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From Greek Reciprocity to Cosmopolitan Idealism

            "Sophistry" is a term of abuse.  Coined by the greatest thinkers of ancient Greece to characterize their opponents as purveyors of sham wisdom, "sophistry" connotes deceptive reasoning and rhetoric that sacrifices truth on the altar of social power.  As characterized by Socrates (369-499 BCE), Plato (427-347), and Aristotle (384-322), the sophists were the ones who entered the field of philosophy armed with talent, skill, and broad information, but refused to submit to the reconstruction of popular opinion required by honest logic and insight.  Sophistic oratory, whether spoken or written--when it was not confrontational and abusive--was marked by a pleasing and ambiguous mix of social propriety, vague idealism, and partisan self-interest.  And it was the sophist Isocrates (436-335) who, more than anyone else, was responsible for the burst of golden-rule thinking that entered fourth century Greek culture.

            Since the golden rule does not specify a particular moral standard, it can associate with social conventions whose mediocrity will be evident only to a later age or another culture.  In this instance the popular code of repaying good for good and harm for harm--helping friends and harming enemies--was the convention in question.  The drama of the evolution of the Greek golden rule is that, as it emerged, it became mingled with the "repayment ethic" as that code deconstructed itself; in other words, factionalism during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431-401 BCE) resulted in social and political disintegration, and the inwardly divided and mutually disunited Greek city-states were conquered by Philip of Macedon in 338.

            The golden rule had a difficult birth in the West.  It rarely received a general formulation.  A general formulation would have tended to bring to light the rule's full human scope, undermining the ethic of factionalism, so that every person, friend or enemy, would be regarded as comparable to oneself.  Neither was there a canonical version of the rule in Greek or Roman antiquity such that those who wrote along its lines regarded themselves as producing variations on a formula that everyone honored and knew by heart.  No author used a golden-rule maxim as a hub around which to gather great themes.  None proposed the rule as the leading principle of morality.  Even at the close of this period (prior to the Christian invasion of the Mediterranean world) golden-rule thinking functioned primarily through specific maxims, e.g., about the treatment of slaves.

            The rule developed in Greek literature, then, not by reflective commentaries on a recognized principle, but by the practice of a certain style of thinking.  The golden-rule thinking coming to birth in various expressions and maxims includes an idea, a recommendation, and a command: Those affected by your actions are comparable to you.  Imagine yourself in the other person's position as an aid to discovering how to apply to yourself the same high moral standard that you apply to others.  Do not treat others as you do not want to be treated.

            The rule evolved unconsciously as a by-product of deliberate effort on two issues: (1) How is the maxim of helping friends and harming enemies to be judged?  (2) Should we extend beneficence only to those who are dear to us or to all humankind?  Once Socrates and Plato achieved a breakthrough on the first question, the implications for the second question would, within a few centuries, become clear to the Stoics.

            It is noteworthy, especially in the light of later discussions of the doctrine (associated with "natural law" ethics) that there are cosmic truths which operate in every human mind, that a survey of Greco-Roman moral literature seems to show deliberate variations on a theme which is widely appreciated but usually not articulated in a general way.  In the absence of such a canonical formulation of the golden rule, applications are nonetheless discernible as such, and the rule already functions with some degree of effectiveness before it is commonly quoted, agreed upon, and given institutional recognition.  So it appears, at least, in retrospect.

Moral clarity in early golden-rule thinking

            The earliest Greek expression of golden-rule thinking is in Homer's Odyssey (eighth century).  Calypso is the goddess who has kept Odysseus as her love prisoner, and she has just received a message from Zeus that she must release her beloved and speed him homeward on pain of (un)godly retribution.  Odysseus, who does not love Calypso, distrusts her offer to let him go.  He demands that she promise not to harm him covertly, and Calypso reassures him.

            Now then: I swear by heaven above and by earth beneath and the  pouring force of Styx--that is the most awful oath of the blessed gods: I will work no secret mischief against you.  No, I mean what I say; I will be as careful for you as I should be for myself in the same need.  I know what is fair and right, my heart is not made of iron, and I am really sorry for you.[1]

Calypso does not announce and apply the golden rule as a general formula for right conduct.  Nevertheless, one may note behind the words "in the same need" a harbinger of the generalizing tendencies inherent in our intuitions of what is fair.  One should be willing to accept the treatment that one gives to another, if the roles should be reversed.  Calypso imagines herself in a situation similar to that of her recipient, Odysseus.  She associates her promise with her assurance of moral dignity and sincerity.  She is acting from a mind (noos) of justice and a heart (thumos) of compassion, and she showed herself trustworthy in carrying out her pledge.

