VIENNA — The philosopher Avishai Margalit was born in 1939, at the onset of World War II, and has lived most of his life in Israel, a country that has always existed between war and peace. That the value of political compromise has always occupied Professor Margalit’s thinking should come as no surprise. He is haunted by how political compromise becomes an act of political maturity and moral responsibility, and under what conditions it becomes morally unacceptable.

It was Mr. Margalit’s conviction that in a liberal society “compromise” cannot be a dirty word. But, he has written, a “rotten compromise” can destroy a liberal society. “We should be judged by our compromises more than by our ideals and norms,” he wrote once. “Ideals may tell us something important about what we like to be. But compromises tell us who we are.”

How might the great moral philosopher judge Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany based on the compromise she reached with the Prime Ministers Viktor Orban of Hungary and Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland in last week’s European summit? Was this a compromise or a rotten compromise?

In the weeks leading up to the European Council summit, the governments of Poland and Hungary threatened to veto the agreed-upon European Union budget and 1.8 trillion euro recovery fund if the European Commission does not withdraw its plan to condition budgetary disbursement on adhering to the rule of law norms and principles.