Seeking the Gold Standard for a New ‘Golden Rule’ of Global Ethics

Last July, a group of Chinese and Western philosophers convened in the Croatian port of Dubrovnik to discuss a question: Is there — and should there be — a “global ethic” for an increasingly divided world?

The notion of the Global Ethic — also known as Weltethos — was first put forward by the Swiss theologian Hans Küng and emerged during the golden age of globalization. It sought to identify the intellectual basis on which humanity could survive together on a habitable Earth despite cultural, ideological, and religious differences and shape individual and social life in a humane way.

A large gathering of scholars affiliated with major faith traditions enshrined the attempt when they signed the document “Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration” in 1993. Across the world’s religions and ethical traditions, they identified a common belief that they would establish as the “golden rule” for global ethics: “What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others. Or in positive terms: What you wish done to yourself, do to others!” While the sentiment appears in most major religions, Chinese people may also recognize it as a famous quote from “The Analects” by Confucius.

However, three decades later, reports indicate that globalization is in jeopardy. Wars, pandemics, climate change, the rapid development of artificial intelligence, arms races, and the rise of nationalism and populism have made social polarization and fragmentation increasingly prominent. Now more than ever, the optimism behind the “golden rule” is at risk of becoming a relic of a bygone era.

In an attempt to rethink and update this idea, a group of Chinese philosophy scholars from Shanghai’s Fudan University — whose specialties span from political philosophy, moral philosophy, and philosophy of science and technology — have been tackling the subject since 2023. They have jointly held conferences at universities in Shanghai, Rome, and Dubrovnik with colleagues from around the world, seeking to develop a new blueprint for global ethics and guide the world back onto a more rational path.

One of the scholars is Deng Anqing, director of the university’s Center for Global Ethics, the institution that initiated and organized the conferences. An expert in German philosophy, Deng has broadened his research to include comparative studies of Chinese and Western thought — an endeavor that, like the 1993 meeting, may reveal new common ground for humanity.

In a written interview last month, we discussed the motivation for reviving the global ethics debate, Deng’s vision of “world coexistence,” and his insights into a comparative approach to Chinese and Western philosophy.

The interview has been edited for length and brevity.

Zhang Bo: When Hans Küng and his colleagues initiated the Global Ethic discussion more than three decades ago, what was the context? Why do you and your colleagues want to restart the discussion now?

Deng Anqing: Küng was responding to a world transformed by the movement of people, goods, and capital — a world that required not just shared economic rules but a common moral language for living together. As a theologian, Küng sought common ground among the world’s religions. After a long debate, the 1993 declaration settled on the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

Yet Küng himself was dissatisfied. According to an attending Chinese philosophy scholar, Küng stormed out of meetings more than once, frustrated that compromise had reduced his vision to its lowest common denominator. He understood that a workable global ethic could not be a thin, minimal moral baseline, because the simplicity would fail to meet the complexity of global interactions. Nor could it be dense, fully reflecting every tradition’s moral consciousness. For him, the Golden Rule met only the minimal requirement, leaving the global ethic weak in practice.

That weakness is even clearer today. In many conflicts, each side acts from its own self-defined values. Many people see themselves as victims of globalization, fueling trade protectionism and xenophobia.

I witnessed this tension firsthand in Germany in 2002. A Chinese visiting scholar was attacked in a former East German city by an unemployed worker who blamed foreigners for taking jobs. The incident drew strong public condemnation, and the next day, residents marched to protest xenophobia in numbers reportedly higher than typical voter turnout. I was deeply moved by their sense of justice — rooted in the moral belief that globalization could make the world freer and more prosperous.

But that belief has since eroded. The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a surge of Sinophobic incidents across Europe (such as when a Chinese woman was insulted at a Berlin S-Bahn station). Such acts reveal how the ethical foundation of globalization has weakened.

A global ethic depends on a shared moral belief in globalization itself. When that belief collapses, the global ethic must find a new path. This is why we are reopening the discussion today.

Our renewed effort depends on three determinations about the future. First, a globalized world cannot revert to a premodern state. Second, though globalization has suffered serious setbacks, it cannot be reversed. Third, the stability of globalization depends on restructuring the world civilization and forming a model of human coexistence. In that sense, a global ethic represents the very moral principles and theories that help shape and sustain a harmonious world of coexistence.

Zhang: If the Golden Rule is too fragile to sustain a global ethic, what stronger foundation would you propose today?

Deng: I believe the new foundation must be about the ethics of global coexistence — what I call ontological justice. It is a version of universal ethics that arises not from any single culture, but from the shared condition of human existence.

