthew 7:12) to the Old Law or the Decalogue. The Fathers normally gave the summary of the law of the New Testament from Matthew 22:39--the precept of loving God and loving one's neighbour, in which "is contained the Law and the prophets." The theologians [Anselm and Hugh] prefer the Golden Rule of Matthew 7:12 (together with its negative formulation in Tobit4:15). This appeal to different texts hardly constitutes an essential difference between the medieval theologians and the Fathers in the question of the natural law. In following the theologians Gratian touched on a long tradition.

Crowe, 81.

Crowe criticizes Gratian, suggesting that the confusion already engendered by St. Isidore was only further exacerbated by Gratian. According to Crowe, in the area of the natural law, Gratian created more disharmony, not less. St. Isidore had already injected a confusion between natural law and divine law, and Gratian's equating of the natural law with "what is in the Law and Gospel," quod in lege et evangelio continetur, was simply a further confusion of the two concepts. We shall address this issue at greater depth in our next blog posting. But here we shall end by quoting the definitions of the natural law in the Decretum Gratiani:

The human race is ruled by two things, namely, natural law and usages. Natural law is what is contained in the Law and Gospel. By it, each person is commanded to do to others what he wants done to himself and prohibited from inflicting on others what he does not want done to himself. So Christ said int he Gospel: 'Whatever you want men to do to you, do so to them. This indeed is the law and the Prophets."
Thus Isidore says in Etymologies, V, ii:

C.1. Divine ordinances are established by nature, human ordinances by usages.

§1. All ordinances are either divine or human. Divine ordinances are determined by nature, human ordinances by usages; and thus the latter vary since different things please different people.
§2. Morality is divine ordinance. Law is human ordinance.
§3. To pass through another's field is moral, but it is not legal.
From the text of this authority one can understand clearly how divine and human ordinances differ, since whatever is moral is included in the term "divine or natural ordinances," while by the term "human ordinances" we understand the usages drawn up in writing and passed on as law. Law is a general term containing many species.

Humanum genus duobus regitur, naturali videlicet iure et moribus. Ius naturae est, quod in lege et evangelio continetur,quo quisque iubetur alii facere, quod sibi vult fieri, et prohibetur alii inferre, quod sibi nolit fieri. Unde Christus in evangelio:
"Omnia quecunque vultis ut faciant vobis homines, et vos eadem facite illis. Haec est enim lex et prophetae." Hinc Ysidorus in V. libro Ethimologiarum [c. 2.] ait:

C. I. Divinae leges natura, humanae moribus constant.

§1. Omnes leges aut divinae sunt, aut humanae. Divinae natura, humanae moribus constant, ideoque he discrepant, quoniam aliae aliis gentibus placent.
§2. Fas lex divina est: ius lex humana.
§3. Transire per agrum alienum, fas est, ius non est.

Ex verbis huius auctoritatis evidenter datur intelligi, in quo differant inter se lex divina et humana, cum omne quod fas est, nomine divinae vel naturalis legis accipiatur, nomine vero legis humanae mores iure conscripti et traditi intelligantur.

D.1, P. 1, C. 1.

The natural law is also defined by Gratian in Canon 7 of Distinction I.

C. 6. What the species of law are.
§1. Law is either natural, civil, or that of nations.

C. 7. What natural law is.
§2. Natural law is common to all nations because it exists everywhere through natural instinct, not because of any enactment.
§3. For example: the union of men and women, the succession and rearing of children, the common possession of all things, the identical liberty of all, or the acquisition of things that are taken from the heavens, earth, or sea, as well as the return of a thing deposited or of money entrusted to one, and the repelling of violence by force. This, and anything similar, is never regarded as unjust but is held to be natural and equitable.

C. VI. Que sint species iuris.
[Isidor. eod. c. 4.]
Ius aut naturale est, aut ciuile, aut gentium.

C. VII. Quid sit ius naturale.
[Isidor. eod. c. 4.]
§1. Ius naturale est commune omnium nationum, eo quod ubique instinctu naturae, non constitutione aliqua habetur.
§2. Ut viri et feminae coniunctio, liberorum successio et educatio, communis omnium possessio et omnium una libertas, acquisitio eorum, quae celo, terra marique capiuntur; item depositae rei vel commendatae pecuniae restitutio, violentiae per vim repulsio. Nam hoc, aut si quid huic simile est, numquam iniustum, sed naturale equumque habetur.

D.I, P. 2, CC. 6-7.

Is the natural law what is contained in the Law and the Gospels? Is the natural law the Commandments and the Golden Rule (in its negative and positive formulations)? Or is that which is common to all nations because it exists everywhere through natural instinct, not because of any enactment? Or is it, in the harmonizing spirit of Gratian himself, both?

That will be our focus in our next blog posting.

(English translations of Gratian's Decretum from Augustine Thompson, O.P., trans., Gratian: The Treatise on Laws (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1993).

Golden Rule in Immanuel Kant: The Golden Rule But a Trivial Footnote

IMMANUEL KANT WAS ROUSED, HE SAYS, from his "dogmatic slumber" (dogmatischen Schlummer) through the reading of Hume. Whatever a "dogmatic slumber" is to a Pietist (such as Kant) who deprecated dogma anyway, the great Kant fell from it into a "critical slumber," which seems like jumping from one fitful dream to another, or from the frying pan into the fire. It would had been better for Kant had Kant read St. Thomas and awakened from his slumbers to a "dogmatic vigil" and so have become a Thomist. But that was not to be.

Immanuel Kant

It seems that Hume not only awakened Kant from his "dogmatic slumber," but also helped Kant trivialize the Gospel, or at least the Golden Rule, into footnote status.

In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten), where Kant stated his famous categorical imperative,* Kant made mention of the Golden Rule in a footnote where he called the Golden Rule "triviale," trivial:

Man denke ja nicht, daß hier das triviale: quod tibi non vis fieri etc. zur Richtschnur oder Prinzip dienen könne. Denn es ist, obzwar mit verschiedenen Einschränkungen, nur aus jenem abgeleitet; es kann kein allgemeines Gesetz sein, denn es enthält nicht den Grund der Pflichten gegen sich selbst, nicht der Liebespflichten gegen andere (denn mancher würde es gerne eingehen, daß andere ihm nicht wohltun sollen, wenn er es nur überhoben sein dürfte, ihnen Wohltat zu erzeigen), endlich nicht der schuldigen Pflichten gegen einander; denn der Verbrecher würde aus diesem Grunde gegen seine strafenden Richter argumentieren, u.s.w.