            Thales, according to Diogenes Laertius, is reputed to have said, when asked how men might live most virtuously and justly, "If we never do ourselves what we blame in others."[2]  Another general formulation occurs in Herodotus (484‑424) where he recounts the story of King Maeandrius of Samos in the days just prior to the Persian invasion of that island.  Meandrius made radical attempt to inaugurate a just political order in place of the former kingship.  His proposal, soon to be frustrated by the suspicion and treachery of his associates, begins thus:

            You know, friends, that the sceptre of Polycrates, and all his power, has passed into my hands, and if I choose I may rule over you.  But what I condemn in another I will, if I may, avoid myself.  I never approved the ambition of Polycrates to lord it over men as good as himself, nor looked with favour on any of those who have done the like.  Now therefore, since he has fulfilled his destiny, I lay down my office, and proclaim equal rights.[3]

The criterion in this speech--"what I condemn"--is unambiguously moral, not an appeal to desire--"what I do not want."  The generality of this formulation is that it covers all the agent's deeds, not only the immediately present one.  The association of the golden rule with equal rights was radical; Maeandrius' gesture of fairness made him vulnerable in an environment where the prevailing ethic was, as we are about to see, very different.  The scope of the rule here extended to the entire relevant political unit, to a group he regarded as friends.

The golden rule mingled with partisan self-interest

            Ancient Greece was awash with the practice of doing good to one's friends and harm to one's enemies--cardinal virtues of the age.  Wars between Greek city-states were frequent, as were clashes between individuals within a given city-state.  "A long-standing feud, year after year of provocation and retaliation, is a conspicuous phenomenon of . . . upper-class society. . . .  It was not the Athenian custom to disguise hatred."[4]  To be sure, returning a favor was often done without self-regarding calculation, and revenge sometimes deliberately sacrificed self-interest.  The practice of repaying in kind involved not only mercilessly blind and suicidal feuding but also risk and sacrifice and self-protection in a violent world.

            As the golden rule emerged within the tradition of repaying in kind, it was not always differentiated from it.  The evolution of the ethic of helping friends and harming enemies is documented in the most massive and focused study of the golden rule, Die Goldene Regel (1962) by Albrecht Dihle.  He carried the connection he noticed to the extreme of interpreting every occurrence of golden-rule thinking in the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean world as blended with, and dominated by, the popular ethic, which he called "repayment-thinking" (Vergeltungsdenken).[5]  Dihle saw the golden rule as a product of the sophists, the traveling professional teachers of rhetoric and diverse knowledge of the -fourth and -third centuries.  Though the sophists were like Plato in some ways, they denounced his quest for transcendent truth.  Their formulations had a generality transcending earlier particular maxims such as "He who kills a person shall be killed."  The new formulations cover not only action in response to what others have done, but also action in which the agent takes the initiative and anticipates others' response.[6]  Dihle credited the sophists with developing the capacity for abstraction and rational analysis; and he emphasized that the golden rule bears the mark of what the sophists wanted to offer: a popular, common-sense technique for social success.[7]  In the words of James Robinson, the sophists transformed "commonsense ethical practice into rational abstract maxims and these maxims into prose gnomic sentences impressive on the memory and aesthetically satisfying in terms of the rhetoric of the day."[8]

            On the whole, it is misleading to link the golden rule with repayment thinking.  Edward Westermarck's encyclopedic study of planetary evolutionary ideas of morality associates primitive retaliation with non-moral resentment, personal hatred, and revenge.  Moral disapproval, by contrast, is distinguished by three factors: (1) non-selfishness, (2) the supposed independence of one's moral judgment from one's sympathy or hostility toward those whose acts are being judged, and (3) the presumption (in fact false, for Westermarck) that a moral judgment "must be shared by everybody who possesses both a sufficient knowledge of the case and a 'sufficiently developed' moral consciousness."[9]

            The initial plausibility of Dihle's interpretation may be gathered from the following train of thought.  Consider that the golden rule may be adopted from desire and fear, as a policy designed to maintain a flow of benefits from allies and to forestall or minimize conflict.  It is natural to respond in a friendly way to those who are friendly to us and to respond with antagonism to those are antagonistic to us.  To the extent that a society holds it as normative to repay persons in kind, it becomes prudent to act in accordance with a maxim of prudence: "Treat others in the light of the expectation that they will repay good for good and evil for evil."  From this maxim one could develop a further rule, "Treat others as you want others to treat you," while remaining within the technology of self-interest.

