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In a number of books and articles, the philosopher Margaret Urban Walker has discussed what she calls 'universalism' and opposed it to what she calls moral particularity. In "Moral Particularity" she writes as follows:

How then may a valid moral judgment be irreducibly particular? The non-universalizability of such judgements cannot be due simply to the fact that some grounds of the given judgement are particular. This does not suffice to show that the judgement is any less an instance of and an implicit assent to a universal principle linking just the kind of grounds appealed to, however particular, with just the moral position the judgement affirms. The universality universalism requires is compatible with minute specificity of content; it is the universality of the connection between grounds acknowledged and position affirmed.

Irreducibly particular judgements are possible because the relevance, rank and weight of particulars is not a given, a uniformity over all agents. Rather, particulars are aspects of ourselves up for moral scrutiny and possibly for revaluation at any turn in our moral lives, and so are part of the matter for moral consideration ongoing. Their relevance is not presupposed to decisions in which they figure as grounds, because their relevance derives from the commitments made, fixed, sustained, or renewed in those very decisions.

Irreducibly particular judgements consist in an agent's assigning to particularized grounds a discretionary value (compatible with generally acceptable orderings of generic values) in the act of affirming a certain moral position on their basis. Such moral judgements do not instance a standard viewpoint, but either establish or renew a precedent which derives what force it has from the agent's identification with it: it is presumed to commit the agent in future acts and valuations to allowing the countenanced particulars special scope, weight, or centrality where they apply. What is systematic and nonarbitrary in the relation between grounds and position in this kind of case derives not from a uniformity over all moral agents, but from an existing or prospective uniformity over performances of this moral agent. ["Moral Particularity" in Moral Contexts by Margaret Urban Walker, p. 8-9.]