Let it not be thought that the trivial quod tibi non vis fieri, etc. [what you do not will to be done to you, etc.] can here serve as a standard or principle. For it is merely derived from our principle, although with several limitations. It cannot be a universal law, for it contains the ground neither of duties to oneself nor of duties of love toward others (for many a man would gladly consent that others should not benefit him, if only he might be excused from benefiting them). Nor, finally, does it contain the ground of strict duties toward others, for the criminal would on this ground be able to dispute with the judges who punish him; and so on.

It is to be supposed that Kant knew what he was saying in this footnote. Though, in passing, one may note some seeds of inconsistency in Kant's objections. Kant objects to the Golden Rule because it is " merely derived" from his Categorical Imperative. Yet he objects at the same time that "it cannot be a universal law." However, his Categorical Imperative requires that one act according to the manner that what you do could be universal law. Which brings the question to the fore: if the Golden Rule is derived from the Categorical Imperative, and the Categorical Imperative requires that any maxim be able to be universalized as "universal law," then how can the Golden Rule be criticized for both being derived from the Categorical Imperative, yet also criticized for not being "universal law"? One smells here a little bit of "Kettle logic," or logique du chaudron, not "Pure Reason," or reinen Vernunft.

Immanuel Kant: Detail from Werner Horvath's "Garden of Peace"

In any event, in Kant's deontological moral theory, where pure reason and duty held sway, there was little room for desire, for happiness, for the Aristotelian or Thomistic notion of eudaimonism. Thus there is little room for such a construct as the Golden Rule. It (the Kantian ethic) is therefore an ethic that, in the main, is to be avoided, rather than embraced. (We have previously treated of the problem it presents in terms of moral autonomy and its anti-teleological leanings. See Ectasis and Telos: Immanuel Kant and Self Law.) Perhaps the watershed distinction between the Categorical Imperative and the Golden Rule is that Kant's rule appeals to what can be willed for all, whereas the Golden Rule, which encompasses notions of desire, happiness, or consent of both ourselves and others, appeals to what actually is or what would be willed by all including ourselves. Looked at another way, the Categorical Imperative suggests we look at ourselves as a universal legislator with a grand view of the universal. It demands for us the vision of God. Whereas, more humbly, the Golden Rule asks us to look at the humanity in ourselves, something which, though difficult enough, is achievable. The Golden Rule, which asks us to look within, is therefore much more intimate and internal, than the formal and external Categorical Imperative, which asks us to look without. It is the distinction between "know yourself" (Scito te ipsum) [cf. Abelard's Ethics, Scito Teipsum treated elsewhere in this blog] and "I will the universal" (volo universalem). The distinction, though subtle, is of great moment. As Jeffrey Wattles succinctly summarizes it: "If Kant's ideas are correct both the golden rule (in its original formulation) and its religious foundation are obsolete." Wattles, 83-84. Indeed, given Kant's stature among the secular academia, one may accept the verdict of Hans Reiner that "Kant succeeded with his objections almost in invalidating the Golden Rule and in disqualifying it from future discussions in ethics. Among Continental European philosophers after Kant only Schopenhauer has attached a high value to it." Hans Reiner, Duty and Inclination (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishsers, 1983), 274-75.

Self Explanatory

As for me and my house, we shall serve the Golden Rule. That is to say, as for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord. (cf. Joshua 24:15).

*Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Gottfried Leibniz on the Golden Rule: Faire le Toure de la Chose

THE POLYMATH GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ (1646-1716) IS A REMARKABLE FIGURE in anyone's book: be it his mathematics, philosophy, logic, physics, biology, medicine, geology, law, ethics, theology, or library science book; he may additionally appear as a footnote or two in your books for half a dozen or so other disciplines. This certainly is not the place to engage in a biographical sketch of the man, which, if it included his intellectual life, might be exhausting, but it is perhaps worth mentioning that he had the unfortunate honor of having had Voltaire's sights aimed upon him: he (and his optimistic assessment of the world: "we live in the best of all possible worlds," le meilleur des mondes possibles, as Leibniz said in his Théodicée) was lampooned by Voltaire, and is the basis for the character Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide. To receive the attention of enfant terrible Voltaire, whether through his wit or his ire, was never a pleasant event, as the Church and her priests well know.

But regardless of being the butt of Voltaire's biting wit, the Lutheran-yet-Catholic-leaning Leibniz, the contemporary of both Spinoza and Locke, had a prodigious mind, one better than Voltaire's, and he seemed to leave his imprint on any topic he put his mind to. And this includes the Golden Rule.

Leibniz profusely appealed to the Golden Rule throughout his writings and throughout his life, and though he does not necessarily understand it in a traditional way, he does not advocate a view of it that, like Locke or (especially) Hobbes, would seek to undermine it. The Golden Rule seems to be genuinely advanced by him as part of his piety which demanded amor Dei super omnia. We may take the word of the Leibnizian scholar, Mogens Laerke:

As it has been noticed many times by a number of commentators, Leibniz very often appeals to this [golden] rule, and in a variety of senses, from the Nova methodus discendae docendaeque jurisprudentia of 1667 to his discussions of Christian Thomasius's theory of natural right in the correspondence with Bierling around 1712. According to Leibniz, this rule is fundamental to both jurisprudence and politics, but also to true theology, simply because jurisprudence and theology 'conspire," as Leibniz explains as early as the Nova methodus.

Mogens Laerke, "Apology for a Credo Maximum: On Three Basic Rules in Leibniz's Method of Religious Controversy," in Marcelo Dascal, ed., Leibniz: What Kind of Rationalist? (Springer, 2008), 399 (hereinafter Laerke (2008)) (citations omitted).

