Circumcision – a conflict between morality and law?

It's no more a conflict than the decision to vaccinate him. Even with the vaccine, he suffers a little from the prick and the mild side effects, but your decision is a decisive weighing of whether you are doing him more good than harm.
(Of course, the comparison is only true if you believe that it is good for the baby to come into a covenant with God).

Hi
I have difficulty understanding how one can justify, at least philosophically, the rejection of a universal moral principle in the name of a particular value (in this case, the religious value of the act of circumcision).

Doron,
Ironically, when there is a conflict between a general value and a particular value, the particular one prevails. Our legal cousins call this lex specialis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_specialis
But there is no need to get to that here, because the question is not the degree of universality of the value but its importance, and there is no necessary connection between the two. You assume that a moral value is always more important than a religious value, and I (and the Torah) disagree with that.

And how do you base what you call importance on a criterion that contradicts universality?
Do you have an example?
My assumption is that universality is a necessary condition (although certainly not sufficient) to establish any value.
To the best of my memory (correct me if I'm wrong), you yourself have written more than once that the moral discussion precedes the religious/halakhic discussion.

First, here I am correcting you (as you requested). I did not write this and I do not think so.
How do you establish the importance of one value over another? There is no algorithm for this, and some even deny the possibility of doing so (the so-called incommensurability of values). Intuition.
The assumption that universality is a condition for establishing a value is absurd in my opinion (your argument here is not universal. I disagree with it), but there is no point in discussing it because it does not concern our discussion in any way that I can see.

Do not understand or disagree (or a legitimate descendant of the two).
In your opinion, intuition reaches some moral ideas.
Isn't the status of these ideas, which are - also in your opinion - “beyond phenomena” universal?

You are right, of course, that there is no algorithm that allows one to establish the importance of one value over another. But that is not exactly relevant.

I can already see the drift into deafness. Please remember what we talked about and argue about it. Your words here are in no way related to the discussion.

After you wrote that there is no algorithm (and I agreed with that) you wrote the word
“intuition”.
Didn't you write that to answer my question about how one value is preferred over another?

My discussion, at least from the beginning, was about a universal value (“moral”?) versus a particular religious value.
I argued that the first comes before the second. I don't understand where you hear deafness here…

By deafness I mean a dialogue of deaf people, which we usually reach at the end of each of our discussions.
We talked about the hierarchy between moral value and religious value. I wrote that the hierarchy between values is determined intuitively. I also wrote that in my opinion there is no principle that determines the priority of one moral value over another. How did you now arrive at the question of whether the status of these or other values is universal. Universality is not related to precedence.

1. We both agree that we relate to some values first of all through intuitions.
2. But what do you do when two intuitions conflict with each other? Such a conflict can happen both between a person and his friend and between a person himself.
3. And another problem that I think has no solution from your point of view: not everything we consider intuition is indeed such. Maybe it is a matter of instinctual inclination?
4. So what is your opinion in all these cases the criterion for identifying the correct intuition?
5. In my opinion, reason and the conceptual analysis it enables are the tools we have. By nature, reason works with the help of simplifications and generalizations, and in any case, in its relation to the ”material” that comes from intuitions, the category of universality enters.
6. Therefore, the universal is relevant, contrary to what you say.
7. And more about the connection between universality and morality: Even the intuitive faculty itself - regardless of the intellect that analyzes it - involves the criterion of universality.
8. Reasoning: Ideas are separate from us and as such are abstract for us. In any case, for us, such abstract entities have a universal status (for example: even if there are endless disputes about the ways of embodying the general ‘good” in the world, there is still an overall idea of good in relation to which those disputes exist).
9. And another minor methodological matter: You very often do not understand me and sometimes I have the feeling that you really enjoy this work. The same is true in this case: I have from the beginning linked the precedence (hierarchy) between values and universality. The fact that you disbelieve in this connection is one thing. But the fact that you claim that it has nothing to do with our discussion is another thing and very strange to me. I explained why I think it is related, and you are welcome to agree with me or disagree with me, as long as you explain it.

Baruch from the Resurrection. 🙂
I don't see the question of the criterion as a fundamental problem. When you know, you know. And if there is no criterion, then it is not true? What is your criterion for morality? Can you propose a universal criterion? And what is the criterion for quality (speaking of Robert Pirsig)? Do you think the conclusion is that there is no quality and no morality?
Furthermore, even when a criterion is given, you can always ask who will insist that this criterion is true. For exactly the same reason, I am also not bothered by questions of skepticism (=maybe what you think is wrong?). In order to be satisfied, you need a reason.
Universality is indeed a possible criterion, but in my opinion it is wrong, and actually not wrong but absurd. If all people think something, does that mean that it is more important than other values? And in general, the fact that something can be used as a criterion while others have no criterion means nothing. To the same extent I could use the alphabet as a criterion, and thus the prohibition of theft overrides the prohibition of murder because theft is a sin. Universality in my view is similar to the criterion of the alphabet.

What can I do that I don't understand you and what I understand doesn't seem to me to be related to the discussion. Maybe the problem is me, but that's what I think exists in your words. I can't explain why I disagree with an opinion that I don't understand and I don't understand how it relates to the discussion. I'm not writing this cynically and not to evade. This is really the case in all our conversations, at one point or another we reach the stage of deafness.

It's hard for me to discuss such gaps (I no longer remember the context).

1. Although we both agree on the source of morality (the intuitive faculty), immediately after that we part ways and you depart for, in my opinion, a strange and alien world in which no human being truly lives.
2. In this mysterious world of yours, for that person who encounters some moral idea within his soul, there is no room at all for judgment, further reflection, comparison between ideas (or between an authentic idea and what is only pretended to be), analysis of it, etc.
3. It can be said metaphorically that you are a close “reader”: in your eyes, the “written Torah” (= the moral idea) is the face of everything. Each time, the “Torah” is given to you anew in its entirety in a kind of your own Mount Sinai status, and it seems to you - as your words suggest - that it necessarily corresponds to the concrete reality in which you are placed at that moment. A kind of electrical pulse that is transmitted directly into your consciousness and tells you what to do. Without the need for interpretation or reflection of the mind.
4. As I said: I think such a description of human conduct in the field of morality is mistaken. It simply does not work that way.

5. A passing remark regarding your next sentence:

“Universality is indeed a possible criterion, but in my opinion it is wrong, and actually not wrong but absurd. If all people think something, does that mean that it is more important than other values?”

6. From this quote (in its second part) it appears that you believe that the concept of universality before us is the product of an empirical generalization. This is a mistake.
The universality that I am talking about is an a priori logical condition. I have no interest in this discussion of psychological or sociological truths regarding the opinions of most people. The question is a philosophical one.
This may be another example of your ”choice” not to understand me. I use a certain term in one sense and you rush to interpret it in another.

7. There are other points I disagree with you on, but I have just returned from the dead and I am still too exhausted to say much. Death is a grueling experience.

I see that we are already deep into the deaf stage. Everything you put in my mouth in your last message is not even close to what I really think, nor is it even a hint of what I said. It is time to end it and say goodbye as friends.

I think you are digging your positions too deep.
Things are much simpler and easier than you choose to see in this case.
Sha Bracha

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B”D 1’ Danukah 577”A

The Jewish boy, when he grows up, will ask to be circumcised, and then he will be forced to undergo a painful operation. In contrast, on the eighth day after birth, circumcision involves only slight pain. So even from a purely moral point of view, it is better for the person to undergo circumcision at a time when it is easier.

With greetings, Yaron Fishel Corinaldi