Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
The Engineering Manual for Morality
A Review of Derechology: The Science of Human Morality by Eldad Tzioni
We live in an era of institutional vertigo. Universities, media organizations, and public health bodies—once the bedrock of social trust—seem to be collapsing under the weight of their own incoherence. In Derechology, Eldad Tzioni argues this isn't a personnel problem; it’s a software problem. Western civilization is running on a corrupted operating system, one that has been crashing with increasing frequency since the Enlightenment tried to reboot it without its original kernel.
Tzioni’s ambitious, sprawling, and often brilliant book offers a replacement OS. He calls it "Derechology" (from the Hebrew derech, meaning "path" or "way"). It is an audacious attempt to reverse-engineer the survival strategies of Jewish ethics, strip them of their theological casing, and offer them as a universal architecture for a secular world that has forgotten how to function.
Athens vs. Jerusalem: The Core Conflict
The book’s central thesis is a high-stakes revisiting of the ancient tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Tzioni argues that Western philosophy, dominated by Greek thought, committed a foundational error by treating the isolated individual (the atom) as the fundamental unit of reality. This choice led to a 2,500-year struggle to solve insoluble problems: logic that breaks when values conflict, "rights" that have no mechanism for adjudication, and a definition of truth that demands impossible perfection.
In contrast, Tzioni posits a "Relational Ontology." The fundamental unit of reality, he argues—supported by metaphors ranging from quantum entanglement to mycelial networks—is not the particle, but the relationship.
From this pivot, the book constructs its most valuable contribution: the Ethoskeleton. Tzioni suggests that trustworthy systems (whether individuals, corporations, or nations) must possess specific structural components to survive entropy. These include "Override Logic" (a transparent hierarchy for resolving value conflicts), "Corrigibility" (the structural capacity to admit and repair error), and "Relational Integrity" (obligations that scale with proximity).
It is a compelling argument. By shifting the focus from content (what values we hold) to architecture (how our systems process those values), Tzioni offers a way out of the culture wars. He doesn't ask us to agree on every political outcome; he asks us to agree on a structure that makes disagreement survivable.
The Physics of Good
Perhaps the book’s most daring leap is its attempt to bridge the gap between "is" and "ought" using the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Tzioni defines "Good" not as a matter of preference or divine command, but as anti-entropic direction.
In a universe continually sliding toward disorder, "Good" is the creative, energy-consuming act of building and maintaining complex relationships over deep time. Evil is not a force, but the surrender to entropy—the dissolution of bonds, the degradation of systems, the slide into chaos. It is a definition that feels rigorous and surprisingly intuitive, grounding ethics in the physical reality of the universe rather than abstract idealism.
The "Antisemitism Diagnostic"
One of the book's sharpest tools is its analysis of antisemitism. Tzioni reframes antisemitism not merely as racism, but as a "system error flag." He argues that ideologies turn antisemitic precisely when Jews—who stubbornly refuse to fit into neat binaries like "white/non-white" or "oppressor/oppressed"—break the ideology’s categorical framework. When a system cannot tolerate complexity, it tries to eliminate the anomaly. Thus, antisemitism becomes a diagnostic tool: if a movement hates Jews, it is structurally incapable of handling complexity and will eventually turn on itself.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Derechology is not a light read. It is dense with coined terminology ("Yesod Ethics," "The Falsification Audit," "Secular Covenantalism") that can occasionally feel overwhelming. The author asks the reader to learn a new language to understand his new world.
Furthermore, while the book explicitly claims to offer a secular system, the final act makes a sophisticated pivot back toward theology, arguing that the structure of the universe implies a "Unbound Domain" (God). While logically consistent with his arguments, this may alienate the strict materialists the book works so hard to court in its opening chapters.
However, the "proof of concept" chapters—specifically the section detailing "AskHillel," an AI programmed with these ethical rules—are fascinating. They demonstrate that this is not just high-minded philosophy; it is computable logic. Tzioni shows that an ethical system with clear "override logic" can navigate complex dilemmas (like triage or self-driving car ethics) better than our current vague notions of "do no harm."
The Verdict
Derechology is a work of significant intellectual engineering. It moves beyond the tired "faith vs. reason" debates to offer something more practical: a blueprint for building institutions that don't collapse.
It is a book for the institutional homeless—those who find the rigidity of the far-right and the incoherence of the far-left equally uninhabitable. Tzioni offers a "place to stand," a foundation built on humility, transparency, and the relentless, anti-entropic work of keeping promises. It is a demanding book, but for a civilization currently crashing, it might just be the manual we need.
Rating: 4.5/5
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If any philosopher, theologian or other credentialed thinker is interested in seeing the book as it stands now and is willing to give me feedback, let me know!
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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