Modem Objections and Responses

Abstract

Abstract For centuries the golden rule had enjoyed favor as a principle in both religious and philosophical ethics. The honeymoon ended as philosophers exercised their critical freedom to reformulate traditional teachings in a manner more satisfying to the requirements of reason. The drama of the golden rule during early modern European ethics was the emergence, in response to philosophical critique, of the three alternative responses: retaining and revisioning the rule, using critique to clarify its meaning; retaining the rule in some reformulated version; and rejecting the rule or replacing it with a newly constructed principle designed to capture everything of value in the rule and to avoid the rule’s handicaps. The stage was set by the outbreak of religious wars, international wars, and civil wars in Europe and by the response of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), who used the golden rule as a basic principle of a peaceful society. For Hobbes, human motivation is predominantly egoistic, and in a “state of nature” (prior to the establishment of government), which is a war of all against all, each person has a right to defend himself by any means whatsoever. But there is also an obligation to seek peace, to enter a “civil society,” in which peace is secured and contracts enforced by a sovereign power with a monopoly on the use of force.