Normativity

One of the most pervasive and puzzling features of human thought is its normative character, the fact that we constantly evaluate things as good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate. In Normativity, the distinguished philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson undertakes a rigorous and illuminating investigation into what normative thought actually is, how it works, and what makes normative judgments true when they are true. Thomson's central insight is that normativity is far broader than most philosophers have recognized. Normative judgments divide into the evaluative and the directive, and both categories are far more extensive than their familiar moral instances. To say that an umbrella is a good umbrella, that a comedian is genuinely witty, or that a chess player must move her rook is to make a normative judgment, just as much as saying that a person ought to be kind or that a certain action is wrong. Once this breadth is appreciated, Thomson argues, the familiar philosophical suspicion of the normative turns out to rest on little more than an arbitrarily narrow conception of what normative judgment involves. Precise, original, and consistently illuminating, Normativity is essential reading for anyone working in ethics, metaethics, or the philosophy of language, and for any reader who wants to understand the structure of the evaluative and directive thinking that pervades every corner of daily life.