This is no more of a clash than the decision to vaccinate him. With a vaccine too he suffers a bit from the prick and from mild side effects, but your decision is based on a balancing of factors that concludes you are benefiting him more than harming him.
(Of course, the comparison is valid only if you believe it is good for the baby to enter into a covenant with the Holy One, blessed be He).

Hi,
I find it hard to understand how one can justify, at least philosophically, setting aside a universal moral principle in the name of a particular value (in this case, the religious value of the act of circumcision).

Doron,
Ironically enough, when there is a clash between a general value and a particular one, usually the particular one is what prevails. Our cousins the jurists call this lex specialis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_specialis
But here there is no need to get that far, 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 one, and I (and the Torah as well) deny that.

And how do you ground what you call importance on a criterion that contradicts universality?
Do you have an example?
My assumption is that universality is a necessary condition (though certainly not a sufficient one) for grounding any value.
Besides, if I remember correctly (correct me if I’m wrong), you yourself have written more than once that the moral discussion comes before the religious / halakhic one.

First, let me correct you (as you requested). I did not write that, and I do not think so.
How do you ground the importance of one value over another? There is no algorithm for that, and some deny that it can be done at all (what is called the incommensurability of values). Intuition.
The assumption that universality is a condition for grounding a value seems baseless to me (after all, your claim here is not universal. I don’t agree with it), but there is no point discussing it because as far as I can see it has no bearing on our discussion whatsoever.

I don’t understand, or I don’t agree, or some legitimate offspring of the two.
On your view, intuition arrives at some moral ideas.
Is the status of those ideas, which are—even on your view—“beyond phenomena,” not universal?

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

I can already see us sliding into deafness. Please remember what we were talking about and make claims about that. What you write here is unrelated to the discussion in any way.

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

My discussion, at least from the outset, was about a universal (“moral”?) value versus a particular religious value.
I claimed that the former takes precedence over the latter. I don’t understand where you’re hearing deafness here…

By deafness I mean a dialogue of the deaf, which is where we tend to end up at the end of every discussion between us.
We were talking about the hierarchy between a moral value and a religious value. I wrote that hierarchy among values is determined intuitively. And I also wrote that in my opinion there is no principle that determines the priority of one moral value over another. So how did you now get to the question of whether the status of these or those values is universal? Universality has nothing to do with precedence.

1. We both agree that we relate to values first of all through intuitions.
2. But what do you do when two intuitions clash with one another? Such a clash can happen both between one person and another and within a person himself.
3. And another problem that in my opinion has no solution from your point of view: not everything we take to be intuition really is such. Maybe it is just an inclination of the impulse?
4. If so, in all these cases what is, on your view, the criterion for identifying the correct intuition?
5. On my view, reason and the conceptual analysis it makes possible are the auxiliary tool we have. By its nature, reason works through abstractions and generalizations, and therefore in its relation to the “material” coming from intuitions, the category of universality enters the picture.
6. Therefore universality is relevant after all, contrary to what you say.
7. And another point regarding the connection between universality and morality: even the intuitive faculty itself—independently of the reason that analyzes it—involves the criterion of universality.
8. Justification: the ideas are separate from us, and as such they are abstract for us. Therefore, for us, such abstract entities have 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 the good in relation to which those disputes take place).
9. And one more minor methodological point: you very often fail to understand me, and sometimes I get the feeling that you really enjoy this activity. So too in this case: from the beginning I connected precedence (hierarchy) between values to universality. The fact that you deny that connection is one thing. But the fact that you claim it is not related to our discussion at all is another thing, and very strange in my eyes. I explained why I think it is related, and you are welcome to agree with me or disagree with me, so long as you explain why.

Blessed is He who revives the dead. 🙂
I do not see the question of a criterion as a substantial problem. When you know, you know. And if there is no criterion, does that make it false? What is your criterion for morality? Can you propose a universal criterion? And what is the criterion for quality (to borrow from Robert Pirsig)? Do you think the conclusion is that there is no quality and no morality?
Moreover, even if a criterion is given, you can always ask who will guarantee that this criterion is correct. For exactly the same reason, I am also not troubled by questions of skepticism (= maybe what you think is not correct?). In order to doubt, you need a reason.
Universality is indeed a possible criterion, but in my opinion it is mistaken—in fact not just mistaken but baseless. If all people think something, does that mean it is more important than other values? And in general, the fact that something can be used as a criterion whereas something else has no criterion proves nothing. By the same logic I could use the alphabet as a criterion, and then the prohibition against theft would override the prohibition against murder because theft begins with t. Universality seems to me similar to the criterion of the alphabet.

What can I do if I don’t understand you, and what I do understand does not seem related to the discussion? Maybe the problem is with me, but that is what, in my opinion, is present in your words. I cannot explain why I disagree with an opinion I do not understand, nor do I understand what connection it has to the discussion. I am not writing this cynically or in order to evade. That really is the situation in all our conversations: at some stage or another we arrive at the stage of deafness.

With gaps like these, it is hard for me to discuss things (I no longer remember the context).

1. Even though we both share agreement about the source of morality (the intuitive faculty), immediately afterward our paths part, and you wander off, in my opinion, into a strange and alien world that no human being really lives in.
2. In this mysterious world of yours, a person who encounters some moral idea within his soul has no room at all for judgment, for further reflection, for comparing ideas (or comparing an authentic idea to something that only masquerades as one), for analyzing it, and so on.
3. One could say metaphorically that you are a strict Karaite: in your eyes the “Written Torah” (= the moral idea) is everything. Each time “the Torah” is given to you anew in its completeness in a kind of your own Mount Sinai experience, and it seems to you—so it emerges from your words—that it necessarily fits the concrete reality in which you happen to find yourself at that moment. A kind of electrical pulse transmitted directly into your consciousness and telling you what must be done. Without any need for interpretation or rational reflection.
4. As I said: I think such a description of human conduct in the moral sphere is mistaken. It simply does not work like that.

5. A side note regarding the following sentence of yours:

“Universality is indeed a possible criterion, but in my opinion it is mistaken—in fact not just mistaken but baseless. If all people think something, does that mean it is more important than other values?”

6. From this quotation (in its second part) it follows that you think the concept of universality here is the product of empirical generalization. That is a mistake.
The universality I am talking about is an a priori logical condition. I have no interest in this discussion in psychological or sociological truths about what most people think. The question is purely philosophical.
This may be another example of your “choice” not to understand me. I use a certain concept in one sense, and you rush to interpret it in another sense.

7. There are other points on which I disagree with you, but I have only just returned from among the dead, and I am still too exhausted to go on at length. Death is a tiring experience.

I see that we are already deep into the deafness stage. Everything you put into my mouth in your last message is nowhere near what I actually think, nor is there even the slightest hint of it in my words. This is the time to stop and part as friends.

In my opinion you are digging yourself too deeply into your positions.
Things are much simpler and easier than you choose to see in this case.
All the best.

https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A8-%D7%9C%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%94

https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%94

With God’s help, first day of Hanukkah 5781

After all, the Jewish child will want to be circumcised when he grows up, and then he will be forced to undergo a painful operation. By contrast, on the eighth day after birth, circumcision involves only mild pain. So even from a purely moral standpoint, it is preferable for a person to undergo circumcision at the time when it is easier.

Best regards, Yaron Fishel Kurinaldi