While we cannot look at every such reference in Leibniz's massive written corpus, we can mention a few of these to try to understand the Leibnizian twist on the moral principle. Such references to the Golden Rule in the writings of Leibniz's era, as Laerke points out, were commonplace among the intelligentsia. They seem to have been part of the intellectual milieu, a leftover from the structures of the Christendom that was beginning to get dismantled by a number of forces, political, intellectual, and social. They also seem to have received such emphasis as the hope for a basis of a working ethic following the Wars of Religion. Yet Leibniz seems to have gone beyond merely mouthing what everybody else was mouthing, and the Golden Rule seems to have been an important, integral part of his thinking on personal ethics, and, more broadly, on law and politics.

In starting with Leibniz's thinking on the Golden Rule, one must start with his view of humans as "monads." It is impossible, in Leibniz's thinking, for human souls to peer into the soul of another individual. Human souls are monads, without windows through which we can look into the soul or monad of another.

[N]obody can, strictly speaking, look into the soul of somebody else, even less put himself in the place of the other. Our very individuality depends upon our perspective on the world: from the metaphysical point of view, literally placing oneself in the place of the other would be equivalent to become the other.

Mogens Laerke, "The golden rule: Aspects of Leibniz's method for religious controversy," in Marcelo Dascal, ed., The Practice of Reason: Leibniz and His Controversies (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010), 310 (hereinafter Laeke (2010). But what cannot be done in actuality, may be done through an imaginative act of transference, and this is what the Golden Rule enjoins us to do.

[W]e may imagine ourselves in the other's place and thereby try to bridge the difference of perspective . . .

Laerke (2010), 310.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz by Francke (ca. 1700)

The sort of effort required to understand others and thereby attain an objective reality is addressed by Leibniz in a passage in the Conversation du Marquis de Pianese et du Père Emery Eremite where he obliquely touches on the Golden Rule:

[T]his is what gives rise to this diversity of opinion, everybody considering the objects from a certain side: only very few people have the patience to go all the way round the thing [faire le toure de la chose] until they are on the side of their opponent, that is to say, people who will examine the pros and cons with equal zeal and with the spirit of a disinterested judge in order to see which side the balance must lean, because time is needed for this, and our passions or distracts hardly give us any.

(quoted in Larke (2010), 310 (citing A VI 4 2250).

This appears to be a reference to the speculative and not the practical intellect, but Leibniz advanced a similar methodology in the area of morals. For Leibniz, the Golden Rule imposes an obligation on persons to "go all the way round the thing (faire le toure de la chose) until they are on the side of their opponent." That is, a man who follows the Golden Rule is supposed to "examine the pros and cons with equal zeal and with the spirit of a disinterested judge in order see which side the balance must lead." He must transfer his vantage point to the perspective of the other, without, at the same time, losing that of his own. For if he completely disregarded his own vantage point, he would lose a little part of the whole picture, and thereby lose objectivity.

For this reason, the Golden Rule required development on a person's part; it required him to faire le toure de la chose. While against Locke, Leibniz rejected accepted the existence of innate ideas, he insisted that these ideas, placed in us by our Creator, required proof and development on our part.

Statue of Leibniz at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

In his New Essays for Human Understanding, written as a response to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Leibniz addressed the issue of whether the rules of morality, in particular the Golden Rule, were innate. Leibniz's Essay is composed as a dialogue between Philalethes and Theophilus, Φιλαλήθης, the "lover of truth," and Θεόφιλος, the "lover of God." Philalethes is the character advancing Locke's views, and Theophilus advances Leibniz's response. In the discussion involving innate principles, Philalethes states: "Moral rules need a proof, ergo [they are] not innate"--for instance that rule which is the "foundation of all social virtue, That one should do [only] as he would be done unto." To which Theophilus, the spokesman for Leibniz, who argues against Locke's rejection of innate ideas, admits, however, that these moral principles, though innate, require proof, and indeed elucidation. In fact, in a very important insight, Leibniz through Theophilus insisted that the Golden Rule itself needed an extrinsic standard, suggesting that it was more a methodological or procedural moral rule than a substantive one.

As regards the rule to the effect that we should do to others only what we are willing that they do to us, it requires not only proof but also elucidation. We should wish for more than our share if we had our own way; so do we also owe to others more than their share? I will be told that the rule applies only to a just will. But then the rule, far from serving as a standard, will need a standard. The true meaning of the rule is that the right way to judge more fairly is to adopt the point of view of other people.

New Essays on Human Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 91-92.

In Leibniz's view, the "proof" and "elucidation" of the Golden Rule required an individual to engage in a disinterested, active exploration of the moral wants of others. This sort of exploration was calculated to allow us virtually to see things from the perspective or vantage point of various individuals, and in a sort of synthesis of them all, Leibniz thought we could grasp the greater reality of the whole. We move from dissent to consent, from heresy to catholicity, from the individual and particular view to a common and general view of things, and thereby move outward from the subjective to the objective. Each of us is like one of the blind men in the proverbial story of the blind men and the elephant, and we must go through the effort of going all-the way-'round the elephant, faire le toure de la chose, in order to understand the entire picture of the reality that confronts us. We know how we want others to treat us, but we do not know how others want us to treat them. In surveying the entirety, and by refusing to be satisfied with just the moiety, we are able to obtain an integral and objective understanding of others as well as ourselves. This allows us to love our neighbor as ourselves. It allows us to know what others would want us to do to them, and so objectifies the Golden Rule.

The process described by Leibniz therefore prevents us from adopting the view of any particular person. The obligation is to go all the way round the thing (faire le toure de la chose), and not stop at anyone's particular vantage point, whether or own or that of someone else, but to grasp everyone's vantage point. This avoids some of the problems in the Golden Rule if it is applied restrictively, taken the vantage point only of merely an other, and not of the others. The issue is described in In his Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice, where Leibniz expressly discusses the golden rule in the context between a judge and a criminal:

It could may be said that nor harming anybody, neminem laedere, is the precept of the law called jus strictum, but that equity also demands that we do something good, when this is suitable [lorsque cela convient], and that it is in this that consists the precept, which demands that we grant everybody what belongs to him, suum cuique tribuere. But this suitability [convenance] or "that which belongs" is known as the rule of equity or equality: Quod tibi non vis fieri aut quod tibi vis fieri, neque aliis facito aut negato. It is the rule of reason and of our Lord. Put yourself in the place of the other and you will be at the true point of view to judge what is just and what is not.

