I.  Introduction:  The beginning of a new year, as well as of a new century and of a new millenium, would seem to be a good time to make and/or renew resolutions about how to be a better person and to rethink what is involved in being a good person.  It is this latter issue that I would like to address this morning.  What is basic in morality, and what is the
foundation for this basic principle?  That is why my title is "The Basic Basics of Morality."

II.  If there is any basic principle of morality, it seems to be the Golden Rule:  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  Or to cite the Confucian negative form: "Do not do to others what you would not have done to you."  This basic principle of morality has a prominent place in all of the world's major religions and has been enunciated by pagan philosophers both before and after Jesus.  There is no evidence of any historical diffusion of this widely accepted principle, so it seems to be a fundamental ethical belief.
        A.  If we are searching for the basic foundation of morality, we need to ask whether adopting the Golden Rule as a moral guide is dependent on believing in God.
                1.  The first argument against dependence on belief in God is that the Golden Rule is cited, as just mentioned, even by persons and societies where there is no belief in God in the traditional sense.  Thus belief in God does not seem to be a necessary foundation.
                2.  One argument for the view that belief in God is a necessary foundation for the Golden Rule is the argument that God must be assumed to exist as the basis for believ-ing that the universe is a moral universe.where it makes sense to follow moral rules  If there is no God, then the universe just is and it has no higher purpose which can provide a
basis for morality.  It is also sometimes claimed that the Golden Rule is a basic princi-ple of morality simply because it is what God has commanded, and what God has commanded is what determines what our duties are.
                        a.  But it does not seem that the universe must be morally based for me to be moral.  Why can't I just decide to be moral even if the universe is amoral or even immoral.  Why can't I just want to do what is right whether the universe "cares" one whit one way or the other?
                        b.  Also is it appropriate to bring up the issue of what God commands?  I think not.  Even if there is a God who commands something, am I not able to discern whether what is being commanded is good or not?  It is not appropriate to argue that God is good and therefore that whatever God commands is good.  How does one know that God is good if the commandment given by God is not good?  The goodness or badness of the commandment is more evident than the goodness or badness of God, so let us focus on the goodness or badness of commandment itself rather than worrying about its source.
                3.  A second argument for the view that the Golden Rule requires a divine being is that there will be no motivation or incentive to obey the Golden Rule without a divine being to enforce it by rewarding those who obey it and punishing those who disobey it.
                        a.  But if one obeys a rule only in order to gain some reward, one is not acting morally no matter what the rule is.  On the other hand, if the moral thing to do is to follow the rule, then one should follow the rule whether or not there is an extrinsic reward.
                        b.  This is a point that needs to be emphasized because it is so often argued that morality requires that there be punishments for disobeying moral rules and rewards for obeying them.  In fact, to argue in that manner undermines the very notion of morality, of doing what is right just because it is right and not because of some extrinsic reward or punishment, either in this life or the next.  That approach would convert everything that seems to be morality into mere enlightened self-interest:  I'll be good so I go to heaven.
        B.  It is not only in popular morality that this Golden Rule principle is basic.  Many philosophers of morality have also argued for this same principle.  One of the best known of these efforts is "The Categorical Imperative" enunciated by the famous 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant.  As befits a philosopher, he stated the principle in a more sophisticated way.  The English-language form of that basic principle of morality is:  "Always act in such a manner that you
could will that the maxim of your action should become a universal law." Modern philosophers refer to this as the universalizability principle.  The moral law is such that it cannot vary from person to person.  The height of immorality is when one does something and then maintains that it would be wrong for others in the same situation to do likewise.  Kant returns again and again to the idea that a law (including a moral law) must be a law for everyone--including oneself.  No one, no matter how rich or talented or powerful, can be above the law.
        C.  You will note that I did not say that all philosophers have argued for this Golden Rule principle.  To get to the basic basics of  morality we must consider one who did not think so highly of this principle, namely, another German philosopher--this one from the 19th century--Friedrich Nietzsche.
                1.  Although Nietzsche is a philosopher, by profession he was a philologist, a student of the development of language.  His study of moral language led him to the conclusion that there are in fact two very different kinds of morality in human society.
                        a.  One kind of morality is that developed by the upper classes, by the elite. Nietzsche calls it "master morality" or "aristocratic morality," the viewpoint of those who have talent and wealth and power.  This type of
morality is focused on excellence, on what makes one a superior person.  It is this kind of morality which attracted Nietzsche.  For him it represented the thinking of those who "have what it takes" to confront life, to rise above mediocrity to excellence.  Master morality reflects an optimistic individualism and disdains the pessimistic collectivist viewpoint of the
common man.  Master morality is opposed to democracy and socialism and any other kind of egalitarianism.
                        b.  The second kind of morality for Nietzsche is what he calls "slave morality."  It represents the moral viewpoint of the masses, of the have-nots  This type of morality is focused on the evil done by those upper class individuals who regard themselves as above the law. It is formulated out of resentment against those whose superior position allows them to be unjust & to ignore the concerns of the poor & weak.  That is why slave morality is usually expressed in negative commandments about what is not allowed--adultery, killing, stealing, arrogance.  For slave
morality, it is precisely the Golden Rule which aims to put some restraints on what the powerful can do.  They may think that their talent and upper class social position entitle them to do anything they want in order to reach a higher level of excellence, but the rules of justice (that is, equality) forbid that.
                2.  Because Nietzsche was a champion of aristocratic morality as against slave morality and thus was not supportive of the Golden Rule, some other philosophers have called Nietzsche an immoralist. But name-calling will not solve the problem of what is moral and what is immoral.  If we are going to support the Golden Rule as a basic prin-ciple
of morality, we must address Nietzsche's contempt for egalitarian slave morality.
                3.  Nevertheless, this discussion of Nietzsche's view has brought to attention what previously may have escaped our notice, namely, that the Golden Rule emphasizes equality in contrast to the alternative aristocratic view which may be capsulized as the "rank-has-its-privileges" view.

