Charles R. Lightner

Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit religious order and a saint of the Catholic Church, was well practiced in bad behavior as a young man. In the words of the contemporary Jesuit Father William Watson, SJ: “He had most of the emotional, intellectual, and psychological complexes that make people today fear any limit to the free expression of their instinctual drives: dysfunctional f...

Most of us will be familiar with the Japanese camera brand called Nikon. Most will not be familiar with the Japanese system of self-reflection, which is pronounced in the same way but is spelled Naikan. Naikan was developed in the 20th century by a Japanese businessman, Ishin Yoshimoto (1916 – 1988), whose religious roots were in the Jodo Shinshu tradition of Pure Land Buddhism. In th...

Human beings, all of us, act in ways that are irrational and contrary to our own interests. And we do so much more often than we’d expect. Yet many of the most influential philosophers, both moral and economic, base intricately constructed ethical and behavioral theories on the assumption of rational behavior. It is partially because we cannot trust others or ourselves to act ratio...

The Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras (ca. 570 – ca. 490 BCE), prescribed a highly structured way of life. His ethical system is captured in essence in seventy-one aphorisms known as The Golden Verses. While the verses are ascribed to Pythagoras, himself, they might actually have been collected in their present form over time by his students and later adherents to his te...

The Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras (ca. 570 – ca. 490 BCE), prescribed a highly structured way of life. His ethical system is captured in essence in seventy-one aphorisms known as The Golden Verses. While the verses are ascribed to Pythagoras, himself, they might actually have been collected in their present form over time by his students and later adherents to his te...

The Golden Rule scholars and commentators have, for the most part, attempted to cure the problems of defining and practicing the Rule by changing its wording. Some acknowledge that changes are required because the Rule, by itself, lacks some critical elements required of an actual practice. Some acknowledge that the Rule, by itself, or taken alone, creates some logical and philosophic...

I’ve suggested for many reasons that we stop using such language as “the negative version of the Golden Rule” or even “the Silver Rule” for the admonition to avoid doing to others "what we would find hateful”. I’ve argued that, contrary to Gensler’s view, the “do not do” injunction is not the inverse of the “do unto others” statement. That using the label “Silver” immediately and with...

Yesterday’s post brought up some implications of impartiality in the utilitarian sense of the term. A theme that runs through the posts on this site but not yet stated in these terms, is that nearness counts, relationship counts. We’ve seen it in the discussion of the stranger in the Hebrew bible. We’ve seen it in the analysis of the grammar of the “love your neighbor” verses. I’ve ar...

The so-called Platinum Rule was derived from a comment made by the philosopher Karl Popper in a footnote appearing in his book “The Open Society and Its Enemies” (1945, Routledge). In that note he comments that the Golden Rule might be improved upon by stating that we should “do unto others, wherever possible, as they would be done by..." Labeling that idea as platinum implies t...

Afterlife beliefs can powerfully influence human behavior. Actions that might seem inexplicable without knowledge of such beliefs can sometimes be easily understood, and even seem quite logical, when viewed in the appropriate context. The major golden rule scholars essentially ignore this issue. I suspect that is because they share the principal elements of a Christian afterlife belie...