Variations on the familiar "Golden Rule" are found in most world religions:
* Christian version: "Treat others as you would like them to treat you" (Luke 6:31, New English Bible).
* Hindu version: "Let not any man do unto another any act that he wisheth not done to himself by others, knowing it to be painful to himself" (Mahabharata, Shanti Parva, cclx.21).
* Confucian version: "Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you" (Analects, Book xii, #2).
* Buddhist version: "Hurt not others with that which pains yourself" (Udanavarga, v. 18).
* Jewish version: "What is hateful to yourself do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah" (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 31a).
* Muslim version: "No man is a true believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself" (Hadith, Muslim, imam 71-72).
Collected by C. Harris, M. Pritchard, and M. Rabins, in Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases, second edition (Wadsworth, 2000), p. 86.
And a couple of other non-religious variations to add to the mix:
* Kant: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
* Rawls: "First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity."
[You could have made that just a
bit snappier Mr R to justify a place on the R3OK Proverbs Thread.
]
