Moral Sense and Ethics in Economics and Finance

Abstract

This chapter follows up on two major explanations of unethical behavior in the business community. The first focuses on the massive cultural changes originating from the rapid technological growth and globalization of the last few decades that have led to moral disorientation. The second view suggests there is a need for reorientation of education and practices of the business community toward morality and ethics. Before a theory of business ethics can be developed, it is critical to form a perspective of a moral sense which can provide philosophical basis for ethical behavior. What values determine the moral sense and how it affects economic and business behavior is essential to understand. The chapter provides such perspective from the history of economics and raises the question if a universal moral principle can be derived to formulate a theory of business ethics. The validity and applicability of the golden rule is evaluated and it is argued that this rule as a universal principle should become the basis of business ethics.

Annex I: Golden Rule Chronology

c. 1450 BC to 450 BC	The Jewish Bible has golden-rule like passages, including: “Don’t oppress a foreigner, for you well know how it feels to be a foreigner, since you were foreigners yourselves in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9) and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18)
c. 563–483 BC	Buddha in India teaches compassion and shunning unhealthy desires. His golden rule says: “There is nothing dearer to man than himself; therefore, as it is the same thing that is dear to you and to others, hurt not others with what pains yourself” (Dhammapada, Northern Canon, 5:18)
c. 551–479 BC	Confucius sums up his teaching as: “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.” (Analects 15:23)
c. 500 BC	Jainism, a religion of India that promotes non-violence, compassion , and the sacredness of life, teaches the golden rule: “A monk should treat all beings as he himself would be treated.” (Jaina Sutras, Sutrakritanga, bk. 1, 10:1–3)
c. 500 BC	Taoist Laozi says: “To those who are good to me, I am good; and to those who are not good to me, I am also good; and thus all get to receive good.” (Tao Te Ching 49) A later work says: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain and your neighbor’s loss as your loss.” (T’ai-Shang Kan-Ying P’ien)
c. 500 BC	Zoroaster in Persia teaches the golden rule: “That character is best that doesn’t do to another what isn’t good for itself” and “Don’t do to others what isn’t good for you.”
c. 479–438 BC	Mo Tzu in China teaches the golden rule: “Universal love is to regard another’s state as one’s own. A person of universal love will take care of his friend as he does of himself, and take care of his friend’s parents as his own. So when he finds his friend hungry he will feed him, and when he finds him cold he will clothe him.” (Book of Mozi, ch. 4)
c. 440 BC	Socrates (c. 470–399 BC) and later Plato (c. 428–347 BC) begin the classical era of Greek philosophy. The golden rule, while not prominent in their thinking, sometimes leaves a trace. As Socrates considers whether to escape from jail, he imagines himself in the place of the state, who would be harmed (Crito). And Plato says: “I’d have no one touch my property, if I can help it, or disturb it without consent on my part; if I’m a man of reason, I must treat the property of others the same way” (Laws). (Wattles 1996, pp. 32–6)
c. 400 BC	Hinduism has positive and negative golden rules: “One who regards all creatures as his own self, and behaves towards them as towards his own self attains happiness. One should never do to another what one regards as hurtful to one’s own self. This, in brief, is the rule of righteousness . In happiness and misery, in the agreeable and the disagreeable, one should judge effects as if they came to one’s own self.” (Mahabharata bk. 13: Anusasana Parva, §113)
384–322 BC	Aristotle says: “As the virtuous man is to himself, he is to his friend also, for his friend is another self” (Nicomachean Ethics 9:9). Diogenes Laertius (c. 225 AD) reports Aristotle as saying that we should behave to our friends as we wish our friends to behave to us
c. 150 BC	Various Jewish sources have golden-rule sayings. Tobit 4:16 says “See that you never do to another what you’d hate to have done to yourself.” Sirach 31:15 says “Judge the needs of your guest by your own.” And the Letter of Aristeas says “Insofar as you [the king] do not wish evils to come to you, but to partake of every blessing, [it would be wise] if you did this with your subjects.”
c. 4 BC–27 AD	Jesus proclaims love (of God and neighbor) and the golden rule to be the basis of how to live. Luke 6:31 gives the golden rule in the context of loving your enemies, later illustrated by the Good Samaritan parable. Matthew 7:12 says: “Treat others as you want to be treated, for this sums up the law and the prophets.”
c. 70 AD	“The Two Ways,” a Dead Sea Scroll discovered in the 1940s, says: “The way of life is this: First, you shall love the Lord your maker, and secondly, your neighbor as yourself. And whatever you don’t want to be done to you, don’t do to anyone else.” (Wattles 1996, p. 47)
c. 80 AD	The Didache, summarizing early Christian teachings, begins: “There are two paths, one of life and one of death, and a great difference between them. The way of life is this. First, you shall love the God who made you. Second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And whatever you wouldn’t have done to you, don’t do to another.”
c. 90 AD	The ex-slave Stoic Epictetus writes: “What you shun enduring yourself, don’t impose on others. You shun slavery – beware of enslaving others!”
c. 90 AD	The apocryphal gospel of Thomas attributes a negative golden rule to Jesus (verse 6): “Don’t do what you hate.”
