Responses, Corrections, Applications

This concluding chapter offers some commentary on various topics covered in the preceding chapters. It first discusses the need for a comparative study of social norms. The investigation of social norms still largely follows their respective provenance from law, politics, religion, or other social fields, and accordingly is disciplinarily divided up among jurists, political scientists, theologians, art historians, or psychologists. The chapter considers how this volume approached the topic in a different way. In addition, the chapter addresses critiques from practical philosophy about the distinction highlighted between norms and their justification. Afterward, the chapter lists some brief reflections on the automation and rule-bound determination of social practices, before discussing further empirical research perspectives.

Research Perspectives

This chapter offers some research perspectives. In the realm of empirics, it discusses a twofold level of observation and examines the description of forms as a point of departure. It also looks at the observation of social norms. Next, this chapter turns to norms beyond functional differentiation and autonomy. Here, it considers Luhmann's model of the pure norm. It comments on the inevitable hybrid character of social norms as well. In addition to these remarks, the chapter turns toward the challenge of historicism and the project of a comparison of theories, after which it discusses two perspectives on normativity succeeding—over-normativization and under-normativization.

The Meaning and Function of Social Norms

This chapter argues that a social norm affirms the realization of a possibility. This notion does without a justificatory element because the concept is supposed to be used to describe, not evaluate, social practice. The concept does without a criterion of success, a measure for a norm being established. Finally, the concept does without the threat of sanctions. Every norm carries with it a specific sanction. Norms create a tension with reality, which they seek to bring into harmony with themselves. The more successful a norm is in terms of being in accord with the course of events, the less obvious it becomes what noticeably distinguishes the norm from this very course of events. This is why normative orders deploy numerous instruments for securing their own distinguishability. It is only in this distinguishability from reality that norms find their achievement, thereby fulfilling a number of different functions. But, as this chapter shows, social norms are just as irreducible to a certain function as appropriate descriptions are.

The Reality of Norms

This chapter considers three areas in laying the foundations for normativity: formalization, authorization, and written fixation. Formalization here is defined as the techniques by which a normative order defines its own elements and thereby makes them distinguishable from each other, and from elements of other orders. The chapter then takes a look at how the practice of the normative often relies on the metaphor of the source. From there, the chapter looks into the relationship between informality and formality of norm authorization. Finally, the chapter describes how the written word is one of the important techniques through which norms are portrayed and formalized.

Interlude II: Do the Esthetics of Art Fall within the Realm of the Normative?

This chapter examines art-esthetic phenomena within the domain of normativity. It considers if art as a practice, and esthetics as its theoretical reflection, even belong in an investigation of the normative. Here, the chapter distinguishes between the internal and external esthetic norms. Internal norms refer to immanent esthetic criteria; they define the success of an esthetic product. External norms refer to a normative content within art, which extends beyond it. Even at first sight, it is not easy to say whether this normative excess, which is external to art, can be grasped in esthetic categories, or whether it needs to be expressed in other terms, such as political or moral categories. Neither kind of normativity are self-evident for esthetic theory; they have rather been viewed with suspicion, and their meaning is frequently denied. And yet, esthetic practice and its theory cannot get by without norms.

Interlude I: False Juxtapositions for the Description of Norms

This chapter examines pairs of conceptual alternatives in order to develop a notion of what marks a normative practice. These are alternatives between which many theories of normativity implicitly or explicitly take sides. This chapter is concerned with a critique of the notion that norms could appropriately be described by reference to these alternatives or juxtapositions. This form of critique is necessary because in many theories of normativity one of these alternatives is presented as the exclusive explanatory option. Because the deficit of this approach does not simply lie in the quality of the explanatory option presented, but already in discussing questions of normativity within such a framework of alternatives. That is because these alternative pairs are assumed to conceptually mislead in their exclusivity. As distinctions, these alternatives have a limited descriptive capacity; as exclusive, counter-positional alternative pairs, they lead to lamentably narrow notions of social normativity.

The Possibility of Norms

This chapter develops a two-part concept of norms: norms consist of a possibility and a marking that affirms the realization of said possibility. It introduces a model or a distinction, stemming from the theory of intentionality, as a rudimentary concept of normativity. This distinction is of pertinent interest for the question because of what it captures and what it leaves out. The model offers an inclusive and wieldy notion of the normative. The chapter builds upon the model with further questions, all of which have their own justification. From here, the chapter is concerned with developing the conceptual precondition of the concept of social normativity itself.

Conceptual Baggage of Empirical Research

This chapter argues that when philosophical theories of normativity miss the mark concerning the social practice of normativity, they thereby miss a side of the normative that is empirically accessible and can be recognized and described in time and space. In order to substantiate this claim, four models are examined so as to explicate how they relate to the question of social norms' empirical recognizability. The first concerns the rationalization of the normative through generalizability, as drawn from Kantian philosophy. Next, the chapter covers a model drawn from David Hume concerning the empiricization of the normative. Power, or the absorption of the normative, is next discussed. Finally, the chapter studies moral realism.

Good Reasons?

This chapter attempts to identify discursive commonalities in a critical manner. If categories from practical philosophy are of significance for understanding social norms and how these can be adequately described, then taking a look at the philosophical discourse provides an entry point. Of course, speaking of practical philosophy as such is somewhat limiting in light of the sheer breadth of such discourse, even more so in that philosophical debates are contentious not only in their solutions but in the very definition of problems. However, the chapter makes the attempt nevertheless. Its focus here is driven by the presumption that at least the identification of problems is not too vague an enterprise in contemporary practical philosophy, and that it indeed plays a decisive role for a theory of the normative. Möllers analyzes the deficits of philosophical concepts of normativity, focusing on theories that conceive of norms as reasons for action. He concludes that they fail to offer an adequate description of the social practice of the normative.