How many conversations have I overheard on the “golden rule”? You know the maxim which recommends that I demonstrate toward my fellowman/woman the same deference which I am wont to demonstrate toward myself. The consensus: everyone approves the rule of harmony, this prescription for universal peace-love-and-understanding. Simply keep the Golden Rule in mind, and practice it!

Nietzsche rejects Arthur Schopenhauer’s assessment of the golden rule. Practicing the Golden Rule isn’t compassionate. When I put myself in relation to a neighbor, mirroring the identical judgment which I often apply to myself, what happens? Truthfully I often severely criticize myself. With a ‘knee-jerk’ kind of reflex I fault myself. Empathy for myself is notably absent.

To “love” my neighbor according to the standard which I apply to myself means that I’d actually hate him or her…

The simple rule is not as golden as I was taught. Relationships are complex. The Golden Rule is a shortcut. And there are no shortcuts to relationships.

A historical note. In the early years of the rise of Christianity, around 54 AD, the historian Tacitus records the Christian community, the followers of the “golden rule”, had a palpable abhorrence for everyone else, for the masses, the “unbelievers,” both Roman administrators and the man-on-the-street.

Among the Evangelicals, the attitude remains unchanged. Hatred comes easy.

Supposing that we felt
towards our neighbor
as he does himself
(Schopenhauer calls this compassion),

though it would be more correct
to call it auto-passion,
fellow-feeling

—we should be compelled to hate him,
if, like Pascal, he thought himself hateful.

And this was probably
the general feeling of Pascal regarding mankind,
and also that of ancient Christianity,
which, under Nero,

was “convicted” of
odium generis humani,
as Tacitus has recorded.

The Dawn Of Day by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by J. M. Kennedy, aphorism 63