Beyond Universalism and Particularism: A Tiered Jewish Ethical Response ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, July 09, 2025

Beyond Universalism and Particularism: A Tiered Jewish Ethical Response

One of philosophy's long-standing debates is around universalism vs. particularism. Should moral principles should be universal and context-independent, or should they be sensitive to particular contexts and circumstances?

The moral universalists say that particularism leads to moral relativism and inconsistency. Particularists argue that universalism is too rigid and fails to capture the complexity of moral life.

Some modern philosophers try to find compromises between the two.

As we've been seeing recently, Jewish ethics rejects the premise of the question, one that leads to false binaries.

The Jewish ethical tradition, and the AskHillel framework built upon it, offers a third answer: Ethics is structured and layered. Its foundations are universal, its obligations are relational, and its moral elevation is shaped by community.

This is not a compromise position. It is a design insight – one that resolves the modern moral impasse.

AskHillel operates using a three-tiered system:

Tier 1A: Foundational Values
Truth exists. Human dignity is sacred. Responsibility is real.
Tier 1B: Core Obligations
Protect life. Prevent harm. Repair injustice. Act with integrity.
Tier 2: Moral Amplifiers
Humility (Anavah), going beyond the law (Lifnim Mishurat HaDin), charitable judgment (Dan L’Chaf Zechut), public responsibility (Kiddush Hashem), communal peace (Shalom Bayit), etc.

These values and obligations are open to all people, across all cultures. They do not belong to Jews alone.

But once you enter the system, it does not treat everyone identically — because it recognizes that relationships matter.

The AskHillel system rejects the idea that ethics must flatten all human relationships in the name of fairness. You are not equally obligated to a stranger and to your child. You are not required to give the same attention to every crisis on Earth before tending to your own community’s suffering.

This is not chauvinism or tribalism. It is moral triage based on proximity, responsibility, capacity and agency - a concept we can call "ethical gravity."

The closer someone is to your sphere of influence or covenant, all else being equal, the stronger your obligation. While all people have dignity, not all obligations are the same. Ethical obligations extend outward from the self, to the family, to the community, to the nation, and then to the world. It doesn't mean we ignore the world's problems but we weigh them against the problems closer to home.

This enables universal ethics without universal sameness.

There is another innovation that is possible within this system: as long as communities adhere to the Tier 1 values, they can decide on their own Tier 2 values and relative importance.

For a community to emphasize or reorder Tier 2 values within AskHillel, certain ethical safeguards must be met:

Non-Contradiction: No Tier 2 priority may override or undermine Tier 1 obligations.
Transparency: The elevated value must be clearly taught, justified, and tested.
Uphold Human Dignity: The custom must support, not suppress, dignity and truth.
Corrigibility: The emphasis must be open to critique and revision.

These rules prevent Tier 2 from becoming a Trojan horse for prejudice, domination, or regress. (A future article will address a similar theme, how to avoid moral drift within secular moral systems.)

A community that places child education as a top value can certainly prioritize that, just as another might do with mental health. The system respects both universal standards and pluralism, as long as they do not contradict the Tier 1 values and axioms of the system.

This model answers the universalism/particularism debate with nuance and integrity:

Universalism without erasure: All humans share a moral grammar.
Particularism without tribalism: Communal ethics can elevate without excluding.
Pluralism without relativism: Moral meaning adapts, but is never arbitrary.

The AskHillel framework does not erase difference. It orchestrates it.

It offers a shared moral operating system that respects particular histories, permits elevated mores, and prevents abuse through layered checks and traceability.

In a time when both universal claims and cultural distinctiveness are weaponized, this layered approach offers a profound alternative: a framework that binds without flattening, guides without commanding, and grows through principled diversity.

Many of the details of moral philosophy are beyond me, but AskHillel does not seem daunted. For those interested, I asked AskHillel to critique the compromises proposed by famed moral philosophers to bridge the gap between universalism and particularism.

Here was its answer, which demonstrates its sophistication - and that I have truly built an AI philosopher.

To thinkers like W.D. Ross, Margaret Urban Walker, and others seeking middle paths between universalism and particularism, the AskHillel framework would offer respectful acknowledgment—but a fundamental departure.
Here's what I would say, in narrative form:
You are right to search for a synthesis. The yearning to honor both universal truths and particular lived contexts is deeply ethical. But Jewish ethics, as structured in the AskHillel framework, does not attempt to blend the two by compromise—it holds them in calibrated tension, like the opposing pulls of justice and mercy, or truth and peace. It refuses the flattening impulse that turns universalism into abstraction or particularism into tribalism.
Ross's "prima facie duties" dignify moral pluralism, but presume that duties are legible and stable across contexts. AskHillel insists that even these must be embedded within covenantal structure, not just philosophical intuition. The problem isn’t conflicting duties—it’s the assumption that their weight can be discerned without reference to identity, history, and responsibility.
Walker's expressive-collaborative model gestures toward covenant but stops short of the accountability mechanisms that make it trustworthy. Jewish ethics does not merely express shared values—it binds the speaker to them in a visible, testable way, anchored in communal systems of correction and humility.
The "particularist-friendly generalism" of Lance and Little is closer to the adjudicative layer of the AskHillel framework, which acknowledges that values must be weighed differently in different contexts. But the key difference is that Jewish ethics does not merely vary application—it requires that interpreters subject themselves to transparent reasoning, covenantal limits, and public moral accountability. Without that, context-sensitivity becomes license.
Virtue ethics, too, contains powerful resonances with Jewish moral psychology. But even virtues must be tested against the system: Are they aligned with life, dignity, truth, and covenantal fidelity? Are they interpretable in light of Teshuvah and Anavah?
Rawls and O'Neill make heroic efforts to ground universal justice in procedural integrity. But Jewish ethics is not neutral—it is accountable. Its laws are not imagined behind a veil of ignorance but inherited through covenant and interpreted in full moral visibility.
Jewish ethics does not deny the moral insights of these frameworks. It reconfigures them. It does not offer a middle path—it offers a tiered, morally structured, and testable system that includes universalizable values within a covenantal scaffolding, not above or beyond it.
If any of these systems were to incorporate not just universal instincts but Jewish-style moral procedure—transparent logic, override protocols, and built-in humility—then true convergence would be possible. But without those structural checks, middle-ground theories risk falling into the very moral flattening they hope to escape.