The Value of Normative Powers

Over the past several decades, certain familiar ways in which persons can intentionally change the normative situation have become the focus of increased philosophical attention under the label “normative powers”. These include making promises and agreements, giving permissions, issuing orders, making requests, and transferring property rights, to name some important instances. It is widely agreed that our ability to deliberately shape the normative situation in these and similar ways calls out for explanation. Yet for all the importance of normative powers in our moral practice, their question of how to explain their existence – that is, how to explain the fact that the relevant acts, usually mere communications, have the normative consequences they do – has not been systematically investigated. There is a noticeable mismatch between the importance of normative powers in our practical lives, reflected in the attention paid to a relatively small set of particular normative powers in the philosophical literature, and the scarcity of sustained inquiry into the general nature and grounds of such powers.

The research project that started in April 2021 aims to advance our understanding of normative powers, and thereby of a core aspect of our ethical practice, by addressing four central and interconnected questions: (1) What distinguishes exercises of normative powers from other ways of intervening in the normative situation? (2) How is the existence of those powers best explained? (3) Which values are served by persons’ having and exercising normative powers, and can these values contribute to explaining them? And (4) what determines the scope of the normative changes that can be brought about through the exercise of normative powers?

Most of the existing literature on normative powers focuses on one or another particular power and tends to touch on these more systematic questions only incidentally and piecemeal. By contrast, the research project aims to make progress on these questions by addressing them in an integrated way. It pursues the hypothesis that the possession and exercise of normative powers enables persons to realize a variety of goods, and that this is the basis on which their existence, scope, and distinctiveness are best explained. Appreciating this axiological significance of normative powers is key for understanding their irreducible role in our practical life and thought, for explaining why we are justified in attributing those powers to ourselves and others, and for determining what their limits are. In particular, the research project focuses on the constitutive role of normative powers for different kinds of valuable interpersonal relationships. The research project articulates a plausible and fruitful approach to the explanation of normative powers, and more generally to contribute to bridging the divide between value theory and the study of deontic phenomena. The thesis of the project yields a principled and informative way of thinking about the scope of particular normative powers and benefits thereby also debates in practical and applied ethics.

Project Leader: Prof. Dr. Peter Schaber
Accademic associate: Dr. Felix Koch