            The best illustrations of the blending of the golden rule with the pursuit of personal or factional advantage are found in the writings of sophist Isocrates, a vigorous advocate of the ethic of repaying in kind.  Panegyricus, his most impressive composition, published around 380, appeals to the rule of helping friends and harming enemies in order to persuade the Greek cities to unite against the threat from Macedonia (which would conquer them in 338).  Isocrates had a school in Athens contemporary with and critical of Plato (427-347).  Isocrates was a sophist in the Platonic sense: brilliant, talented in (literary) oratory, and contemptuous of speculative philosophy.  One of Isocrates' letters, composed in 374, during the period when Plato's Phaedo was probably written, is sprinkled with such observations.

            In Isocrates' maxims (mostly positively formulated) revolving around an emerging golden rule, self and others are portrayed as comparable; and this insight becomes the hub for a variety of psychological observations and bits of moral and political advice.[10]  At the close of a speech to the jury that will decide a lawsuit he has brought, Isocrates exhorts the jurors to "give a just verdict, and prove yourselves to be for me such judges as you would want to have for yourselves."[11]  He advises, "Conduct yourself toward your parents as you would have your children conduct themselves toward you."[12]  But this advice, which apparently expreses a high moral tone, is immediately preceded by the counsel to "do honour to the divine power at all times, but especially on occasions of public worship; for thus you will have the reputation both of sacrificing to the gods and of abiding by the laws."  On the basis of the comparability of states, Isocrates does argue for a moderate, reasonable, and fair symmetry in power relations.  "Deal with weaker states as you think it appropriate for stronger states to deal with you."[13]  This advice, again apparently of high moral tone, is followed in the very next sentence by the following word: "Do not be contentious in all things, but only where it will profit you to have your own way."  A similar ambiguity may be observed in a companion essay titled "Nicocles," where Isocrates writes by putting himself in the place of the ruler--it is as though Isocrates is ghost-writing a speech for Nicocles.[14]  Here we find a quite general formulation of the emerging rule, but again set in an immediate context of repayment-thinking: "Those things which provoke anger when you suffer them from others, do not do to others.  Practice nothing in your deeds for which you condemn others in your words.  Expect to fare well or ill according as you are disposed well or ill toward me."[15]  In other words, the "ruler"-author is counseling his subjects to follow the golden rule in their relations toward the ruler . . . and if they do not, they can expect retaliation.

            In order to get clear about the issues surrounding repayment thinking (both in Greek thought and in the New Testament), it is necessary to distinguish several principles that are logically independent, even though they may be combined or confused in a given text.

1.  The repayment principle: We should repay good with good and harm with harm.  This is a formulation of repayment-thinking, and it is a maxim about what one ought to do.

2.  The principle of social or cosmic justice: Acts have consequences; if we do good, we can expect good in return; if we do evil, we can expect to suffer.  This is an observation from experience about how reality is often seen to work.  Dihle quotes the sophist Antiphon, "Whoever things he can do evil to his neighbor and not suffer evil is not wise."[16]

3.  The principle of moral prudence: We ought to do good rather than evil because it is in our own long-range self-interest to do so.  Dihle cites exhortations to give a portion of our treasure to the god, because the god will reward us in turn; and he documents a belief that the high proportion of eunuchs among the Sythians can be explained as a punishment from the gods, since the Sythians had been lax in offering sacrifices to them.[17]

4.  The golden rule: We ought not to do to others what we do not want others to do to us.

            None of the last three principles implies an ethic of repaying in kind.  Those who accept the principle of cosmic justice have reason to affirm the principle of prudence.  But the repayment principle is inconsistent with the principles of cosmic justice and prudence, since doing harm to others provokes a spiral of never-ending vengeance.  Golden-rule thinking, exemplified by King Maeandrius in Herodotus' narrative, abandons the motive of prudence, stands for what is regarded as intrinsically right, does not presuppose any doctrine of cosmic retaliation, and does not engage in doing evil at all.

