“Do onto others as you would wish them do onto you.” Such reads a version of what many people term “The Golden Rule,” (GR) or alternatively, “The Ethic of Reciprocity.” Some even regard it as the ethic of transference of perspective.
In many inter-faith and inter-civilizational dialogues held so far, whether in Malaysia or elsewhere, as in many talks and writings promoting common ethical grounds for co-existence, it is commonplace to find GR being invoked.
It is clear that GR is regarded by its proponents as being well suited to be a standard to which different religions and cultures could appeal in resolving conflicts. In their view, the need for such a common standard is becoming more urgent as the world becomes more and more a single interacting global community.
It is expected that once people accept GR, they will also stand in good stead the idea that every person shares certain inherent human rights simply because of their membership in the human race. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is often regarded as one good manifestation of this growing worldwide consensus.
Some of the GR proponents even argue that the greatest failure of organized religions is their historical inability to convince their followers that GR applies to all humans, not merely to fellow believers.
As such, they urge that religions stress that their membership use GR when dealing with THE OTHERS-persons of other religions, the other gender, other races, other sexual orientations, etc.
There are of course other versions of the rule, as is obvious when one refers to the sacred scriptures, or books, of the various religions and ethical teachings. However, the proponents of GR will always try to convince us that despite such varieties, they all boil down to the same principle and meaning.
Yet, some observers have pointed out that GR is meaningless without identifying the recipient and the situation. Otherwise, a depressed person who wishes to be killed would be morally obligated to kill others. Or a person who likes peanut butter should feed it to someone who is allergic to it.
Moreover, whereas some policies that are beneficial to the majority may well be harmful to some minority, precepts such as GR somehow assume that there is some absolute and universal standard to what is beneficial and what is harmful. As such, if one is to avoid all harm, one would be prevented from doing much good. George Bernard Shaw might be right when he remarked, “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”
Such being the case, there have been attempts to reformulate GR in a way that is expected to minimize any paradox or absurdity that may have appeared if the rule is left in its original literal version.
One such attempt is the interpretation that is formulated by Harry J. Gensler, a scholar who has conducted philosophical analyses on GR, in the form: “Treat others only in ways that you are willing to be treated in the same exact situation.”
Thus formulated, it is clear that to apply GR adequately, one needs knowledge and imagination. Not only does one need to know what effect one’s actions have on others’ lives but one also needs to be able to imagine oneself, vividly and accurately, in the other person’s place on the receiving end of the action.
Yet, in Gensler’s observation, GR is best seen as a consistency principle. It does not replace regular moral norms. It is not an infallible guide on which actions are right or wrong nor does it tell one specifically what to do.
It only prescribes consistency-that one not have one’s actions toward another be out of harmony with one’s desires toward a reversed situation action. It tests one’s moral coherence. If one violates GR, then one is violating the spirit of fairness and concern that lie at the heart of morality.
Be that as it may, in order to make GR work, its proponents must be able to convince as many people as possible of its viability. And this includes their proving that it is not merely a good rhetorics but is also both intellectually firmly grounded and widely applicable.
To do this, they need, among others, to account for situations in which a strict application of GR is contraindicated because it can lead to harming others. As a lot of harm has been done historically in the name of helping other people, before one can apply GR, one should take care that one is really helping people, and not harming them. This often requires more wisdom than is readily available. Eventually, it will also lead one to the question whether it is moral to harm a few individuals in order to prevent a larger harm to the rest of society?
Furthermore, if the GR proponents are also adherents-not simply nominal followers-of any particular religion, they need to also account for passages or teachings within their Holy Books which may contradict their own Ethic of Reciprocity. Usually this happens when non-believers in the dominant religion are discussed.
Instead of sloganeering, the proponents also need to supply detailed comprehensive explanation of GR. This includes their clarifying what it is not. An attempt at this, for instance, has sought to show that GR is not (1) tit-for-tat, or retributive justice; (2) non-aggression, or harm, principle; (3) a “rule” in specifics; and (4) majoritarianism.
In this respect, a critique made by Bernard Gert, a professor of Moral Philosophy at Dartmouth College, in his article “Morality versus Slogans” is something for them to consider: “I am not denying that the Golden Rule, in some cases, tells us to do the moral thing. What I am saying is that in those cases, you already knew what was immoral before you applied the Golden Rule. If you are wondering whether to kill somebody, you don’t need that Golden Rule to tell you, ‘I wouldn’t want to be killed, therefore I shouldn’t kill him.’ You knew it was wrong to kill him before you applied the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is of no help at all because it gives you the wrong answers as often as it give you the right ones. Using procedures that are not very reliable, that sometimes give you the right answer but just as often give you the wrong answer, is not very useful.”