Some objections have been made against this great rule, but only because it is not applied everywhere. It is for example objected that a criminal can claim to be pardoned by the sovereign judge in virtue of this maxim, because the judge would wish the same thing if he found himself in a similar position. The reply is easy. It is necessary that the judge places himself not only in the place of the criminal, but also in the place of those others who have an interest in the crime being punished.

(quoted in Laeker (2010) (emphasis in original Laeker), 311 (quoting DR 123-24)). Thus, in applying the golden rule, the judge must "go all the way round the thing," faire le toure de la chose, and look at the entire moral reality by considering not only the criminal's vantage point, but the vantage point of the victim, the victim's family, and the people whose law he is enforcing and whose common good he is to consider in applying that law. By expanding one's view from the other to others in a context such as this one, we can avoid some of the problems in applying the Golden Rule.

As Laerke explains this Leibnizian gloss on the Golden Rule:

Whereas the first part of the quotation states the primitive rule of charity (putting oneself in the place of the other), the second part clearly states that the golden rule should be considered as a principle for procuring the general felicity (putting oneself in the place of all others). Thus, there is a test of generalization for any act of charity. One must ask: if this is a charitable act towards this other (to spare this criminal, for example), is this also charitable towards everybody else (the victims of the criminal, for example)?

Laerke (2010), 311. There is a clear advantage to Leibniz's formulation. But there is also a concomitant disadvantage. That disadvantage is the generalization, the lack of the concrete that may arise as a consequence.

Leibniz also believed that the Golden Rule was a principle of jurisprudence. It was more than merely a rule of personal morality. In a short essay entitled La place d'autruy (The Place of the Other), Leibniz describes how the Golden Rule has both a role in individual morality and in public law and politics.

The other's place is the true point of view both in politics and in morals. Jesus Christ's precept of putting oneself in the other's place is not only good for the end our Lord speaks of, i.e., morals, in order to know our duty with respect to our neighbor, but also for politics, in order to know what designs our neighbor may harbor against us. One's best access to these designs is obtained by putting oneself in his place . . . This fiction stimulates our thoughts, and has served me more than once to guess with utmost precision what was concocted elsewhere.

DA 164 (N. Naaman Zauderer, trans.). As Laerke puts it in discussing Leibniz's treatment of the golden rule in his Conversation du Marquis de Pianese et du Père Emery Eremite: "The originality of Leibniz's appeal to the golden rule resides in this reflexive development of it: no simply as a rule of caritas, but as a rule of caritas prudentis, which turns it into a full law of justice."

In summary, Leibniz rejected Locke's view that Golden Rule was not innate, but he agreed that it required proof and elucidation. Leibniz saw the rule as procedural, not substantive ("the rule, far from serving as a standard, will need a standard"). It provided a means, a method for discovering an objective, unbiased morality (the means was to "faire le toure de la chose"), but it was not the source of that morality. The Golden Rule was both a rule of reason and part of the sublime teachings of Jesus Christ. Importantly, for Leibniz, the Golden Rule was both a personal principle, a principle of morality within the context of Christian love (caritas), and a public, political principle, a principle of justice or prudent love (caritas prudentis). Finally, the Golden Rule was a way to objectify, to generalize our moral knowledge so that we may leave the limits of a parochial, subjective view of what was good and right.

The Golden Rule by Norman Rockwell

Golden Rule in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

IT IS JOHN LOCKE IN HIS AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING that first initiates the Western "critique" of the Golden Rule according to Jeffrey Wattles. Wattles, 81. Locke rejected the notion of any innate philosophical principles, including both speculative and practical moral principles. The father of modern philosophical empiricism, Locke maintained that nothing is innate; nothing in practical principles is self-evident; and that all things without exception are learned through an empirical process. Man is born without any moral impression or awareness, there is nothing moral in us ab ovo: in morals man is tabula rasa. And this is particularly true in the area of practical moral principles. There is no universal acceptance of these in Locke's mind. Anyone who looks "abroad beyond the smoke of their own chimneys," should be able to recognize that there is no universal ethic. "Where is that practical truth that is universally received, without doubt or question, as it must be if innate?" Locke asks rhetorically. "Whereby it is evident that they [practical, moral principles] are further removed from a title to be innate; and the doubt of their being native impressions on the mind is stronger against those moral principles than the other [speculative principles]." Thus, the Golden Rule is not a self-evident moral principle such as the principle of non-contradiction. The Golden Rule comes from the outside in; it is in fact, for Locke, ultimately conventional or positive; it does not come from the inside out. Its binding nature may be questioned, nay, demands that it be questioned, since it is not part of reason, but outside of reason. "I think," says Locke,

there cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason: which would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd if they were innate; or so much as self-evident, which every innate principle must needs be, and not need any proof to ascertain its truth, nor want any reason to gain it approbation. He would be thought void of common sense who asked on the one side, or on the other side [when/went*] to give a reason why "it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be." It carries its own light and evidence with it, and needs no other proof: he that understands the terms assents to it for its own sake or else nothing will ever be able to prevail with him to do it. But should that most unshaken rule of morality and foundation of all social virtue, "That one should do as he would be done unto," be proposed to one who never heard of it before, but yet is of capacity to understand its meaning; might he not without any absurdity ask a reason why? And were not he that proposed it bound to make out the truth and reasonableness of it to him? Which plainly shows it not to be innate; for if it were it could neither want nor receive any proof; but must needs (at least as soon as heard and understood) be received and assented to as an unquestionable truth, which a man can by no means doubt of. So that the truth of all these moral rules plainly depends upon some other antecedent to them, and from which they must be deduced; which could not be if either they were innate or so much as self-evident.