Plato's limited use for golden-rule thinking: the Crito

            Greek philosophy, born in the quest for the source or principles of all things, took a turn with Socrates, who focused on the cognitive foundations of virtuous character.  Plato located the key to character growth in a conversion of the mind to inquiry into knowable patterns or structures ("forms"), leading toward insight  into their ultimate source, an eternal, perfect, divine, unitary principle, "the good."[18]  Socrates and Plato attacked the sophists; Plato's dialogues are consistent and militant in exposing and criticizing the ethic of helping friends and harming enemies.[19]

            In the Crito, Plato portrays Socrates in prison; he has been condemned to death by the Athenian assembly for giving impious teachings and corrupting the youth.  His friend Crito offers to bribe the prison guard to let Socrates escape, since Crito does not want to lose his friend, nor does he want his reputation to suffer among those who might regard him as unwilling to spend the money to save his friend.  Crito illustrates a tendency of character which Plato classifies as unduly influenced by social-emotional concern about what others think.  In response to Crito, Socrates challenges the hegemony of popular opinion and then wins agreement on a major premise (repudiating the retaliation component of repayment thinking): Never do harm, even in return for harm.  The agreement on this principle is the philosophic highpoint of the dialogue.  In the subsequent and final section of the dialogue, Socrates begins by asking how that principle may be applied to the present situation.  Does breaking jail amount to breaking a just agreement?  At this point, Crito has trouble understanding him.  Then Socrates replies,

            Look at it in this way.  Suppose that while we were preparing to run away from here--or however one should describe it--the laws and constitution of Athens were to come and confront us and ask this question, Now Socrates, what are you proposing to do?  Can you deny that by this act which you are contemplating you intend, so far as you have the power, to destroy us, the laws, and the whole city as well?[20]

Using golden-rule thinking to clarify reasoning, Socrates imagines himself in the position of the one(s) who may be hurt by his action.  He constructs what the laws, personified, might say if they were to catch him escaping from prison; indeed, his project is to gain an impartial perspective on what is just and what is harmful.  This point remains true, regardless of the controversy about the degree of irony present here.

Plato's argument in the Phaedo for loyalty to one's divine spirit

            In the Phaedo we find Socrates in prison on the day when he will be put to death by drinking hemlock.  The topic of the immortality of soul is the focus of his final conversation with friends.  The question arises whether it is permissible to follow Socrates (not by imitating his sustained philosophic inquiry but) by committing suicide.  Then, at Phaedo 62b‑62e, there is an argument that we should not commit suicide because we belong in the service of the god, the very best master, with whom a wise man would want to remain as long as possible.  Socrates uses an argument that could be derived from the golden rule: Just as we would not want our property to destroy itself without our permission, so we should not frustrate the god by taking our lives prematurely.

            Socrates begins by mentioning a questionable source of information: "The allegory which the mystics tells us--that we men are put in a sort of guard post, from which one must not release oneself or run away--seems to me to be a high doctrine with difficult implications."[21]  The reference to an allegory of the mystics is a flag for irony, because a goal of Platonic philosophy is to transcend popular religion with its passions and opinions and fears and retaliatory notions of justice.  However, Socrates' following sentence exemplifies the philosopher's effort to penetrate religious myth so as to distill its universal meaning: "All the same, Cebes, I believe that this much is true, that the gods are our keepers, and we men are one of their possessions.  Don't you think so?"  Cebes' simple agreement with Socrates establishes the shared foundation for this part of their dialogue: we belong to the gods.

            The golden-rule argument in this passage comes in the next speech of Socrates, which Socrates begins by calling Cebes to think of himself as an illustration.

