The Future of Normativity

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.

1 - Beyond Normativity: Can Metaethics Escape Samsaras Wheel?
2 - Choosing the Right Companion: On the Authority of Epistemic, Aesthetic, and Moral Normativity
3 - Is the Unity of Normativity Safe?
4 - Normative Indispensability
5 - Normative-to-Normative Reductionism and the Case of Aesthetics
6 - On the Normativity of Fit
7 - The Supervenience of the Normative and the Autonomy of Essence: Lessons from Learys Hybrid Gambit
8 - Metanormative Constructivism as Non-Reductive Perspectivalism
9 - Aesthetic Obligation
10 - n-1 Guilty Men
11 - The Disguise of the Good
12 - Reasons from Identity
13 - The Ethics of Agency: An Alternative Approach to Normative Ethics

Simon Kirchin is Professor of Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre at the University of Leeds and Director of the British Philosophical Association. He is also a past President of The British Society for Ethical Theory. He is the author of Thick Evaluation (OUP, 2017) and Metaethics (Palgrave, 2012) and has edited and co-edited several volumes. He is currently writing about normativity, leadership ethics (especially in universities), and philosophy of comedy. He hosts two podcasts: Philosophy Takes on the News and Philosophy Gets Schooled.