Portrait of John Locke

Locke seems to have slipped into that fallacy that moral rules cannot be universal because they are not universally followed, as if moral rules had to have the same ineluctable, unvarying, and tyrannous powers as the law of gravity or any other law of physics have upon us. Locke supposes that, unless you find both a unanimous acceptance and an exceptionless practice of a moral rule, it does not exist as part of our intrinsic makeup. Naturally, no moral principle, and few intellectual principles, can survive such a burden of proof. What principle, even Locke's principle of "reason" itself, can you not find some man denying, in theory or in practice? Applying this standard (and from whence does it come?), Locke concludes that the Golden Rule, or for that matter, any moral principle, is simply not something that God has writ into the human heart or the human conscience.

The great principle of morality, "To do as one would be done to," is more commended than practised. But the breach of this rule cannot be a greater vice, than to teach others, that it is no moral rule, nor obligatory, would be thought madness, and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they break it themselves. Perhaps conscience will be urged as checking us for such breaches, and so the internal obligation and establishment of the rule be preserved. . . . To which I answer, that I doubt not but, without being written on their hearts, many men may, by the same way that they come to the knowledge of other things, come to assent to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligation. Others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, company, and customs of their country; which persuasion, however got, will serve to set conscience on work; which is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions; and if conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some men with the same bent of conscience prosecute what others avoid.

Then Locke, who went "beyond the smoke of their own chimneys," to some stacks of books at some library (and there leafed through the pages of Martin von Baumgarten from which he culled the excerpts of the German traveler who relied upon the translated testimony of a Mule driver of the alleged sexual practices among the Saracens and Mohammedans), puts forth as part of his argument a litany of moral abuses to justify his moral skepticism:

But I cannot see how any men should ever transgress those moral rules, with confidence and serenity, were they innate, and stamped upon their minds. View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense of moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure. Have there not been whole nations, and those of the most civilized people, amongst whom the exposing their children, and leaving them in the fields to perish by want or wild beasts has been the practice; as little condemned or scrupled as the begetting them? Do they not still, in some countries, put them into the same graves with their mothers, if they die in childbirth; or despatch them, if a pretended astrologer declares them to have unhappy stars? And are there not places where, at a certain age, they kill or expose their parents, without any remorse at all? In a part of Asia, the sick, when their case comes to be thought desperate, are carried out and laid on the earth before they are dead; and left there, exposed to wind and weather, to perish without assistance or pity. It is familiar among the Mingrelians, a people professing Christianity, to bury their children alive without scruple. There are places where they eat their own children. The Caribbees were wont to geld their children, on purpose to fat and eat them. And Garcilasso de la Vega tells us of a people in Peru which were wont to fat and eat the children they got on their female captives, whom they kept as concubines for that purpose, and when they were past breeding, the mothers themselves were killed too and eaten. The virtues whereby the Tououpinambos believed they merited paradise, were revenge, and eating abundance of their enemies. They have not so much as a name for God, and have no religion, no worship. The saints who are canonized amongst the Turks, lead lives which one cannot with modesty relate. A remarkable passage to this purpose, out of the voyage of Baumgarten, which is a book not every day to be met with, I shall set down at large, in the language it is published in. Ibi (sc. prope Belbes in AEgypto) vidimus sanctum unum Saracenicum inter arenarum cumulos, ita ut ex utero matris prodiit nudum sedentem. Mos est, ut didicimus, Mahometistis, ut eos, qui amentes et sine ratione sunt, prosanctis colant et venerentur. Insuper et eos, qui cum diu vitam egerint inquinatissimam, voluntariam demum poenitentiam et paupertatem, sanctitate venerandos deputant. Ejusmodi vero genus hominum libertatem quandam effrenem habent, domos quos volunt intrandi, edendi, bibendi, et quod majus est, concumbendi; ex quo concubitu, si proles secuta fuerit, sancta similiter habetur. His ergo hominibus dum vivunt, magnos exhibent honores; mortuis vero vel templa vel monumenta extruunt amplissima, eosque contingere ac sepelire maximae fortunae ducunt loco. Audivimus haec dicta et dicenda per interpretem a Mucrelo nostro. Insuper sanctum illum, quem eo loco vidimus, publicitus apprime commendari, eum esse hominem sanctum, divinum ac integritate praecipuum; eo quod, nec foeminarum unquam esset, nec puerorum, sed tantummodo asellarum concubitor atque mularum. (Peregr. Baumgarten, 1. ii. c. I. p. 73.) More of the same kind concerning these precious saints amongst the Turks may be seen in Pietro della Valle, in his letter of the 25th of January, 1616.

[In Awnsham and John Churchill's Collection of Voyages and Travels translation (I.456): There we saw a Mahometan Saint sitting among the Hillocks of Sand, as naked as he came out of his Mother's Belly. It is a custom, as we were then told, among the Mahometans to reverence those as Saints who are mad, and out of their wits; and they think also that a great deal of Respect is to be paid to those who voluntarily repent and vow Poverty, after they have led a leud and scandalous life. This sort of Men are allowed an unbridled and unbounded liberty of going into all Houses, of Eating, Drinking, and which is still worse, of lying with whom they will; and if this Copulation produces a Child, it is likewise reckoned holy. They honour these Men very much while they are alive, and after they are dead they build stately Temples and Monuments in honour of them; and they think it a very happy and lucky thing to touch or bury them. This we heard our Mule-driver say, as we understood by our Interpreter.]

Title Page of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Locke finds this argument dispositive:

Whatever practical principle is innate, cannot but be known to every one to be just and good. It is therefore little less than a contradiction to suppose, that whole nations of men should, both in their professions and practice, unanimously and universally give the lie to what, by the most invincible evidence, every one of them knew to be true, right, and good. This is enough to satisfy us that no practical rule which is anywhere universally, and with public approbation or allowance, transgressed, can be supposed innate.

Beyond the argument that moral principles cannot be innate because otherwise there would not be such wide scale instances of their breach without the least sense of impropriety, Locke also argues that commands have no truth value to them, and that only duties do. But duties presuppose a law, a law a lawmaker, and a lawmaker both reward and punishment. For Locke it follows that the requirements of law, lawmaker, and reward and punishment take any moral law outside the realm of the innate, and into the realm of the empirical, and, ultimately, conventional. In developing this argument, Locke takes as an example the maxim that "Parents preserve your children."