            Then take your own case.  If one of your possessions were to destroy itself without intimation from you that you wanted it to die, wouldn't you be angry with it and punish it, if you had any means of doing so?[22]

This use of the imaginative role reversal shows the capacity of golden-rule thinking to mingle what Plato regards as inferior psychological and religious notions with moral insight.  The passage invokes the motive of retaliation, part of repayment thinking which Plato opposes, associated with an anthropomorphic conception of a vengeful god.  Such a concept of God is displaced in the dialogues by the Socratic experience of the personally present divine spirit (daimon) and by a philosophic concept of an eternal goodness.  In this context the hierarchal relation of superior to subordinate is unquestionably legitimate, and the possibility of our own property being disloyal is fanciful (unless we think of Plato's Euthyphro, in which the fatal beating of a runaway slave led to the occasion for philosophic inquiry).  Despite the fact that the reader should discern irony in the passage, the reader should also, I believe, discern a genuine Platonic affirmation here.  Socrates' flight of imagination about runaway property is associated with ideas that Plato actually holds: that evil has consequences in human lives; that punishment has a place in a just order; that the harvest of earthly character-sowing cannot be presumed to terminate at death.  The morally correct conclusion about suicide becomes clearer as a result of putting oneself in the position of the divine superior.

            If we believe that Plato was at least partly serious about an afterlife, new questions arise.  Can any moral theory maintain its integrity if it posits a cosmic order of rewards and punishments?  Must self-interest invade the motivation of an agent who believes in such a scheme?  If one who anticipates life beyond death wants to distinguish morality from self-interest, how can he manage to avoid cultivating virtue primarily as an ornament for his own immortal soul?  It is easy to understand the suspicion, but difficult to prove that a given belief must cause the believer's motivation to be impure.  Reply could be made with counterquestions: What if virtue really does coincide with our true self-interest in the long run?  What if there really is an afterlife?  What if our earthly loyalties really do matter to our immortal soul?  Should we repress our beliefs about that?  Or is our duty rather to put those beliefs in perspective by noting their epistemological limitations and their psychological functions and by emphasizing the realization in this life upon which the purported future of the soul depends?  In Socrates we see Plato's exemplar of the proper emphasis of attention: he is not looking over his shoulder at the prospects for heavenly reward and punishment, but living with philosophic responsibility, examining arguments, and promoting virtue for its intrinsic value.

        What philosophic possibilities of golden-rule thinking might be gleaned from the Phaedo passage?  There is no parity of interaction between gods and mortals such that we should treat the gods as we want the gods to treat us.  When we say, "Do not treat others as you do not want others to treat you," there is an unspoken assumption--"in (essentially) the same situation."  This assumption can be extended to yield a new application of the golden rule: the agent should treat a superior as the agent would like to be treated by a subordinate.  The domain of the golden rule is thus not restricted to interactions among social equals.  The golden rule applies to those who are comparable.  What is surprising is that God is included among the comparables.  (Socrates does use the singular, theos, at 62b7.)  The structure of this particular extension of golden-rule thinking is this.  We have an asymmetrical relationship to God analogous to asymmetrical relationships in which we are in the superior role.  Our experience as recipients (when others are obedient, or not, to our legitimate requirements) enables us to anticipate the attitude of God to the action we are considering.  The implicit rule is that we should treat our divine superiors as we want our subordinates to treat us.  In this sense, we should treat God as we would be treated.  The principle that can be constructed on the basis of the golden-rule arguments of the Crito and Phaedo is, "When deliberating about how to treat a divine superior, imagine yourself (as best you can) in the superior perspective, and do not violate what you can thus recognize to be fair."[23]  The force of such arguments is to remind us that actions relating to self and others are also subsumed by our relationship with God.

The reasoning in Plato's Laws about respecting others' property

            In the Laws Plato considers in detail the legislation appropriate to a well-ordered state.  Regarding business transactions, the Athenian, using a piece of reasoning clearly akin to the golden rule, proposes a "simple general rule": "I would have no one touch my property, if I can help it, or disturb it in the slightest way without some kind of consent on my part; if I am a man of reason, I must treat the property of others in the same way."[24]  The previous adventures in golden-rule thinking involved loyalty to superiors; here we have a symmetrical maxim for use between human beings.  Again, ambiguity could be alleged.  The Athenian's desire that others not touch his property seems extreme.  The subsequent lines of his speech explain why business people should be motivated to respect others' property.  According to the Athenian, what virtuous restraint costs him financially will be made up by the gain of his soul in goodness, a consideration that may seem "self-interested."  There follows a discussion of punishments for thieves.  As before, the maxim pertains to property considerations.

