While highlighting the golden rule’s psychological functions, doubt is cast on the rule’s need for empathy and cognitive role-taking. The golden rule urges more feasible other-directedness and egalitarianism in our outlook.Ī raft of additional rationales is offered to challenge the rule’s reputation as overly idealistic and infeasible in daily life. Like agape or unconditional love, these precepts demand much more altruism of us, and are much more liable to utopianism.
The rule is distinguished from highly supererogatory rationales commonly confused with it-loving thy neighbor as thyself, turning the other cheek, and aiding the poor, homeless and afflicted. This emphasis eases the rule’s “burdens of obligation,” which are already more manageable than expected in the rule’s primary role, socializing children. The article notes the rule’s highly circumscribed social scope in the cultures of its origin and its role in framing psychological outlooks toward others, not directing behavior. With those misconceptions go many of the rule’s criticisms. Working “bottom-up” in this way builds on social experience with the rule and allows us to clear up its long-standing misinterpretations. The approach reworks common belief rather than elaborating an abstracted conception of the rule’s logic. This article approaches the rule, therefore, through the rubric of building its philosophy, or clearing a path for such construction. The most familiar version of the Golden Rule says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Moral philosophy has barely taken notice of the golden rule in its own terms despite the rule’s prominence in commonsense ethics.
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