Regardless I think your evaluation of Hans lecture is quite accurate here, I got the same impression with his ambigious approach on the usage of "ethical standards." To me, it seemed as if he was directing his presentation to an audience not familiar with the ethic of reciprocity and its application. He was tiptoeing around certain polemics and skirting important issues that rendered his presentation obtuse. Instead of assertiveness he showed caution and relied on subtlety which demonstrates a lack of confidance in his project.
Of course a speech is always going to be like that, as opposed to a written piece where he would be more precise and give more detail. Although I'm not sure why subtlety shows a lack of confidence; I'd have thought that subtlety is always to be preferred to simplicity!
At any rate, I think here we are in disagreement because you are employing the Golden Rule as if this principle has other versions. The principle of the Golden Rule ceases to be the Golden Rule when it is no longer applied universally, in essence the principle would violate itself if employed as such.
I don't really see why that should be the case. On the contrary, any ethical principle can be applied with varying scope. You could say, for example, that "Do not kill" is an ethical principle which can vary in scope: you could apply it to all living things, as Jainists do, or restrict it to human beings, as most people do, or restrict it further to only some human beings, as countries with capital punishment do. The same thing with the "Golden Rule". If we state that as "Do to others as you would have them do to you" then the scope of "others" could be anything you like. There's nothing in that formulation that demands that it has to be universal, so there's nothing contradictory about defining it in a restricted way. Now we might think that the rule is better if applied universally, or at least to all human beings. But as ironduck points out, it becomes controversial when you consider applying it to other species too. I'm sure that Jesus didn't mean to tell his disciples to do to orang utans as they would have done to themselves - or to dogs - or to gnats. Indeed, Jesus' record on animal rights wasn't great, at least as the Gospels portray him (making all those pigs leap many miles through the air into the lake, for example), suggesting that his version of the "Golden Rule" did not apply to all living things. And I should think that most people's version of the rule would be equally restricted. So if there's nothing inherently contradictory about restricting it to some degree, there's nothing inherently contradictory about restricting it to a greater degree too. We might think that a less moral attitude, or something, but it's not more
contradictory.
How can you univeralise a principle that by its very nature is not universal? a principle is firm, absolute and unchangable. If the basic principle itself mandates tribalism or parochialism which is the antithesis of universalism, how is it possible to extract a universal principle from a parochial one?
Easily! The reason is the same as I gave above: the principle itself does not state its scope. The version of the rule that Küng quoted from the Hadith did not specify that it applied only to other believers. You only get that limited application by reading it in the light of the Koran, as you showed. So there's nothing in the nature of the principle that makes it parochial, only the wider ethical context in which it is placed. There's absolutely nothing stopping you taking it out of that context and universalising it.
Besides, even if the hadith had explicitly limited its scope to other believers, why would this prevent anyone from saying, "Well, this is a nice principle, but it's too parochial, so let's make it universal in scope"? You can change principles as much as you want. You say that they're firm and unchangeable, but I don't see why that should be. Not, at least, if you're like Küng and you think that the various moral traditions provide, as it were, the raw materials for the construction of a synthesising "Global Ethic". If you were some kind of religious conservative who thought that you shouldn't change anything in your tradition then perhaps you couldn't tinker with the principles, but obviously Küng isn't.
Judging from this speech, Küng thinks that we can distinguish between the good moral principles in a religious tradition and the unfortunate parochialism which partially obscures them; and he wants to universalise the former and banish the latter. Surely the hadith's formulation of the "Golden Rule" on the one hand, and the Koran's distinction between the rights of believers and those of the infidel on the other, are a prime example of such a case. Küng would say that we should universalise the former and try to move beyond the latter. And what's wrong with that? It seems a pretty good programme to me. Perhaps he's over-optimistic about the possibilities of everyone agreeing on what should be universalised and what should be discarded, but that's a problem of practicality rather than of ideal.
We have trouble believing that the other apes (as a species) would reciprocate the Golden Rule.
As ironduck implied, the "Golden Rule" contains no caveat stating that you should only do as you would be done by when dealing with people who also follow the "Golden Rule". Or rather, perhaps you could formulate such a version, but I think most people would regard it as fairly defective, and I've never heard of such a version. Why should the fact that a being does not or cannot reciprocate the "Golden Rule" invalidate them from enjoying having it applied to them? Jesus said that we should love our enemies, didn't he?
The problem with the "Golden Rule", though, is that it's fairly obviously defective as stated. Would you want a masochist to live by this rule, for example? I think it needs a lot of qualifications to be workable as a viable moral principle.