For, "Parents preserve your children," is so far from an innate truth, that it is no truth at all: it being a command, and not a proposition, and so not capable of truth or falsehood. To make it capable of being assented to as true, it must be reduced to some such proposition as this: "It is the duty of parents to preserve their children." But what duty is, cannot be understood without a law; nor a law be known or supposed without a lawmaker, or without reward and punishment; so that it is impossible that this, or any other, practical principle should be innate, i.e. be imprinted on the mind as a duty, without supposing the ideas of God, of law, of obligation, of punishment, of a life after this, innate: for that punishment follows not in this life the breach of this rule, and consequently that it has not the force of a law in countries where the generally allowed practice runs counter to it, is in itself evident. But these ideas (which must be all of them innate, if anything as a duty be so) are so far from being innate, that it is not every studious or thinking man, much less every one that is born, in whom they are to be found clear and distinct; and that one of them, which of all others seems most likely to be innate, is not so, (I mean the idea of God,). . . .

Locke, however, insists (though it is not particularly clear how this is so) that he is not to be taken as advocating the idea that all law is positive, and, because there are no innate moral principles, that there is no such thing as a natural moral law. He claims seeks to steer between the Charybdis that all laws are positive and the Scylla that all laws are innate:

I would not here be mistaken, as if, because I deny an innate law, I thought there were none but positive laws. There is a great deal of difference between an innate law, and a law of nature; between something imprinted on our minds in their very original, and something that we, being ignorant of, may attain to the knowledge of, by the use and due application of our natural faculties. And I think they equally forsake the truth who, running into contrary extremes, either affirm an innate law, or deny that there is a law knowable by the light of nature, i.e. without the help of positive revelation.

There are other arguments that Locke puts forth on this issue, which will not be addressed here. But his final conclusion is: "I think it past doubt, that there are no practical principles wherein all men agree; and therefore none innate." Encompassed in Locke's judgment is that the Golden Rule is not innate, not found in the conscience of men, not a universal, self-evident principle. But it may be, like many principles, that Locke has demanded too much from the Golden Rule. It may be, like many foundational or self-evident principles, not a principle that can be established by reason, but a principle the rejection of which can be shown to be unreasonable.

Whether this be so or not is something for another day. But it strains the imagination to think what reasonable and objective basis there could there be to hold that I should treat others worse than I should want to be treated by them. What possible reasonable basis is there to hold that others should treat me better than I treat them? Why should bias in the moral law be in my favor?

*Some editions use when, others went, some leave the word out altogether.

Golden Rule in Thomas Hobbes

THE GOLDEN RULE WAS SOILED by the philosophers and political thinkers of the of the Enlightenment. We can start with Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the English philosopher of Leviathan fame, and from him look at Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, and finally John Stuart Mill. Hobbes may be called the first liberal in a manner of speaking since, at, least with respect to the Golden Rule, he transformed it from a rule regarding duty or law, to a rule regarding liberty, or the absence of law. The difference is subtle, but of significant importance, and it comes from his anthropology, where he rejects the natural social tendencies in man.

The English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes begins his radical re-interpretation of the Golden Rule with his famous assumption that the "condition of Man . . . is a condition of War of every one and against every one." For Hobbes, since man is naturally in a state of War, there are no natural rights, nor are there any natural duties, which is the odd result of his doctrine that "every man has a Right to every thing; even to on another's body." If others have a right over even my own body, then it follows that I have no rights. Thus already, Hobbes is using language in a manner that is novel. As a matter of expediency, then, we have a second Hobbesian right: "the sum of the Right of Nature; which is, "By all means we can, to defend ourselves." There is thus a certain self-interest to "endeavor Peace, as far as [man] has hope of obtaining it." And at this point, Hobbes comes up with his radical re-working of the Golden Rule, a rule that is derived not from the fact that we have a common God, or that we share a common nature, but that we are natural enemies to each other:

From this Fundamental Law of Nature, by which men are commanded to endeavor Peace, is derived this second Law; "That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth, as for Peace, and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself." For as long as every man holds this Right, of doing any thing he likes; so long are all men in the condition of War But if other men will not lay down their Right, as well as he; then there is no Reason for any one, to divest himself of his: For that were to expose himself to Prey, (which no man is bound to) rather than to dispose himself to Peace. This is that Law of the Gospel "Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them." And that Law of all men, "Quod tibi feiri non vis, alteri ne feceris."

(p. 100) For Hobbes, the Golden Rule is not part of the fundamental law of our nature; it is, as it were, a secondary natural law, one that comes into play only as we transfer out of the state of war into a state of peace following the social contract. As Jeffrey Wattles puts it:"Hobbes proposed [the golden] rule as a mark of the radical transition from anarchy to order." Wattles, 77.

In Hobbes's view, then, Golden Rule is essentially a convenient summary of the various secondary "natural" laws that are necessary concomitants of our movement from a state of war to a state of covenantual peace, otherwise the covenants would not be kept and we would revert to our state of war. We are therefore to keep our promises and covenants, we ought to be gracious, complaisant, forgiving, limit our revenge, avoid contumely, pride, and arrogance. We are also to do equity, accede to equal use of things that are owned in common, respect private property and the law of primogeniture and first seizing. We ought to give safe passage to "men that mediate Peace," and submit ourselves to the decision of an independent judge or arbiter, and never be a judge in our own cause, when in the throes of a dispute with our fellow man. These we are not to keep because they are part of our nature, but because they are necessary to maintain the covenant that keeps men from being caught in internecine warfare, that state where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," that would otherwise exist. The Golden Rule is a summary of these concomitant requirements.

And though this may seem too subtle a deduction of the Laws of Nature, to be taken notice of by all men; whereof the most part are too busy in getting food, and the rest too negligent to understand; yet to leave all men inexcusable, they have been contracted into one easy sum, intelligible even to the meanest capacity; and that is "Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy self;" which shows him, that he has no more to do in learning the Laws of Nature, but, when weighing the actions of other men with his own, they seem too heavy, to put them into the other part of the balance, and his own into their place, that his own passions, and self-love, may add nothing to the weight; and then there is none of these Laws of Nature that will not appear unto him very reasonable.

(pp. 120-21) This entire way of looking at thinks is markedly different from the Golden Rule as perceived by Hillel or by Christ. This is something altogether different than the Golden Rule as we find in the Analects or in the Mahābhārata. There is, in fact, something already rotten in the Denmark of Hobbes's philosophy.


