SOURCE: "Reweaving the 'One Thread' of the Analects," in Philosophy East and West, Vol. XL, No. 1, January, 1990, pp. 17-33.

In the following excerpt, Ivanhoe discusses the Golden Rule, which, in Confucian thought, is described in the notions of chung and shu.

Introduction

The Golden Rule—the notion that one's own desires can serve, by analogy, as a guide for how one should treat others—is found in various forms, in cultures throughout the world.¹ It seems that something like it must exist if there is to be any kind of society at all. One cannot have a friend, a tribe, or a civilization without the fundamental recognition that there are others who share at least some of one's central desires and that one can know what these are by reflecting on one's own desires. If this notion is joined with a concern for others, one has taken the...