            Nevertheless, there does seem to be more than reward-and-punishment thinking here.  The rewards in question are treasures of the soul, incompatible with greed ("mere self-interest").  The Athenian, a mature citizen, sees that it is virtuous to abstain from taking others' property--not simply that retaliation is possible.  The maxim is proposed as a practical guide, not as a substitute for theoretic insight into reality.  It is not offered as a free-floating criterion of what is right.

A Platonic transformation of golden-rule thinking

            On its face, the rule, "Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you" sets up what the agent wants as a criterion of morality.  Plato, in sustained opposition to the sophistic maxim of Protagoras, "Man is the measure," emphasized, above all, the pursuit of intellectual insight into eternal, perfect, unchanging, divine "forms" and their relations with the things we sense around us.[25]  If Plato had ever explicitly discussed a generally formulated golden rule, his basic objection would have been expressed in a remark Socrates makes in the Republic: "Nothing imperfect is the measure of anything."[26]  Unregulated wants are no measure at all.  It is striking, however, that all occurrences of golden-rule thinking in Plato's dialogues incorporate conditions that largely block this objection.[27]  The person using golden-rule thinking, Socrates or the Athenian, is virtuous, loyal to the highest conceivable standard of goodness.  The conditions that block the objection are, first, that no free-floating golden rule is presented as a sufficient moral measure; and, second, that the wants of Socrates and the Athenian are hardly unregulated--they both strive for the divine measure.  Such idealism would facilitate the insight necessary to apply the golden rule appropriately.  Ennobled wants do not exceed what is fair.

            In the interest of a more completely developed theory, one might ask what concepts of idealism, divine measure, and perfection are required for a non-sophistic golden rule.  The answer need not be spelled out in detail here.  Any intuitively repulsive counterexample to the rule would suffice to indicate, by contrast, the requisite idealism.  Any idealism worthy of the name will have the resources to condemn abuses that satisfy the letter but not the spirit of the golden rule--manipulative shows of benevolence, vengeful excesses, imperialistic impositions of one's own standards on another, including the caricatured adulterer or sadomasochist who goes forth to treat others, etc.  The bulwark against abuse of the rule and the key to its higher interpretation is its link to ideals of character.

An Aristotelian norm among friends

            Aristotle (384-322) saw the golden rule operating legitimately among friends.  According to Diogenes Laertius, when asked how to behave toward friends, Aristotle replied, "As we should wish our friends to behave to us."[28]  We have concentric circles of friends.  At the center is self-love, friendship with oneself.  In persons of high character this is not a materialistic and antisocial trait, but a self-love possible for one who is not torn by inner conflict, has no anxiety about being alone with himself, is content with his life in retrospect, and choses, above all, noble deeds for himself.  Such a person enjoys a truly happy life--full of excellent activities in which human capacities find satisfying exercise under the leadership of reason.  Though Aristotle writes glowingly of philosophic contemplation of God, he does not regard the supreme experience of theoretical reason as particularly beneficial for ethics.  Instead, he emphasizes cultivating virtuous habits through emotional discipline and careful deliberation based on a balanced understanding of the situation.

            Then comes one's closest circle of friends and family.  Though one might dream of being divinely self-sufficient (tasting contemplatively the self-reflective thinking that is God), having friends is one of the necessary goods in life.  Companion friends like the same activities and share political convictions.[29]  What goods shall one then wish for one's friend?  The same goods that one wishes for oneself.  "The decent person . . . is related to his friend as he is to himself, since the friend is another himself [allos autos]."[30]  (Aristotle is not merely noting that each of them is a self; the implication rather is, for example, that you, my friend, are to me another Jeff.)  The same idea applies within the family: "A parent loves his children as [he loves] himself."[31]  Friendship includes goodwill--wishing goods for the other, for the other's sake; and a friend is also motivated to act to do good to his friend.[32]

            The next circle comprises one's fellow citizens.  These, too, are people that one cares about, and a virtuous person is prepared to die for his city.[33]  Though Aristotle's concept of justice differs from repayment thinking, in the Nicomachean Ethics he speaks tolerantly of the popular custom.[34]  Though Plato evaluated reciprocity on the basis of its manipulative forms, Aristotle evaluates it more as a reasonable practice of social balance.  Discussing justice, Aristotle does not advocate returning evil, harming the wrongdoer; rather he focuses on restoring proper proportion, e.g., when property has been wrongly taken or a distribution improperly carried out.  Moreover, punishment is not directed to "enemies," but to those who have, in a particular action, violated due proportion.