(Quotations to Leviathan are taken from the reprint of the 1651 edition by Oxford University Press, 1929; they have been modified somewhat so as to be spelled in modern English.)

Golden Rule in African Proverbs

PROVERBS ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF YORUBA CULTURE. The Yoruba tribe live in Western Nigeria, although they may also be found in the eastern Republic of Benin, Ghana, and in Togo. There may be perhaps as many as 30 million Yoruba in West Africa, representing about 21 percent of that area's population. Many of the slaves that were brought to the Americas came from the Yoruba. The Yoruba are thus a significant people in both Africa and the African diaspora.

According to E. Bolaji Idowu, the Golden Rule is important to the Yoruba, and the Yoruba elders teach their young the importance of that rule. (cited in H.T.D. Rost, The Golden Rule, 21-22.) The importance of the Golden Rule in Yoruba culture may be somewhat unique in African culture, if Rost is to be believed, and an intensely tribal culture would suggest that the Golden Rule acts only intra-tribally, and may be tempered or altogether abandoned inter-tribally.

Yoruba Bronze Sculpture

As might be expected in a culture that was largely oral, the Golden Rule is stated by the Yoruba in proverbs, some of which are provided below. The source of these proverbs is Dr. Oyekan Owomoyela, Ryan Professor of African Literature at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, who maintains a web page at the University of Nebraska, "The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yoruba Proverb Treasury." A link to that web site is provided at the end of this posting.

Those Yoruba proverbs that approximate the Golden Rule are:

Bí a bá gé igi nígbó, ká fi ọ̀ràn ro ara ẹni wò.

When one fells a tree in the forest, one should apply the matter to oneself.

(Whenever one does something to another, one should put oneself in that person's shoes.)

Bí a bá rí òkú ìkà nílẹ̀, tí a fi ẹsẹ̀ tá; ìkà-á di méji.

If one sees the corpse of a wicked person on the ground and one kicks it, there are then two wicked people.

(If one returns evil for evil, one joins the ranks of the evil.)

Bí ó ti ńdun ọmọ ẹyẹ, bẹ́ẹ̀ ló ńdun ọmọ èèyàn

As the young of birds hurt, so the young of humans hurt.

(Others feel hurt, just as one does.)

Rost provides another proverb which I was unable to find in Professor Owomoyela's work, and so I cannot provide it in its original Yoruba form:

As sensitive to pain as are rats' little ones
So sensitive to pain are birds' little ones.

Similarly, Jeffrey Wattles provides one that bears some similarity to those quoted:

One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts.

The Yoruba proverbs appear to portray some of the animism of that culture. Animals and things appear almost to have a moral or spiritual life so as to inform that of man. So do trees, baby rats, and fledglings inform our behavior. Yet the proverbs suggest, in a vivid manner, that others feel pain and that others suffer, and that we ought to be sensitive to that pain and to that suffering in assessing our behavior toward them, from the branch in the forest, to the rat and bird, and a fortiori to our fellow man.

A rather poignant exception to Rost's statement that the Golden Rule is not common among the traditional religions or cultures of Africa is the prayer of the dying man in the Dinka tribe of Southern Sudan. The prayer is included in Desmond Tutu's An African Prayer Book.

And though I behold a man hate me,
I will love him.
O God, Father, help me, Father!
O God, Creator, help me, Father!
And even though I behold a man hate me,
I will love him.

In his book on the Golden Rule, Wattles quotes some other examples of African proverbs that incorporate Golden Rule thinking, including this one supposedly prevalent among the Bush Tribes in Tropical Africa:

If you neighbor's jackal escapes into your garden, you should return the animal to its owner; this is how you would want your neighbor to treat you.

Wattles, 9 (quoting C. C. Claridge, Wild Bush Tribes of Tropical Africa, 248, 259).

Less reliant upon proverbs is the formulation of the Golden Rule by the Bakongo, which I have not been able to locate in its original Kikongo form:

O man, what you do not like, do not to your fellows.

Wattles, 193, n. 11. This is manifestly a legal or moral maxim.

The Akan people of West Africa, the majority of whom live in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, also seem to have accepted a Golden Rule principle in their culture. According to the African philosopher Kwasi Wiredu ("The Moral Foundations of and African Culture"), the Akan have a Golden Rule principle which governs their "ethical talk."

Nea wo yonko de ye wo a erenye wo de no mfa nye no.

What you do not find acceptable if it were done to you by another, do not do to him or her.

The Akan also have other moral maxims or apothegms that relate to the Golden Rule, and we may also quote those:

Woamma wo yonko antwa nkrong a worentwa edu.
If you do not allow your neighbor to reach nine you will never reach ten.

Obi de aba; obi de nam kwan so.
Somebody's troubles have arrived; those of another are on the way.

Kwasea na ose, "Ye de meyonko, yenne me.
It is a fool that says, "My neighbor is the butt of the attack not me."

Abaa a yede boo Takyi no aa na ye de bebo Nyankomago.
The stick that was used to beat Takyi is the same that will be used to beat Nyankomago.*

Obi Kwan nkye na asi obi de mu.
One person's path will intersect with another's before too long.

*Takyi and Nyankomago are traditional Akan names.

Click here to see The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yoruba Proverb Treasury

Golden Rule in Ancient Egypt

THE OLDEST MENTION OF THE GOLDEN RULE is perhaps found in the Ancient Egyptian story about justice, the story called the Eloquent Peasant. It is a story about a peasant named Khun-Anup who trespasses upon the property of Rensi, son of Meru as a result of a trick by the harsh and unjust overseer of that property, Nemtynakht. Nemtynakht takes the property of Khun-anup in exchange for the innocent trespass. Khun-Anup then seeks justice from Rensi's judges, and then, the Pharaoh Amenemhat himself. The story itself revolves around nine various days of pleading for justice. Eventually, Khun-Anup receives his justice, as does the wicked caretaker, Nemtynakht.

The story is dated perhaps as early as 1875 B.C. As part of its discussions of justice, the Egyptian Ma'at, it contains a mention of the "Golden Rule," and so is the earliest mention of the principle of the Golden Rule in human literature.

