Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Stanford University

Commentary by Peter Y. Chou
WisdomPortal.com

(pp. 42-44) The Good Samaritan
"I ask you to consider the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), which in my view is the principal source of the Gospel's influence on the modern world."

Commentary:
Dupuy mentioned that Christ's "Good Samaritan" story stands out above other religions, since it shows compassion for one's fellow human being. However, the Golden Rule of Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Buddha superceded Christ by some 500 years. We find in Confucian Analects, XV.23: Tsze-kung asked: "Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" Confucius said, "Is not RECIPROCITY such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." In Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, Chapter 49: "The sage does not distinguish between himself and the world; The needs of other people are as his own. He is good to those who are good; He is also good to those who are not good, Thereby he is good... The sage lives in harmony with the world, And his mind is the world's mind. So he nurtures the worlds of others, As a mother does her children." In Buddhism: "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful" (Udana Varga, V.18) and "How could I inflict what is not pleasing or delightful to me upon another?" (Samyatta Nikaya, Verse 353). In an even earlier scripture of Hinduism (circa 800 B.C.), we find in the Mahabharata, V.1517: "This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you."
    In his introduction to his translation of Plato's Laws, A. E. Taylor writes: “The Golden Rule is here: 'May I do to others as I would that they should do to me.' Four hundred years later Christ said it. The essence of the parable of the good Samaritan is in the words, 'Offenses by alien against alien, compared with sins agains fellow citizens, more directly draw down the vegeance of God. For the alien, being without friends or kinsmen, has the greater claim on pity, human and divine.' The Old Testament declares that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children. Plato says, 'But children and family, if they forsake their father's ways, shall have an honorable name and good report, as those that have done well and manfully in leaving evil for good.' He probes more deeply than the Old Testament into the nature of sin when he writes, 'The sorest judgment on evil-doing is that a man grows like those who already are evil,' and 'Violent sttachment to ego is the constant source of misdeeds in every one of us.' He stands with the Old Testament when he says, 'It is God who is, for you and me, the measure of all things.'”
(Plato: The Collected Dialogues, Edited by Edith Hamilton & Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 1225-1226)

(pp. 42-44) Only human beings will decide
Dupuy concludes his essay with "The first truth is that it is the sacred that gives birth to human societies. The second is that Christianity is not a morality, but rather an epistemology: it conveys the truth of the sacred and, by virtue of just this, deprives it of creative power— for better or for worse. Only human beings will decide."

Commentary:
Is Dupuy suggesting in his concluding sentence "Only human beings will decide" that man is the measure of all things as championed by Protagoras? It is interesting that Plato held this view in Cratylus, but in his older years adopted a more transcendental viewpoint in his Laws. I'm citing both viewpoints below:

“Protagoras says that man is the measure of all things.”
— Plato, Cratylus, 386a (p. 424)

“Now it is God who is, for you and me, of a truth 'the measure of all things',
much more truly than, as they say, 'man'”
— Plato, Laws, IV.716c (p. 1307)