III.  Although the Golden Rule was widely known in ancient civilizations, it seems at first to have been applied only within one's own society.  It would have been an important principle in maintaining peace within the society.  As far as I know, the first philosophers to extend it to all humans were the Stoic philosophers in the third century BC.  It became very
popular among the Romans, including the soldiers of the Roman legions, leading intellectuals such as Cicero and Seneca, the slave-turned-teacher Epictetus, and the much-admired Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
        A.  The Stoics based their acceptance of the Golden Rule on the belief that every human (or at least every man) carried within himself a part of the divine, a rational capability of seeing things from a general or disinterested  point of view.  This meant that there was a basic equality among men regardless of their social rank.  The logical consequence of this view, as the Stoics themselves realized, is that slavery (the idea that one person could be the possession of another
person) is immoral.  I suppose that a few persons even applied this principle to women, but the accepted view in society still was that women were the possessions of their husbands.  The Stoic view that slavery was morally wrong also was not generally accepted until much later.
        B.  According to the Stoics each man was able to comprehend the divine order in the world and to realize that everything happened in accord with the laws of nature, which could also be understood as the will of God. The Stoics extended this notion of law and order to the realm of morality arguing that every man could realize that there are rules of good behavior that constitute a natural or moral law which everyone could know intuitively.  When put into its most concise form, this moral law was the Golden Rule.
        C.  Kant's notion of the categorical imperative was basically a new more philosophic-ally sophisticated way of saying what the Stoics and other philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas and John Locke had said in defense of a
natural moral law.  It is a view that has come to most Americans through the words of the Declaration of Independence which note that men have certain unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  What does not so often come to consciousness is that if all men have these natural rights, then all men also have natural obligations to
respect these natural  rights of others.  That is, the moral law works both ways, giving us obligations as well as rights.
        D.  Thomas Jefferson got the idea of unalienable rights from John Locke, and so did many other Enlightenment thinkers.  In fact, the notion of natural rights and the conse-quent need for a democratic political system were among the most important ideas of the Enlightenment.  Recall the slogan of the French Revolution:  Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
E.  It is worth noting, however, that natural rights for women still did not fare very well despite Condorcet's 1787 treatise defending them.  Four years later woman author Marie Olympe de Gouges published a declaration on the rights of women, but she was be-headed two years later for opposing Robespierre.  At the turn of the century 100 years ago, New Zealand was the only country in the world where women were allowed to vote.
        F.  The main point I want to make here is the intimate connection between the widely accepted basic principle of the Golden Rule on the one hand and the ideals of equality and democracy on the other.  These are diametrically opposed to Nietzsche's "rank-has-its-privileges" view and the ideals of elitism & aristocratic morality on the other.  Though the
individualistic Nietzsche was by no means a fascist, still his elitist ideology provided support for some aspects of later Nazi racism and antipathy to democracy and the notion of a natural universal moral law.

