Interlude I: False Juxtapositions for the Description of Norms

Abstract

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.