The Future of Normativity

A volume of philosophical essays about normativity that considers questions such as: Is normativity a distinctive phenomenon clearly delineated in current philosophical work? Is it useful to connect these aspects of the world in this way? What are we are trying to achieve in focusing on normativity? What might the future questions be?

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The past few decades have witnessed an intense focus on the notion of normativity. We orientate ourselves to think about normativity by asking a range of questions. There are ways we act and think, and ways in which the world is. But as well as what there is and what we do, what should or ought we to do? What reasons are there for acting and thinking? What values do certain ways of being have? What authority is had by the norms and standards that govern our behaviour and thought? At the heart of these debates are other questions. How should we characterize normative notions such as reason and value? What are the relations between them? Are they all properly normative?

The Future of Normativity brings together work by a set of leading philosophers to consider what normative thought could and should be. These questions gain additional colour and point by being considered within different areas of our lives, such as the areas concerned with ethics, aesthetics, and epistemology. Further issues then come to the fore. Reasons and obligations in some areas seem to have more authority than in others, but why and how? Is there a 'unity of normativity' across different areas? This volume therefore considers familiar questions afresh while also introducing new questions and topics, all of which bear on the future of normativity.