IV.  It is worth mentioning that our country's democratic, capitalistic ideology contains a tension between the opposing principles of egalitarianism and individualistic elitism.
        A.  As already noted, democracy is the application of universalistic egalitarianism in the arena of politics.  This focus on equality under the law and on not allowing a few rich and powerful persons to run the show is the leftist part of our national ideology.  This egalitarian viewpoint tends to be emphasized in our political system by the Democratic Party, the party of the down-and-outers.
        B.  But what also needs to be noted is that our capitalistic economic system is the application of Nietzsche's individualistic get-the-group-controlled-government-out-of-my-way ideal in the arena of economics.  This focus on the desirability of competition and on letting the winner enjoy the reward of winning is the rightist part of our national
ideology.  This individualistic elitist viewpoint tends to be emphasized in our political system by the Republicans, the party of those who are succeeding in the competition.
        C.  My own view is that the tension between these two opposing ideologies is desir-able and that a balance between them should be maintained.  The problem which I see developing at the present time within our country is that the leftist democratic political system is losing its battle to keep some control on the rich-get-richer rightist capitalistic economic system as our politicians, our elections, and our news sources are being taken over by the rich to further enrich themselves.  The problem is duplicated at the global level where the lack of a democratic world federation allows the rich to advance their interests without the kind of political check that has often been exercised on them within democratic
nation-states.

V.  The balance or tension between the leftist democratic political system and the rightist capitalistic economic system is desirable, but I think we must put more emphasis on the preservation of the egalitarian leftist viewpoint.
        A.  This added push is required partly because of the current trends away from a democratic check both within our country and within the world.  As we all know, the gap between rich and poor is widening both within our country and within our world.
        B.  Aside from the current trend, there is also a natural tendency for this increasing concentration of wealth and power to occur, so we must constantly struggle against it.  Those who have wealth and power use that wealth and power to get more both in the economic arena and in the political arena.  Furthermore, the wealth and power tends to get passed on to their limited group of descendants.  If it were just a matter of how much could be amassed in one generation, the problem would be much more manageable.
        C.  Though the incentive of individual rewards must be maintained in order that pro-gress will continue, it is even more important to maintain the moral constraint that comes with application of the Golden Rule.

VI.  The basic insight which underlies the Golden Rule and the leftist, egalitarian way of thinking connected with it is the recognition of the great role which luck or fortune plays in all of our lives.
        A.  The important role of luck becomes evident to everyone in accidents or natural disasters or fortuitous misfortunes.  As a result, there is usually much public sympathy for the victims of such obvious bad luck.
        B.  What is not so evident without special effort of thought is the extremely important role of luck in making each of us what we are.
                1.  No one chooses when or where to be born.  Yet these are very crucial factors in making us what we are.
                2.  No one chooses their biological make-up, which includes such crucial matters as what race one is, what sex one is, how intelligent one is, whether one has special talents or special disabilities, whether one has genes for good health or a debilitating disease or sickness.
                3.  No one chooses what their parents and early environment will be like.  Will one live one's early years in love and prosperity or in suffering and poverty?  That again is totally outside of our control.
        C.  Given all these factors which are outside of our control, all who have a relatively happy and successful life can only be very thankful for what has come their way.
        D.  Any personal pride--in what one has accomplished, in what one has, in what kind of life one has lived--is totally inappropriate.  Of course, it will be satisfying to believe that we are doing the best we can given what opportunities and abilities we have, but in the end we need to realize that even that drive to do well is a gift or dependent on a gift that ultimately is not within our own control. 
        E.  All these thoughts are what make me call Nietzsche and other advocates of the rightist or elitist viewpoint "immoralists."  They are guilty of hubris, of thinking that their great accomplishments of whatever kind are their own doing rather than the result of a huge number of factors over which they had and have no control.
        F.  I ally myself with the friends of the Golden Rule and egalitarianism.  I agree with Albert Schweitzer that one of the most basic of all principles of morality, one which goes even beyond the Golden Rule, is "Good fortune obligates."  Anyone who thinks otherwise just has not appreciated the overwhelming role of luck in human life.
        G.  Appreciating the fundamental role of luck in our lives is one of the basic basics of morality.  As I have noted, acceptance of the Golden Rule is totally unrelated to believing in God or to expecting some kind of personal reward either now or in some after-life for doing what is the right thing to do.  On the contrary, let us always keep before us the thought of how much our lives and the lives of others have been and still are dependent on forces over which we and they have no control and remember that that is the basic foundation for the Golden Rule, one of the most basic of all moral principles.