As early as 1979, Hans Jonas warned in “The Imperative of Responsibility” that transformations wrought by modern technology — such as nuclear weapons, ecological destruction, and genetic engineering — had already placed humanity in a precarious situation. We would either survive together or perish together. Every day, in his words, we are living in a state of survival (“überleben”), and thus it is not individual morality but a collective awareness of this shared vulnerability that should compel us to adopt universal ethical principles.

The mission of global ethics, then, is to help humanity move from mere survival to stable coexistence. To that end, we propose shifting from a traditional ethics centered only on parsing each locale’s distribution of rights to one also centered on coexistence and shared responsibility. In an age of global risk, a perspective centered on national or personal interest is too narrow; what’s required is a renewed transcendent perspective and public reason.

Global ethics should not be imposed by any single power or ideology. It must grow through dialogues among civilizations, drawing on all moral insights. True patriotism, in this sense, means bringing one’s culture into the shared process of humanity’s moral construction. The ultimate goal is a civilization of coexistence — one guided by universal principles yet open enough to preserve difference and individual freedom.

Zhang: What resources can Chinese philosophy and culture contribute to constructing a global ethic? As a Chinese scholar of Western philosophy, do you see lessons of mutual understanding between Eastern and Western traditions?

Deng: During the Enlightenment, the West went through a wave of “China fever.” Philosophers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz recognized that Confucian ethics, as a representative of Chinese culture, could compensate for what was lacking in Western moral thought, since it was based on human rationality rather than divine law, and grounded the pursuit of worldly happiness in rational, moral self-cultivation. That enthusiasm faded as the West rose in power and China declined, yet the respect for Confucian and Daoist thought has never fully disappeared.

Ironically, nowadays, as Chinese universities have deepened their engagement with Western philosophy, Chinese scholars often understand Western thought better than Western scholars understand Chinese philosophy, since that knowledge rarely goes beyond Enlightenment-era interpretations. This imbalance itself shows the necessity of mutual exchange.

At a recent conference in Croatia, for instance, we debated AI policy with German philosophers. The Germans, true to form, insisted on principles first, arguing that governance must precede development. We argued for a practice-first approach: Let AI develop under market logic, identify real problems and risks as they emerge, and then build governance accordingly, developing and regulating in tandem. This embodies what I would call a distinctly Chinese form of practical wisdom guided by experience.

The German scholars firmly disagreed, but the contrast reveals something essential: China’s strength lies in flexible, reality-based reasoning, while Europe’s lies in the rigor of abstract rationality. The exchange also shows that Chinese culture can indeed contribute valuable resources to global ethics and that dialogue between civilizations is not about competition, but mutual learning. As the world changes rapidly, such exchanges help us transcend our own boundaries and seek a higher, universal form of civilization. The key is cultivating a consciousness of coexistence, a value that should underlie any serious discussion of global ethics.

Zhang: What first led you to study Western philosophy? What do you see as the main differences and commonalities between Chinese and Western thought?

Deng: I come from a typical academic background in philosophy. In 1980, I entered the Department of Philosophy at Shandong University. During my second year, I first felt like I was studying true philosophy while studying Spinoza and Kant. Since then, I have been bound to Western philosophy for life. It satisfies both my intellectual curiosity and my professional vocation, which, for me, is an almost ideal way to live.

There are, of course, important differences between Chinese and Western philosophy. Classical Chinese thinkers often began from a moral standpoint, placing goodness — shan — at the center, such as the Ming-dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming’s School of Minds and its emphasis on conscience. By contrast, major classical Western philosophies are reason-based, founded on truth. Yet I would caution that such a distinction doesn’t cover Chinese and Western philosophical schools throughout all time — modern Western philosophy, for example, is also wrestling with the tension between morality and objective truth.

If we look from the perspective of first principles, however, the distinction between Chinese and Western philosophy fades even more. As many Chinese scholars say, “Philosophy knows no East or West.” In this deeper sense, philosophy is a fundamental act of speculation — seeing the world through the world itself and understanding humanity through humanity itself. Both traditions share the same core mission: to ask what we live for, and how we might live a good life. Philosophy, wherever it arises, seeks the ultimate meaning of being. That’s why I have been deeply shaped by great thinkers with a cosmopolitan vision: Kant, Hegel, and Gadamer in the West; Confucius in China.

The next Global Ethics Conference — which will be held in 2026 at the University of Graz, the birthplace of the theory of value — will focus on environmental philosophy, AI ethics, and the future of humanity. I hope that by then, Chinese philosophy will no longer act as a “museum piece,” but as a living, global source of thought. We also hope more scholars from around the world will join us in contributing to a shared moral framework for the world.

(Header image: Visuals from Marie Bertrand/Corbis Creative and Moment/VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)