The Golden Rule- One or Many, Gold or Glitter

Introduction

The “Golden Rule” book is written is written by Jeffrey Wattles. This book tells about the histories of the Golden Rule. Its scope in Confucianism and Hellenism, as well as Judaism, the New Testament and the Christian tradition, is competently presented and discussed. Moving from the religious to the secular, the author traces philosophical objections and responses from Hobbes to Kant and John Stuart Mill. A fascinating chapter sketches the fate of the Rule in the hands on 19th century liberal idealism. (One has observed that the Rule re-emerges today in attempts to give a philosophical basis to business ethics; but such a move was anticipated by Albert Nash, among others, in the 19th century.) The theme of reciprocity involves the familiar figures of Piaget, Kohlberg, Gilligan, and Erikson, as well as equally familiar concerns about stage sequences, self-deception and role reversal (Richard, p. 95).

Ethical concept of the book

In a short second part, the writer sums up his reflections in an attempt to present the ethics of the Rule, both in terms of a philosophy of morality and its religious dimensions. He concludes that the Rule is 'part of our planet's common language, shared by persons with differing but overlapping conceptions of morality. Only a principle as flexible can serve as a moral ladder for all humankind'. The author justified in devoting so much space to a historical review? In view of the perennial nature of the subject matter, I think he was. Of course, one could be ungenerous and ask for more. The relationship of the Rule to exegesis and ethics in the New Testament is not fully explored, but this criticism might be ascribed to the eccentricity of the reviewer. The book is, in fact, remarkably comprehensive. It originated in a Stanford University seminar, and one could wholeheartedly commend it as source material for a major theme in Religious Studies and Ethics. It has engaged the minds of the most estimable philosophers and religious teachers; it has been endorsed by social scientists concerned with human relations and personal development; as popular wisdom, it recognizes no boundaries; yet it retains a childlike simplicity of style that is both appealing and deceptive.

Risky Arguments

From a realist perspective, i.e. from the point of view of classical philosophy, human rights can be conceived as individual rights derived from the condition, nature or human nature or, in more simple natural subjective rights. Human nature is a source of regulatory requirements that the classical tradition called natural law (Paden, p. 131). From another perspective, one can also say that, in the broadest sense, natural law is the case these demands we call human rights work as she is the rule that gives the subject the power to enforce certain behavior. Now there are various formulations of natural law that can be taken as principles capable of rationally justified under the necessary logical link with them, the existence and extent of human rights. Thus, we have, for ...