The Golden Rule and the Categorical Imperative

The Golden Rule – “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or in its negative formulation “do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you” – is one of the most ancient formulations of moral criteria. We encounter it in some form in the canonical texts of practically all religions that aspire to any kind of universality. At the first glance, the categorical imperative states and demands the same as the Golden Rule. This presents the question of whether the categorical imperative is a variation of the Golden Rule, or whether, inversely, the Golden Rule is a different way of stating the demand that morality be one and the same the world over? In other words, can these two “rules” be reduced to each other? If this is indeed the case, it would represent an exceptional example of correlation be­tween practice and theory, sophisticatedly elaborated in Kant’s moral philosophy. Alas, if the argument that follows in this text is correct, it will show that the categorical imperative is not a variation of the Golden Rule, nor is the Golden Rule a popular form of the demand placed by the categorical imperative. Furthermore, it will show that the Golden Rule does not present a deontological standpoint at all, and that it fails to guard against arbitrariness; it does not have the capacity to be a criterion of the particular kind of evaluation we call moral or issue the cardinal demand of universal objectivity and impartiality. None of which can be denied the categorical imperative, due to its precious property Kant labels as “formalism”.