c. 120 AD	Rabbi Akiba says: “This is the fundamental principle of the Law: Don’t treat your neighbor how you hate to be treated yourself.” (G. King 1928, p. 268) His students support the golden rule: Rabbi Eleazar (“Let another’s honor be as dear to you as your own”) and Rabbi Jose (“Let another’s property be as dear to you as your own”). (Wattles 1996, p. 202)
c. 130 AD	Aristides defends his fellow Christians, who “never do to others what they would not wish to happen to themselves,” against persecution
c. 150 AD	The Ethiopian version of the apocryphal Book of Thekla ascribes a negative golden rule to Paul: “What you will not that men should do to you, you also shall not do to another.”
c. 150–1600	Many Christians, seeing the golden rule’s wide acceptance across religions and cultures, view the golden rule as the core of the natural moral law that Paul saw as written on everyone’s heart (Romans 2:14f). The golden rule is proclaimed as the central norm of the natural moral law by Justin Martyr, Origen, Basil, Augustine, Gratian, Anselm of Canterbury, William of Champeaux, Peter Lombard, Hugh of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Luther, Calvin, and Erasmus.
222–235	Roman Emperor Alexander Severus adopts the golden rule as his motto, displays it on public buildings, and promotes peace among religions. Some say the golden rule is called golden because Severus wrote it on his wall in gold
c. 263–339	Eusebius of Caesarea’s golden-rule prayer begins: “May I be an enemy to no one and the friend of what abides eternally. May I never quarrel with those nearest me, and be reconciled quickly if I should. May I never plot evil against others, and if anyone plot evil against me, may I escape unharmed and without the need to hurt anyone else.”
610	Muhammad receives the Qur’an, which instructs us to do good to all (4:36) and includes the golden-rule like saying: “Woe to those who cheat: they demand a fair measure from others but they do not give it themselves” (83:1–3). Several Hadiths (Bukhari 1:2:12, Muslim 1:72f, and An-Nawawi 13) attribute this golden rule to Muhammad: “None of you is a true believer unless he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
c. 650	Imam Ali, Muhammad’s relative, says: “What you prefer for yourself, prefer for others; what you find objectionable for yourself, treat as such for others. Don’t wrong anyone, just as you would not like to be wronged; do good to others just as you would like others to do good to you; that which you consider immoral for others, consider immoral for yourself.”
c. 700	Shintoism in Japan expresses the golden rule: “Be charitable to all beings, love is God’s representative. Don’t forget that the world is one great family. The heart of the person before you is a mirror; see there your own form.”
c. 1093	Muslim Abu Hamid al-Ghazali in his Disciplining the Soul (the section on discovering faults) uses the golden rule: “Were all people only to renounce the things they dislike in others, they would not need anyone to discipline them.”
1140	Gratian, the father of canon law, identifies natural law with the golden rule: “By natural law, each person is commanded to do to others what he wants done to himself and is prohibited from inflicting on others what he does not want done to himself. Natural law is common to all nations because it exists everywhere by natural instinct. It began with the appearance of rational creatures and does not change over time, but remains immutable.”
c. 1230	Muslim Sufi thinker Ibn Arabi sees the golden rule as applying to all creatures: “All the commandments are summed up in this, that whatever you would like the True One to do to you, that do to His creatures.” (See my §3.1c.)
1259	Gulistan, by the Persian poet Sa’di, has these verses, which are now displayed at the entrance of the United Nations Hall of Nations: “Human beings are members of a whole, in creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain.”
1265–74	Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica (I-II, q. 94, a. 4) says the golden rule is common to the gospels and to human reason. He adds (I-II, q. 99, a. 1) that “when it is said, ‘All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them,’ this is an explanation of the rule of neighborly love contained implicitly in the words, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
c. 1400	Hindu Songs of Kabir (65) teach the golden rule: “One who is kind and who practices righteousness , who considers all creatures on earth as his own self, attains the Immortal Being; the true God is ever with him.”
c. 1400	Sikhism from India teaches: “Conquer your egotism. As you regard yourself, regard others as well.” (Shri Guru Granth Sahib, Raag Aasaa 8:134)
1688	Four Pennsylvania Quakers sign the first public protest against slavery in the American colonies, basing this on the golden rule: “There is a saying, that we shall do unto others as we would have them do unto us – making no difference in generation, descent, or color. What in the world would be worse to do to us, than to have men steal us away and sell us for slaves to strange countries, separating us from our wives and children? This is not doing to others as we would be done by; therefore we are against this slave traffic.”
1827	Joseph Smith receives the Book of Mormon, which has the golden rule: “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets” (3 Nephi 14:12)
1854	Abraham Lincoln quips: “Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”
1858	Abraham Lincoln gives this golden-rule evaluation of slavery: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” The next year, he says: “He who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.”

1. Source: http://www.harryhiker.com/goldrule.htm. See also Gensler (2013)