The word "sanctity" is loaded. In a secular context, it’s often dismissed as a purely theological concept, a relic of a pre-scientific worldview. But in Judaism, and possibly in other traditions, sanctity isn’t just about "holiness" in a standalone, abstract sense. It's profoundly about boundaries - the separation between the sacred and the profane, between the pure and the impure, between what is holy and what is ordinary. This act of drawing boundaries helps create a coherent moral structure for the entire system. The Hebrew word normally translated as "holy," "kadosh," means separate in some contexts.
This insight gave me an "aha" moment: the secular world has its own, unnamed version of this same principle.
Let's call it Category Integrity.
Category Integrity is the moral obligation to preserve the separation between essential distinctions. It is the principle that the boundaries of core concepts are not infinitely malleable. They are the invisible scaffolding of a functional society. While our society relies on these boundaries, it has never formally named or defended the principle itself as a core ethical tenet.
Every serious field has the idea of category integrity baked in. Journalism intends to separate reporting from opinion. Medicine distinguishes between licensed doctors and self-proclaimed wellness experts. Society distinguishes between civilian and military, citizens and non-citizens, minors and adults. The idea of changing the distinction between married and unmarried, no matter what your own position on the topic, is really about maintaining that category and its role within the social structure.
By reframing "sanctity" in this way, we can see that this isn't a religious concept at all. It's a functional necessity for any coherent system, from a legal code to the scientific method.
Once you name this principle, its absence becomes glaringly obvious. Many of our modern societal crises are not a result of bad values, but the absence of this one. When journalism blurs into propaganda, when university teachers turn into activists, when medical practitioners refuse to treat some patients based on their religious or political views, when judges turn into lawmakers, when conflict of interest is considered just another valid choice, when animal rights are elevated to the same level as human rights, the very foundations of a moral society get shaken.
Post-enlightenment philosophy acted like religious concepts were allergens, and it kept the idea of sanctity far away from its attempts to create a secular moral system. This blind spot may be one of the reasons for the cracks we are seeing in an increasingly secular society. Sanctity is not a purely religious concept - it is the basis for the idea of treating different categories of everything differently.
Secular ethics has been so focused on situational harm (consequentialism) and individual rights (deontology) that it has completely missed the meta-level harm of structural decay. It has been debating the morality of individual actions while the invisible scaffolding that holds the entire moral picture together has been crumbling.
Judaism and other religious traditions already have this principle baked into their foundations: man/woman, child/adult, believer/non-believer, cleric/non-cleric, married/single, weekday/Sabbath, house of worship/non-sacred space. By translating "sanctity as separation" into "Category Integrity," we not only find a way to secularize a key religious concept, but we also give modern secular ethics a powerful new tool. It allows us to better understand and defend the fundamental distinctions that make a just and functional society possible.
And it gives us a way to diagnose when things start to go wrong.
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