All news

Read all about ethics and our resources, events and projects worldwide

null Global Ethics Day 2017 Reading List: The Golden Rule: 12 Key Concepts from Eastern Spirituality to Take the Cannoli

Golden Rule as Cultivating Benevolence and Applying Modesty

Keywords: Virtue ethics, Analects, Confucian ethics. 
Source: Confucius, Analects 5.12 (written between 475–221 BC)
"Never impose on others what you would not do for yourself"
Read: Santiago, John: "Confucian Ethics in the Analects as Virtue Ethics", 2008. 
 

Does The Negative of the Golden Rule Apply? On What One Should Do

Keywords: Jewish Ethics, the Torah, the reciprocity principle.
Source: Hillel the Elder (110 BC-10 AD): "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah"
Read: Andersen, Kath: "Mediation in Judaism",
Discover: Christianity and Judaism (167 items)
 

Golden Rule: as Doctrine of the Mean and Virtue as Between-State [Measure: Mesotes, Meson]

Keywords: identification of subject and object, measure between two extremes. 
Source: Aristotle (384–322 BC), Nicomachean Ethics. NE ii 6.1106b27–8 
"Virtue, then is a mesotes, insofar as it aims at and achieves what is meson."
"Virtue, then is a kind of mean, at least in the sense that it is able to hit the mean".
"Excellence, then is a kind of intermediacy, insofar as it is effective at hitting upon what is intermediate".
Read: Karban, Walter: "The Second Order Observer and Aristotle's Mesotes", Biocosmological Association, 2015,
Discover: Aristotle and Ethics (750 items)
 

Self and Christian Salvation: The Reciprocity Principle in the New Testament

Keywords: Christian ethics, Golden Rule, ethics in pastoral care, Gospel of Matthew
Source: New Testament, Matthew 7:12:
"Therefore whatsoever [good] you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets."
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Matthew 22:37-39
Read: Connolly, Michele: "The World's Golden Rule in Christian Mode", Health and Social Care Chaplaincy, 2015,
 

The Golden Rule as a Mark of the Transition from Anarchy to Order

Keywords: natural law, contract, political order.
Source: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Leviathan.  
‘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."'
Read: Leviathan,1651.
Dutra, Delamar J. V.: "Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris", Principia, 2016.
Discover: Hobbes on contract and equity (50 items)
 

Golden Rule As Rule of Equity: Impartiality and Universality

Source: Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), "Rule of Equity", A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God. 
Keywords: axiom of benevolence, rule of equity
"Whatever I judge reasonable or unreasonable that another should do for me, that by the same judgement I declare reasonable or unreasonable that I should in the like case do for him".
Read: Clarke, Samuel (1705): A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God: More Particularly in Answer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza and Their Followers. 
 

Formal Legitimation of What We Should Do

Keywords: the Golden Rule and the Categorical Imperative. Respect and solicitude: this movement from the self to the other.
Source: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
"Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." (G, 4:400).
 

God as Commander of Love Applied to Christians

Source: Kierkegaard, Works of Love [Kjerlighedens Gjerninger] (1847)
"You shall love—this, then, is the word of the royal law. And truly, my listener, if you are capable of forming a conception of the state of the world before this word was spoken, or if you are trying to understand yourself and are paying attention to the lives and minds of those who, although they call themselves Christians, actually live with pagan concepts, then in relation to this Christian imperative, as in relation to everything Christian, you will humbly confess with the wonder of faith that such a thing did not arise in any human being's heart." Works of Love, 1995, 24.
 

Golden Rule and Personal Identity

Source: Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (1990) 
Keywords: idem identity (what is always the same), ipse identity (the identity of a character that remains identifiable as it unfolds over time), and identity as self-attestation or the testimony that we have the belief that we must accept responsibility.
"[We] shall interpret the Golden Rule as the transitional structure between solicitude and the categorical imperative". "This is why it is so important to give to solicitude a more fundamental statute than obedience to duty". Oneself as Another, pp. 189-190.
Discover: Oneself as Another and Ricoeur (50 item)
 

Ethics of the Welcome and Face to Face Encounter

Source: Emmanuel Levinas (1906 – 1995)
Keywords: Ethics of other-centered services and responsibility to one-another in the face-to-face encounter.
"Responsibility arises as if elicited, before we begin to think about it, by the approach of the Other person". "Face-to-face encounter", "proximity", "one's responsibility for the Other" should be considered prior to the categorical imperative, as responsibility for the Other is "anachronously prior to any commitment" (Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, 101).
Discover: Levinas and face to face ethics  (111 items)
 

The Radar-Effect

Source: Mark Hunyadi (1960-), La règle d'or : l'effet-radar (1994, RdTP)
"Do not do to others what he would not wish to be done to him"
Keywords: reciprocity.
 

Richie's Culinary Metaphor: the Golden Rule in Film and Humour

Source: Francis Coppola Film: The Godfather, 1972, [50mn. into the film].
"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."