Chapter Eleven: Normativity

In the last three chapters, we have looked at several approaches to thinking about human beings that foundered on problems related to normativity. As a result of work in the biology and psychology, we now understand, better than ever before, how the human mind – as an empirical object in the world – works. Through the study of human history and, more generally, of human diversity, it is increasingly clear that the biological and psychological characteristics of human beings admit of extremely wide variations in very basic categories in terms of which human beings think about and govern action within the world. And philosophical developments over the past 100 years, especially the important influence of existentialism and deconstruction, has challenged traditional philosophical dualisms and at the same time driven home the difficulty, and perhaps even impossibility, of fully determining the “nature” of human beings. Even with all of these developments, however, normative issues have not gone away. Insofar as human sciences (whether biology or history or anthropology) purport to provide anything like knowledge of human beings, they appeal to some sort of epistemic standards. Moreover, as forms of life, the practice of these sciences involves appeal to some sort of volitional standard. Even those not directly involved in these scientific and philosophical development need – at least now that you have read this far in this book! – to decide what to make of them. And in any case, as reflective thinkers, feelers, and actors, we find ourselves – again, especially if you’ve read this far – needing to decide what do think, feel, and do in our lives. As the existentialists rightly show, even the refusal to see oneself as needing to make such decisions is an exercise of freedom, albeit in bad faith. Unfortunately, none of these developments provide, in themselves, the tools for deciding how we ought to think, feel, and act in the light of them. Even if evolutionary biology shows how and why humans evolved to care about one another, this does not in itself help us determine whether such caring is a trait to be fostered or resisted. And even if historical analyses show how modern physics developed through the overturning of a Newtonian paradigm, how modern conceptions of penal justice developed, or even how human beings as subjects emerged; historical analysis alone cannot tell us whether to believe the claims of modern physics, embrace current conceptions or penal justice, affirm modern subjectivity, or reject one (or all) of these developments. Comparison of different ways of thinking and acting across lines of gender, race, or culture, likewise, can reveal the contingency of these ways of thinking, but it cannot tell us whether this contingency should be embraced as a delightful pluralism, rejected as tribal ethnocentrism, or treated in some wholly different way. And even existentialism itself, with its emphasis on freedom, so emphasizes freedom and authenticity, and calls into such great suspicion any purportedly universal normative standards, that it fails (and intentionally so) to provide real guidance for making the important decisions the omnipresence of which it so aptly reveals. As we saw in chapter two, Kant’s transcendental anthropology provides a normative framework for answering questions about what to think, feel, and do. Kant’s purely formal normativity leaves room for individual thoughts and choices to be influenced by historically-evolving cultures and biological capacities/tendencies while still being incorporated into normative frameworks that are at once authentically one’s