            Life in the city is an affair of transactions; without exchange, there would be no relationships.  Aristotle's overarching concern is to preserve proportion in interactions.  Equality is the ideal, though it does not require exchanging the same kind of good in the same quantity.  Friends make an appropriate return, reciprocating the spirit of the gift received.[35]  In the case of benefactor and beneficiary, however, there may be an inequality.  "Doing good is proper to the superior person, and receiving it to the inferior."[36]  Where one cannot return a comparable good to a benefactor, the way to compensate is to accord the greater honor to the benefactor.

            Aristotle finds what might be called a golden-rule reasonableness in normal social life.  This evident in a friendship among those whose goodwill springs from certain similarities.

            People are also friends if the same things are good and bad for them, or if they are friends to the same people and enemies to the same people.  Necessarily these people wish the same things, and so, since one wishes the same things for the other as one wishes for oneself, one appears to be a friend to him.[37]

A golden-rule consistency between feelings and actions becomes explicit in a passage concerning popular ways of thinking.  "For what a man does himself, he is said not to resent when his neighbors do it, so that what he does not do, it follows that he resents."[38]  The inference, though fallacious, is interesting.  If I interpret it properly, the first part amounts to a social-psychological generalization that people usually accept it when others engage in the same kinds of behavior that they engage in themselves.  The second part says that people generally do not do what they resent when others do it.  An example of this kind of consistency is found in Aristotle's discussion of humor.  There are certain jokes that are so abusive that a decent person would not tell them; neither does he welcome others' telling jokes of that sort.[39]  In other words, Aristotle finds a general consistency between people's feelings about what others do and their own actions.  Most people are not hypocrites.  Thus far, they satisfy a golden rule that Aristotle never quite formulates as a norm; but his ethics is not in the business of giving rules for living.  Normative description, with prescriptions latent, is his method.

            The outermost circle of friendship includes every human being.  Toward humanity one can be expected to acknowledge the capacity for community, to relax decently any legalistic insistence on having the exact measure that is due to one, and to have an attitude of goodwill.  There is a basis for limited friendship with slaves qua human beings, since "every human being seems to have some relations of justice with everyone who is capable of community in law and agreement."[40]  Moreover, Aristotle observes the wide range of affection that includes animal bonding and the validation of common humanity across cultural barriers.

            A parent would seem to have a natural friendship for a child, and a child for a parent, not only among human beings but also among birds and most kinds of animals.  Members of the same race, and human beings most of all, have a natural friendship for each other; that is why we praise friends of humanity.  And in our travels we can see how every human being is akin and beloved to a human being.[41]

In the days before crowded airports, the sentiment of friendship for humanity came more easily to a traveler.  Aristotle hardly emphasizes being a philanthropist, a friend of humanity, though the generalities that he proposed his Ethics were not intended to be only locally helpful.  They represent a normative distillation of observations and reflections based on his wide travels, study, and discussion.  Indeed, the very enterprise of classical philosophy carried an implicit nisus towards a humanitarianism that would come to center stage in the Stoics.

The cosmopolitan golden rule of Stoicism

            The universal scope of the golden rule in Stoicism was based on the affirmation that human beings are the offspring of God (Zeus), the universal logos (principle, reason) governing the entire cosmos.  Within each person is a spark of divinity making it possible to realize cosmic truth; and the Stoics equated that highest in man with reason, an equation which has been the hallmark of philosophic rationalism.[42]  To do the will of God, therefore, is to be true to one's nature and to act in accord with right reason.[43]

            Golden-rule thinking appears a few times in the writings of Seneca (4 BCE - 65 CE), the Stoic philosopher and assistant to the Emperor Nero.  On Anger rehearses at length the cruelties and follies of anger, its deceptive rationalizations, its causes, and strategies for its cure.  One's tranquillity of soul is too valuable to be squandered in anger.  The text is full of the wisdom of psychological and social and historic experience.  It is in the context of this perspective of seasoned reason that Seneca advocates the imaginative role reversal:

            Let us put ourselves in the place of the man with whom we are angry; as it is, an unwarranted opinion of self makes us prone to anger, and we are unwilling to bear what we ourselves would have been willing to inflict.[44]

