Applying the Golden Rule

 “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

The Golden Rule is a fundamental moral precept of the natural law and is also rooted in the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves (cf. Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:9). However, application of this principle can clearly go awry when carried out in a naïve manner. For we can imagine a masochist who enjoys people inflicting physical harm on him. Consequently, he desires people to inflict physical harm on him. Naively applying the Golden Rule, the masochist comes to conclude that he ought to inflict physical harm on others since this is what he would want them to do to him. (And assuming he takes pleasure in doing his perceived moral duty, our masochist would thereby become a sadomasochist!). This conclusion is clearly wrong. Not only does the masochist not have an obligation to inflict physical harm on others, but he is also positively prohibited from doing so. So, how should the Golden Rule be properly understood so as to not yield such obviously false moral conclusions?

One way of understanding the Golden Rule is that Jesus’ statement of it presupposes that people have properly ordered desires with respect to what they want done to them, and this presupposition is implicit in Jesus’ statement. Rewriting the statement so that this presupposition is explicit would result in something along the following lines: “So whatever you ought to wish that men would do to you, do so to them.” (This understanding is suggested in Moral Theology: A Complete Course, Vol. I, pg. 504, par. 1259). In this way, it seems plausible that Jesus expected members of His audience to morally reason (in the light of His teaching) as follows:

1. I desire people to treat me in a way that is conducive to my goodness and flourishing (Jesus’ audience has properly ordered desires).
2. I can see the truth of the Golden Rule and understand that I must abide by it (Jesus teaches this to His audience).
3. Therefore, I ought to treat people in a way that is conducive to their goodness and flourishing.

The problem with the masochist is that he does not properly love himself as he ought. Thus, he has disordered desires for how he should be treated by others, and this is a moral defect that must be corrected prior to applying the Golden Rule in cases of moral reasoning. In this way, love of self can be seen as being morally prior to love of neighbor in that in order to properly love neighbor, one must first properly love self. After that, one can begin to treat his neighbor as another self, which seems to be the key idea of the Golden Rule.