Facts & Norms

What role should (non-normative) facts such as people's confined generosity and scarcity of resources play in the normative theorising of political philosophers? The chapters in this book investigate different aspects of this broad question.
Political philosophers are often silent on questions of what types of facts are relevant, if any, for normative theory, and what methodological assumptions about agency and behaviour need to be made, if any such assumptions are necessary. However, due to recent debates among and between idealists, non-idealists and realists in political theory, the issue about the relation between facts and norms in political philosophy/theory is beginning to attract greater attention from political theorists/philosophers.
The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Theresa Scavenius, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Planning, University of Aalborg, Copenhagen, Denmark. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, PhD, Professor, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Introduction Theresa Scavenius and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen 1. Fact-sensitive political theory Theresa Scavenius 2. Towards a democracy-centred ethics Annabelle Lever 3. Facts, norms, and dignity Pablo Gilabert 4. Kant and the critique of the ethics-first approach to politics Christian F. Rostbøll 5. What Mr. Spock told the earthlings: the aims of political philosophy, action-guidingness and fact-dependency Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen 6. The role of interpretation of existing practice in normative political argument Sune Lægaard 7. How practices do not matter Eva Erman and Niklas Möller