The golden virtue

Sat, 26 May 2007 21:00:22 +0100

I'm trying to catch up on Chris' prolific writing on ethics, a topic of some interest to me. Yesterday he wrote about the golden rule as one of the foundations of a system of ethics:

The Golden Rule, also known as the Ethic of Reciprocity, is a moral principle found in virtually all the major world religions, usually explicitly. Stated simply, it asks that we treat other people as we would have ourselves be treated. So fundamental to religious practice is this principle, that the Parliament of the World's Religions (a recurrent conference of religious representatives) endorsed it as the common principle of the majority of world religions.

continued...

and recounts some of it's long history. I've come across some of the philosophical objections to the golden rule before but it was brought back to me as I read:

"Love they neighbour," possibly the oldest form of the Golden Rule, offers more traction against the problems Appiah notes than he originally assumes. If we take into account the issues presented by relative ethics, that our ethics are only absolutely valid from our particular frame of reference (and any other frame of reference which also holds the same values), the application of the Golden Rule becomes simpler. We would not want other people to ignore our values and beliefs, and thus by extension when we behave towards other people we must take into account their values and belief, and then behave in whichever manner we can uphold as loving or compassionate.

I think that seems very easy to forget the value systems of others or, perhaps more insidiously, assume that the values of others are necessarily congruent with our own values. I have some more thoughts related to existential psychology but they are not yet formed to a point. I hope to post them later after further reflection.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on values

The golden virtue