            In another text, Seneca brings the golden rule into tacit paradox in discussing how to do good to others.  The rationality implicit in moral practice should not hinder spontaneity:

            Let us consider, most excellent Liberalis, what still remains of the earlier part of the subject; in what way a benefit should be bestowed.  I think that I can point out the shortest way to this; let us give in the way in which we ourselves should like to receive.  Above all, we should give willingly, quickly, and without any hesitation . . . .[45]

The paradox of the golden rule is that many situations leave nary a moment for rational reflection, so the rule cannot succeed as a compulsive mental exercise; it must be forgotten to be fulfilled.

            Seneca applies interpersonal moral comparison to the question of the treatment of slaves.

            I do not wish to involve myself in too large a question, and to discuss the treatment of slaves, towards whom we Romans are excessively haughty, cruel and insulting.  But this is the kernel of my advice: Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters."[46]

It is questions about Seneca's character that have raised doubts about the genuineness of his extension of the golden rule to the question of the treatment of slaves.  It has been argued that Seneca's stand on slavery was not advanced for his time, but merely a collection of platitudes and clichés.[47]  While Seneca did promote the cause of humane treatment of slaves, his stand was based an ambiguous combination of appeal to principle and warning about the dangers of slave revolt.  He advocated neither the abolition of slavery nor the large-scale freeing of slaves, though his will provided for the manumission of his own slaves, and he was never accused of treating his slaves abusively.  Although, as the teacher and friend of the Emperor, he is credited with influence on the early and worthy phase of Nero's reign, Seneca's hypocrisies, obvious and alleged, occupy his historians.[48]  Proclaiming the virtues of poverty or moderation in material goods, he amassed luxurious wealth.  Apart from the question of Seneca's sincerity, it is noteworthy that golden-rule appeals had become platitudes.  Whether or not people adhered to the rule or realized its implications, people had come to recognize it as a worthy standard.  And those who cared about their reputation (or who, like Seneca, were in charge of creating a good reputation for their employers) could press the golden rule into service.

            If Seneca's golden-rule pronouncement on slavery lacked credibility, that of Epictetus, the freed Roman slave, did not.

            What you avoid suffering, do not attempt to make others suffer.  You avoid slavery: take care that others are not your slaves.[49]

Free of anger, Epictetus administers a personal moral teaching with elemental moral logic.  That logic is not only a formal affair of deducing a specific application from a general law.  The moral logic of this golden-rule teaching (and the negative formulation is proper here) is precisely what is implied in the experience of suffering under oppression.  The Greeks had long held that wisdom comes from suffering, and here we find a morally powerful pronouncement of the golden rule from someone who has experienced the harm in question. 

Conclusion

            Is the golden rule, then, sophistic?  Yes, if it is asserted in opposition to philosophy.  Yes, if it consorts with a partisan spirit.  The rule is undoubtedly heard on the lips of modern-day sophists; but such a condition hardly suggests the rule's higher potentials.

            Plato finds golden-rule thinking occasionally useful for engaging the mind in the first steps toward philosophic insight.  If Socrates and Plato rouse us from a complacent mediocrity, Aristotle protects us from extreme idealism.  It is far easier with Aristotle to imagine a normal, social practice of the golden rule.  If Aristotle had ever confronted a generally formulated golden rule proposed as a universal rule, he would have pointed out that the golden rule needs a way of articulating human similarities in terms of which a direct application of the rule would be justified, e.g., giving food to a starving person.  Moreover in order to work with the rule one needs a way of adjusting to situations in which one faces someone with desires that are unknown or different from one's own.  Aristotle had just the flexibility needed to apply the rule.  He understood that his principles would not have the character of mathematical principles--true for every conceivable application.[50]

            The Stoics began to affirm the golden rule as a universal moral law, but their overemphasis on character achievement--ordering the self in harmony with reason--affected the outworking of their humanitarian insight.  Excessive focus on the inner citadel of the soul tended to dissolve any profound sense of relationship and to distract the impulse to social service.[51]  Their cosmopolitan concept of humanity expressed itself rather in philosophy of mind and philosophy of law, giving rise to the notion of human rights.  Stoicism remained a philosophy, not a religion.  Its recognition of human kinship was a fire waiting to be lit.