A Covenant of the Ethically Willing: A Jewish Answer to Hume’s Law ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, July 08, 2025

A Covenant of the Ethically Willing: A Jewish Answer to Hume’s Law

Yesterday, I used my AskHillel Jewish ethical chatbot to answer a major philosophical riddle, known as the regress problem.

Are there other major unsolved problems in philosophical ethics? Yes, quite a few - about 15 famous ones.

Can the AskHillel ethical framework answer them all?

Very possibly.

One of the most famous problems that has haunted modern ethical thinking for over 250 years is Hume's Law. Scottish philosopher David Hume famously noted that "You cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is.'"

Secular philosophers o the time would describe the world and therefore derive how people should act based on those observations. Hume noted that one cannot leap from "is" to "ought" without some sort of a bridge - facts alone cannot tell you how you should act. Everyone who tries to describe ethics - what ought to be done - cannot derive it purely from what is.

If no amount of empirical observation can produce a moral claim, then where do morals come from? If they aren't deduced from reason or observed in nature, are they just made up? Are they feelings? Social conventions? Power plays?

The AskHillel ethical framework is a structured system based on Jewish moral values, that I fed into an AI. The newest version is essentially an AI philosopher. So as with the regress problem, I asked it if it can solve the "is/ought" problem.

AskHillel accepts Hume's Law, but insists that he is asking the wrong question.

The secularized Jewish ethics system begins from transparent axioms: foundational commitments that are not proven but chosen. Among them are: Truth exists. Right and wrong are real. Human dignity is sacred. We are responsible for one another.

These are not derived from biology, emotion, or utilitarian calculus. They are covenantal. We commit to them because they enable us to build a moral world that is livable, just, and transformative. The authority of these values is not in their provability, but in their performance. They produce ethical fruit.

And from these axioms flow obligations. Not because nature says so, but because we have said so. Together.

Those obligations are what we "ought" to do.

I had a more fundamental problem with understanding Hume's Law. It seems to me that the word "ought" by itself assumes that morality exists and we have moral obligations. It seems to me that the very idea of morality is close to axiomatic, based just on the idea that the word "ought" is used. But this is a definitional issue, and it doesn't answer Hume's real question: Can there be a compelling secular morality at all? If God no longer grounds morality, what does? What gives people this sense of obligation?

Hume concluded that morality must come from sentiment - human sympathy, feeling, social instinct. This is an answer, but not a great one. People's feelings are fickle - which mean that morality is, too. And if morality is different for everyone, then it isn't really morality in any real sense.

Jewish ethics offers a more enduring answer. It does not try to derive morality from nature, nor from sentiment alone. It builds from brit — a covenant.

Traditionally, this was a binding agreement between God and the Jewish people. In a secular framework, you can perhaps argue that Jews have a historical covenant with each other even without God ("All Israel is responsible for one another.")

But how about the rest of the world? What is the source for morality?

I suggested, and my AI chavrutas expanded, on a new idea: the modern covenant is open to anyone who wants to live a meaningful life.

This idea becomes something more expansive in the AskHillel framework.

It is a commitment to uphold certain truths together, in order to build a moral world. And this commitment is not limited to Jews, or to the religious. It is open to anyone who seeks to live a meaningful life.

And what is a meaningful life?

A meaningful life is one dedicated to ethically transformative actions and relationships, driven by responsibility to uphold human dignity, pursue truth, and foster justice, within a structured moral framework that enables personal and communal growth.

To refine the definition of covenant:

A covenant is a voluntary, collective commitment to a shared set of moral values—obligations to uphold life, dignity, justice, and truth—that binds individuals and communities in mutual responsibility and fosters ethically transformative outcomes.

These definitions reflect a widespread secular desire for purpose without religion. Anyone who seeks this life can enter the covenant, a commitment to ethical flourishing. It is not exclusive nor is it inherited. It is chosen. People often make pledges to obligate themselves to do something important - this is an extension of that idea.

This redefines moral obligation not as divine command, nor as emotional intuition, but as a chosen responsibility anchored in shared values and tested by the moral integrity of the world it builds.

So the Jewish answer to Hume is not just a clever way around his dilemma. It is a replacement for the entire framing.

Instead of asking, "How do I derive 'ought' from 'is'?", which presupposes that morality must emerge from fact, we ask: What kind of person do I become when I choose to live by 'ought'? What kind of world do we build when we commit to obligations together?

Ethics, in this view, is not a deduction. It is a covenant of the ethically willing.

And that covenant is open to everyone.

Not because the universe commands it. Not because religion demands it. But because it is the only kind of life worth living.

This isn’t the end of the debate. But it may be the start of a new one - one where obligation doesn’t need proof, just purpose. And where the choice to live a moral life joins you to a community of the ethically willing.