People in general need a moral compass. Reform Judaism seeing the abuses and problems of Jewish leadership, decided the most current up to date German philosophy of the 19th century was the way to go. The sad thing is the most up to date and popular German thinker was Hegel. (Later they added Freud who based himself on Nietzsche.) Reform Judaism could not have chosen a worse philosophy even if they had tried. ----later note: my approach is what is called "Musar" which refers to books about morality אורחות צדיקים, מסילת ישרים, חובות הלבבות, שערי תשובה/ Musar also refers to the movement started by Rav Israel Salanter that held that people ought to learn the books on morality written during the Middle Ages, and also the later books by Rav Moshe Chaim Lutzato/. As a side note I might mention that Musar got to be part of the yeshiva world. As for morality itself, I think that is simply reason applied to human affairs. I mean to say that I think that reason applies to what are called universals,[ that is an academic term which means characteristics that individual things have in common].In the words of dr michael huemer:"So moral intuition is just the general faculty of reason applied to a particular subject matter, viz., values, just as mathematical intuition is not a separate quasi-perceptual faculty but rather the faculty of reason applied to numbers." [Moral Objectivism by Michael Huemer] [Dr Huemer is basing his views on Prichard and G.E. Moore with his own modifications. I admit that I borrow a lot from him but also a lot from Kant, and Leonard Nelson.]dr huemer deals with the world of reason and phenomena.