In the translation of R. B. Parkinson:

Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do.

jr n irr n = k. Act for him who acts for you
m sDm n bw nb r=f:
and don't listen to anyone who is against him!

See specifically the "Golden Rule" in the Eloquent Peasant.

See generally The Eloquent Peasant.

The Golden Rule by Norman Rockwell

Golden Rule in the Medieval Church, Part 5

ST. THOMAS INVOKES THE GOLDEN RULE in his Summa Theologiae, specifically in the first part of the second part, in Question No. 99, where he considers the precepts of the Mosaic law. He asks the question of whether the Mosaic law had multiple precepts or just one, and he handles several points of view on that issue in Article 1. He comes to the conclusion that, with respect to the precepts of the law, "are many in respect of the diversity of things" that "may happen to be necessary or expedient to an end." And yet, all these precepts that relate to the necessary and expedient things are "ordained to one end." Therefore, Thomas concludes that "we must say that all the precepts of the Old Law are one in respect of their relation to one end (sunt unum secundum ordinem ad unum finem): and yet they are many in respect of the diversity of those things that are ordained to that end (secundum diversitatem eorum quae ordinantur ad finem illum)."

St. Thomas Aquinas

In handling this issue, St. Thomas raises three objections. The third of these is:

Further, it is written (Matthew 7:12): "All things . . . whatsoever you would that men do do you, do you also to them. For this is the Law and the prophets." But the whole of the Old Law is comprised of the Law and the prophets. Therefore the whole of the Old Law contains but one commandment.

Praeterea, Matth. VII, dicitur, omnia quaecumque vultis ut faciant vobis homines, et vos facite illis, haec est enim lex et prophetae. Sed tota lex vetus continetur in lege et prophetis. Ergo tota lex vetus non habet nisi unum praeceptum.

The Golden Rule seems to be one precept that contains the entirety of the Law and the prophets. However, as St. Thomas has made clear, this is true in regard to its end. It is not however true with respect to the manner and means to that end. Therefore, the Golden Rule is one precept in respect to its end, but contains within it many precepts in the sense of means to that end.

In responding to the objection, St. Thomas states that the Golden Rule is implicit in the Second of Christ's Commandment: To love one's neighbor as one's self. He explains:

As stated in Ethic. ix, 8, "friendship towards another arises from friendship towards oneself," in so far as man looks on another as on himself. Hence when it is said, "All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them," this is an explanation of the rule of neighborly love contained implicitly in the words, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself": so that it is an explanation of this commandment.

Sicut dicitur in IX Ethic., amicabilia quae sunt ad alterum, venerunt ex amicabilibus quae sunt homini ad seipsum, dum scilicet homo ita se habet ad alterum sicut ad se. Et ideo in hoc quod dicitur, omnia quaecumque vultis ut faciant vobis homines, et vos facite illis, explicatur quaedam regula dilectionis proximi, quae etiam implicite continetur in hoc quod dicitur, diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsum. Unde est quaedam explicatio istius mandati.

What is the end of the the Golden Rule, which is nothing but the explanation of the Commandment that one ought to love one's neighbor? To answer this question, St. Thomas Aquinas invokes St. Paul. St. Paul boils the end of the law, and therefore the end of the Golden Rule, to one word: caritas, love (agape), which is the product of friendship (amicitiam). This is a marvelous concept: ad caritate, ad amicitia, omnis lex tendit, all law tends to love, to friendship.

St. Thomas by Fra' Bartolomeo

This view of law is in direct contradistinction to those who would put law and love at odds, as if love demanded anomie or anarchy. This marvelous teaching is found in his reply to Objection 2, where St. Thomas clarifies the end of every law:

As the Apostle says (1 Timothy 1:5), "the end of the commandment is charity"; since every law aims at establishing friendship, either between man and man, or between man and God. Wherefore the whole Law is comprised in this one commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," as expressing the end of all commandments: because love of one's neighbor includes love of God, when we love our neighbor for God's sake. Hence the Apostle put this commandment in place of the two which are about the love of God and of one's neighbor, and of which Our Lord said (Matthew 22:40): "On these two commandments depends the whole Law and the prophets."

Sicut apostolus dicit, I ad Tim. I, finis praecepti caritas est, ad hoc enim omnis lex tendit, ut amicitiam constituat vel hominum ad invicem, vel hominis ad Deum. Et ideo tota lex impletur in hoc uno mandato, diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsum, sicut in quodam fine mandatorum omnium, in dilectione enim proximi includitur etiam Dei dilectio, quando proximus diligitur propter Deum. Unde apostolus hoc unum praeceptum posuit pro duobus quae sunt de dilectione Dei et proximi, de quibus dicit dominus, Matth. XXII, in his duobus mandatis pendet omnis lex et prophetae.

Friendship, the love between friends, is the one end of the Golden Rule, but the manner and means by which it may be applied is many. The Golden Rule strains upwards, then, toward a loving friendship to God, one, ultimately, that will have to rely on the supernatural remedy of Grace, since this supernatural love requires an infusion of grace. As part of the natural law, the Golden rule is found in man and naturally inclines him to his connatural end of friendship and love of his fellows. Post-lapsarian man, though so inclined towards the love of God and of his fellows, still finds it difficult to apply the Golden Rule consistently, especially when it calls for great selflessness. There is also within him the three libidines: the libido sentiendi, the libido domindandi, the libido sciendi, the inordinate desires of the flesh, of domination, of the pride of life--what the American Protestant (Unitarian) minister James Luther Adams called felicitously called "the old triumvirate of tyrants in the human soul." Man required a remedy, as he cannot follow the Golden Rule, he cannot love his neighbor, with supernatural aid. God, speaking through his Son in the fullness of time, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:12) and the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:31), has added to the Golden Rule by making it part of the supernatural law. The Golden Rule is thus transformed by the theological virtue of love, a love of a whole different order than anything found naturally among men, that allows man to love God, and to love his neighbor as himself for the love of God. Cf. S. T. IaIIae, q. 62, art. 3. This is also the law of Grace.

The Golden Rule by Norman Rockwell