This chapter reconstructs the perennial tension between universal morality and particular ethics in modern political philosophy, drawing on Habermas, Forst, and Rawls to argue that morality, grounded in the human capacity for reciprocal justification, serves as a freestanding framework prior to ethical diversity. It critiques traditional approaches for failing to reconcile these domains without authoritarianism or formalism, showing how Habermas’s discourse ethics achieves separation but exacerbates a motivation problem in pluralistic societies. This chapter lays the foundation for the book’s pluralistic proviso as the bridge enabling legitimate coexistence of universality and particularity under deep reasonable pluralism.