“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
Socrates
I believe this precedes Hillel by 300 years and Christ by 400 years.
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Wow! Good example of why “Judeo-Christian values” are actually the values of civilization itself, as it developed through the ages, including the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Sumerians, etc, etc.
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Cogito - as the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun.
Is it known for sure that the real Socrates said that? Who reported it in writing?
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I came across it this morning in The Epoch times. I cannot verify but I hope it is true. This was three hundred years before Hillel and four hundred years before Jesus.
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Reminder to readers: A young man told the rabbi Hillel that if he, the rabbi, could say what Judaism was essentially about while he, the enquirer, stood on one leg, he would convert to it. Hillel replied (varying the Golden Rule): Do NOT do unto others as you would NOT that they do unto you."
I cannot recall a report that Jesus Christ ever said something similar. If there is such a report, please correct me.
(Incidentally, I admire Socrates more than Hillel, and I do not admire the Jesus of Christian worship at all.)
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The lives of Hillel and Jesus of Nazareth overlapped by some 10 to 14 years (Jesus’s birth date being more a matter of opinion than fact). While it is possible that 100 years separated the time of Hillel’s pronouncement and the three years or so of Jesus’s ministry, unless Hillel became famous when he was very young it was likely to have been quite a lot less than that.
I am saying that just out of interest, not to quibble.
I don’t think the Epoch Times is a trustworthy source. Whoever chooses their daily quotation is often impressed by ideas that repel me (though not in this case).
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I believe the Christian version of the Golden Rule is Matthew 7:12.
I agree with you that Socrates was intellectually and morally superior to anyone in the Bible.
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Thank you for the Matthew reference. I had forgotten that.
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Thank you for the Hillel correction.
I’ll try to verify the Socrates quotation…
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Seems that quotation is very generally ascribed to Socrates. But I still haven’t found an ascription to a source. Am I just failing to see it?
Seems most likely that it comes from the “Socrates” of Plato’s Republic. (Though I haven’t looked for it there.)
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If we think about it, that rule goes back to the beginning of parenthood. “Why did you hit her?” “Would you want her to hit you?”
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It was Isocrates (436-338 BC) not Socrates. See my edit below.
I don’t think the Socrates character said this. We’d have heard it attributed to him before. (I wouldn’t trust Epoch Times for quotations.) I found that there is something in Plato similar to it, but it’s at the beginning of Book XI in The Laws, the only verifiably Plato work that does not include Socrates – “may I be of a sound mind, and do to others as I would that they should do to me.”
The Golden Rule in its so-called ‘negative’ formulation (do not do unto others…) seems to be so morally obvious and intuitive that it’s not surprising to find articulations of it going back very far in history. So of course, it would be surprising if it had not occurred to Socrates.
edit:
But on further investigation, Cogito’s quote is actually attributed to Isocrates (436–338 BC), not Socrates.
“Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.” – Isocrates
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Fascinating!
Interesting to see that there is also a precedent to the Christian idea of “love your enemy” in the Tamil tradition, which states that “the proper punishment to those who have done evil is to put them to shame by showing them kindness”.
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a precedent to the Christian idea of “love your enemy”
That precedent might be historically accurate, but I doubt it was ever good advice. 
These days, against the power-odds we’re facing, it’s suicidal. They hate us. We need to return the favor and act accordingly.
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I couldn’t find - with a quick glancing through - the quotation we’re talking about in the Wiki entry on Isocrates. Can you pinpoint it for me please?
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Its under the category of Ancient history.
And I never thought it was good advice, either.
Maybe it could be of use in personal relationships, but as Z. points out, not in international ones.
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The Isocrates quote is at the bottom of this screen clip from the Wikipedia article on Golden Rule (not in the article on Isocrates; sorry, that may have been misleading). It’s almost the same wording that the quote Cogito found in Epoch Times attributes incorrectly to Socrates.
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Thank you Liz and Zerothruster.
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I confess that I could not verify the quote but Zerothruster’s assessment is as close as we will get.
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Oops, I thought you were referring to the “love your enemy” I mentioned. I do think the Golden Rule is good advice.
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