Would you prefer the NEGATIVE or POSITIVE version of Golden Rule?

[Pag_Hingowa]

It seems that the positive allows for some twistings which enables people to get away with some truly horrific things. For example, the positive allows someone who wants people to abuse and torture them to do so to others (and such individuals do exist).

The negative prevents this as no one wants another to suborn their individual choice.

(I stand to be corrected)

Question -

Which version version has much more power to foster moral behavior?

I would very much appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut.

 

[tonyrey]

It seems that the positive allows for some twistings which enables people to get away with some truly horrific things. For example, the positive allows someone who wants people to abuse and torture them to do so to others (and such individuals do exist).
The negative prevents this as no one wants another to suborn their individual choice.

(I stand to be corrected)

Please explain why you think this is so.

Which version version has much more power to foster moral behavior?

Positive instructions are generally more effective than negative ones. “Thou shalt not” seems to infringe on our freedom even though it often promotes it. Evil is ultimately self-destructive…

 

[exnihilo]

I always though Robert Dabney did a good job of explaining the positive version of the Golden Rule.

But a more special word should be devoted to the argument from the Golden Rule. The sophism is so bald, and the clear evolution of it has been given so often, even in the humblest manuals of ethics prepared for school-boys, that it is tiresome to repeat its exposure… The whole reasoning… proceeds on the absurd idea, that any caprice or vain desire we might entertain towards our fellowman, if we were in his place, and he in ours, must be the rule of our conduct towards him, whether the desire would be in itself right or not. This absurdity has been illustrated by a thousand in-stances. On this rule, a parent who, were he a child again, would be wayward and self-indulgent, commits a clear sin in restraining or punishing the waywardness of his child, for this is doing the opposite of what he would wish were he again the child. Judge and sheriff commit a criminal murder in condemning and executing the most atrocious felon; for were they on the gallows themselves, the over-mastering love of life would very surely prompt them to desire re-lease. In a word, whatever ill-regulated desire we are conscious of having, or of being likely to have, in reversed circumstances, that desire we are bound to make the rule of our action in granting the parallel caprice of any other man, be he bore, beggar, highwayman, or what not. On this understanding, the Golden Rule would become any thing but golden; it would be a rule of iniquity; for instead of making impartial equity our regulating principle, it would make the accidents of man’s criminal caprice the law of his acts. It would become every man’s duty to enable all other men to do whatever his own sinful heart, mutatis mutandis, might prompt…

It is clear, then, that our Saviour, by His Golden Rule, never in-tended to establish so absurd a law. The rule of our conduct to our neighbour is not any desire which we might have, were we to change places; but it is that desire which we should, in that case, be morally entitled to have.

 

[jochoa]

It seems that the positive allows for some twistings which enables people to get away with some truly horrific things. For example, the positive allows someone who wants people to abuse and torture them to do so to others (and such individuals do exist).

The negative prevents this as no one wants another to suborn their individual choice.

(I stand to be corrected)

Question -

Which version version has much more power to foster moral behavior?

I would very much appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut.

I believe word play can easily yield equal results given either version:
The negative could allow someone who does not want others to treat them kindly to be mean to others.

This is why the golden rule is second to the Greatest Commandment.

Excellent Question! Thanks for sharing and I hope to hear your thoughts.

 

[John_Russell_Jr]

it makes the presumption that people are sane , if their insane the golden rule can become insane

 

[Earnest_Bunbury]

“Don’t do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” This lowers the bar equal to “the good is now the evil you don’t do”.

Today’s modern philosophy has no connection between the subject and the object which makes words mean whatever people want them to or agree to make them mean without any basis in reality. Reality is God’s Nature as reflected in His Creation. By our reasoning we can know and extrapolate, but when we accept the lie of modern philosophical thought, we cannot give positive affirmation to much, and the negative is all that makes sense because of a lack of knowing what is real. The Catholic philosophical tradition of Thomism and “moderate realism” makes the best sense of the world around us.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” has God’s vision of humanity as its basis. If you don’t care if someone treats you badly then you are not in union with God as to your true worth and dignity. It must presuppose you know the truth about yourself as made in the image and likeness of God. Thinking that this allows someone to do something wrong because they themselves want something wrong done to them has lost any sense of the real world, and man, as created by God, a world that reflects God, and the world “without end” that will have its final perfection in God. This error is a thinking that has accepted the modern philosophical lies.