NINA · Norms in Nature: Rethinking the Natural Side of Normativity. Towards a New Hegelian Paradigm

Norms in Nature: Rethinking the Natural Side of Normativity. Towards a New Hegelian Paradigm

What are norms? Where does their authority come from? Today, some of the most fraught debates in both analytic and continental philosophy pivot upon questions regarding the origin and status of “normativity”. NINA addresses a problem crucial to this context, namely the issue of natural normativity. It seeks to answer the following questions: To what extent are norms natural? Are there natural forms of normativity? If so, how are they identified? And through what phenomena do they manifest? So far, most theories have considered normativity a typically social phenomenon. Many scholars believe that norms are sui generis and belong to a “logical space” that cannot be grasped by the frameworks of the natural sciences. These same scholars find the very idea of natural normativity suspicious. However, their conceptual frameworks, which identify the social as the sole domain for norms, are vulnerable to an unresolvable dualism between norms and nature. Furthermore, the idea of a sharp distinction between these two dimensions is unable to explain the genesis of normative authority within communities. This project therefore has two general objectives. It aims (1) to develop a new conception of norms in nature which present norms as naturally grounded by (2) rediscovering and reevaluating ideas drawn from classical German philosophy, particularly the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel—whose insights are already central to the debate on norms but whose ideas on natural normativity have not yet been fully appreciated. The development of a non philosophically problematic philosophical conception of what norms are and what it means to think of humans as beings as both natural and norm-following creatures is the main goals of this project. This aim is relevant not only for developments in the domain of philosophy but will also provide a conceptual framework for all scholars concerned with normative phenomenon and the relations among natural and social dimensions. Achieving this objective requires finding a way to root norms in nature, making it essential to investigate developments in biology and, in particular, its theoretical paradigms that ground normativity in nature.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз