Emanuele Caminada Barbara Malvestiti

Universität zu Köln Università degli Studi di Milano

[email protected] [email protected]

Norms, Values, Society:

A Brief Phenomenological
Overview

abstract

In our paper we introduce three main areas of social ontology that correspond with the
sections structuring the current issue of “Phenomenology and Mind”: non-institutional
life, institutional life and ethical-political life. We argue three points about these areas,
which are represented in the accounts published in this issue: levels of social life and
reality; normative levels of life and reality; hierarchical levels of life and reality. Finally,
we introduce two interviews, to which the last special section of the issue is devoted.
The interviews were conducted by the editors with Martha Craven Nussbaum and by
Valentina Bambini, Cristiano Chesi and Andrea Moro with Noam Chomsky.

keywords

Non-institutional life, institutional life, ethical-political life, norms, values

 Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

1. The current issue (vol. 3) of “Phenomenology and Mind” deals with social
Our Purposes facts. Social facts include many different subjects: persons, groups, norms,
values, political systems, economical powers, etc., that are the domain of
different theoretical and practical disciplines, such as social and developmental
psychologies, empirical sociologies (both quantitative and qualitative), political
sciences, legal theories, ethics, economics, etc.

What exactly are phenomenological and ontological approaches to these subjects?

Social facts have historically been the subject of several phenomenological

studies: in the early German movement (Max Scheler, Adolph Reinach, Edith Stein,
Alexander von Hildebrand, Nicolai Hartmann, Gerda Walther, Theodor Litt, Herbert
Spiegelberg, Felix Kaufmann); and its development in Europe (in Spain José Ortega
y Gasset; in France Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas,
Paul Ricoeur; in Italy Norberto Bobbio, Enzo Paci; in Germany Bernard Waldenfels;
in Brasil Antônio Luís Machado Neto); and in the United States (Alfred Schutz, Peter
Ludwig Berger, Thomas Luckmann). Phenomenological sociology is now recognized
as a school of its own in contemporary social sciences.

On the other hand, ontological approaches to social facts declined

in popularity not only in postmodernist culture, but also within
phenomenological sociology itself, since one of its most famous pioneers,
Schutz, disregarded the ontological research of the early phenomenological
movement because of their static essentialism: i.e., the belief in universal
and constant structures of social entities independent of the dynamics
of the concrete subjectivities of the life-word. Contemporary social and
cultural studies presuppose the anti-essentialist refusal of constant
features, for example, in the domain of group structures, sex orientation
and gender, individual and collective identities, normality and pathologies1.

1 Some phenomenologists (like Scheler) spoke about individual essences, such as the essence
of a nations or a person, going far beyond the ontological assessment that personhood implies
absolute individuality (haecceitas). His pretension to have direct access to the metaphysical obscure
individualities of Germany, Britain, or Europe cast a cloud over his bright ontology of the individual
person, justifying more skeptical approaches in cultural studies and Schutz’s mistrust of ontology.
Husserl’s methodological distinction (finally edited in Hua XL) between ontology and the essence
of individuals, however, stressing that eidetic, the ontological study of essences (greek ‘eidos’, ‘eide’),
deals with classes and not with individuals, as well as his distinction between ontological eidetics and
monadological metaphysics could reset long-lasting prejudices about the role of ontologies in cultural
and social sciences.
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Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

Still, in the last few decades, apart from these influential debates, analytical
philosophers began to struggle with the (formal) nature of social facts,
looking for their constitutive features, their invariants, and their properties
and trying to systematize the results of these meticulous analyses into a
particular branch of general metaphysics: social ontology. In doing so they
found unexpected echoes among scholars working on and furthering the
phenomenological projects, through the pioneering work of the “Seminar
for Austro-German-Philosophy” and the reassessment of “realistic
phenomenology” (especially Kevin Mulligan and Barry Smith).

In the last three years, the Research Center in Phenomenology and Sciences
of the Person has invited several scholars working in this field to discuss
their current research. The discussions were held in the lecture halls of
the San Raffaele University (Milan), and on the virtual platform of this
research laboratory (www.phenomenologylab.eu). The main goal of the
lab is to give voice to an authentic phenomenological spirit in both its
analytic (in the sense of conceptual clarity and of the attention for formal
logic and ontology) and synthetic (in the sense of openness to the best
of the philosophical traditions, including the contemporary intellectual
debates and the material or regional ontologies). The best contributions
on social ontology that preceded and followed the Spring School 2011, and
the International Conference Making the Social World, devoted to John R.
Searle’s Making the Social World. The Structure of Human Civilization (2010), are
collected in this issue of the journal under the title “Norms, Values, Society:
Phenomenological and Ontological Approaches”.

We speak about phenomenological and ontological approaches both in the

disjunctive and conjunctive sense, because this issue testifies to ontological
approaches within phenomenological and other different philosophical
frameworks (e.g. Plural Subject Theory, Speech Act Theory, Constitutive
Rules Theory, Theory of Justice) and because, the contemporary dialogue
between phenomenology and social ontology occurs mainly on genuine
ontological levels, although phenomenological approaches to social facts do
not only consist in phenomenological ontology.

Phenomenological approaches to social facts can in fact be divided into three

main areas (Nam-Im-Lee 2006): first, empirical phenomenological sociology,
concerned with the qualitative description of social facts in the first and
second person perspectives (e.g. Berger’s Sociology of Religion or Harold
Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology); second, ontological phenomenological

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Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

sociology as a kind of regional ontology dealing with the essential structures

of social realities (Reinach, Stein, Walther, Hartmann, Spiegelberg, Kaufmann,
Bobbio); and third, “transcendental” or constitutive phenomenological
sociology, which finally aims to clarify the condition of the possibility of social
reality and its structures2.

The main “axiom” of all these branches of phenomenological sociology

is that social facts are products of intentionalities, said by Husserl to be
constituted in lived experience, and by Searle to be mind-dependent.
This general assumption is nowadays widely shared in the contemporary
ontological debate (although not in wider cultural and social studies), with
particular attention to the constitutive role of collective intentionality and
its different modes.

The working hypothesis of our Lab was that the individual person is the last
bearer of properties in the ontological region of the social. She is individuated
in her intentional positions and attitudes (both theoretical, axiological
and practical) toward her social environment, which is necessary, but not a
sufficient condition for her concrete personal development. On one hand, she
relies on her natural, biological and psychological faculties, which, together
with her material and social environment, give her the possibility to develop
her individual personality in early childhood socialization. On the other hand,
the mature and autonomous flourishing of her being-person requires the free
capability to emerge from the level of her social environment through the
execution of spontaneous and rational acts, both shaping her individuality
as well as offering her personal contribution to social and institutional
life. Personhood, therefore, is at the same time rooted in and transcending
sociality. Moreover, the individual person, as the last bearer in the region
of social ontology, does not coincide with her natural and psychological
support, although she is founded on it. As highlighted by Norberto Bobbio
(1948), a human being is definable by three traits, which coincide with its
progressive levels of individuation: human being as natural being or biological
individual, human being as social being or socius, human being as personal

2 Nam In-Lee (2006) claims, that we don’t have any phenomenological attempts of
transcendental sociology. Maybe Schutz and his heirs Berger and Luckmann (Berger and
Luckmann 1966, Schutz and Luckmann 1975/1984) could be considered as transcendental
sociologists, although they didn’t. Yet since they looked for invariant but dynamic structures
of the life-world, and Husserl considered the description of these the phenomenological way to
transcendental philosophy, as the research on the condition for the possibility for something
(in our case, social facts), we can consider them in these frame. Thereby Berger and Luckmann’s
metaphysical sympathies for constructionism could be revisited within Husserl’s approach to the
realism and constructivism debate.

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 Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

being or person. Curiously, positive law has historically recognized (although

not everywhere) the correlative rights in the opposite order: firstly, civil and
political rights; then social and economic rights; and finally, contemporary
ecological rights as well as biological or psychological or even cultural self-
determination rights , as Jeanne Hersch stressed (1990).

Further, individual persons are not the only objects of the ontological
region of the social, which is inhabited also by organizations consisting
of a plurality of persons (such as clubs, states, churches, universities…),
immaterial objects (such as promises, marriages, juridical persons, titles,
…), and social subjects (such as documents, money, monuments and meeting
halls for clubs, parliaments and governments, churches and universities),
whose material founders cannot explain their irreducible social meaning,
although the constitution of social objects is limited by materiality (Roversi
2012, Terravecchia 2012). Hartmann (1933) defined these three domains
as the domain of the person or subjective mind (Person bzw. subjektiver
Geist); the domain of the common mind or objective mind (Gemeingeist bzw.
objektiver Geist); and the domain of the cultural objects or objectified mind
(Kulturwerke bzw. objektivierter Geist).

2. Three main topics emerge from the accounts presented here. They
Three Topics correspond to three main areas of social reality:

1. Non-institutional life
2. Institutional life
3. Ethical-political life

Therefore, the issue is structured in three sections corresponding to these

areas. We will argue for three points about the aforementioned areas, which
are supposed to be shared by the accounts presented in this issue:

(i) They are levels of social life and reality

(ii) They are normative levels of life and reality
(iii) They are hierarchical levels of life and reality

Let us present the main features of each point.

2.1 The contemporary ontological debate presupposes a sharp distinction

Social Life vs. between natural and social facts. Phenomenological ontologies recognized
Natural Life in nature and “social mind” (Gemeingeist) two cardinal domain of reality. The

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 Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

general ontological and metaphysical question about the relation between

these two domains transcends the special ontological topic of the present
issue. Some scholars, like Searle, embrace naturalism for both domains,
others see in naturalism an approach that is consistent only with the
domain of nature. Phenomenology is more sympathetic to the relativization
of the universal claim of naturalism. Husserl explored nature and mind as
different forms of reality given to corresponding attitudes, the naturalistic
and the personalistic (Hua IV). Finally, he viewed both attitudes as rooted
in the concrete (and social) life-world. Thus, his ontology sees a direct
foundation between natural and social life, while the objects of natural
sciences (such as atoms, waves, energies, neurons, dna-informations,
etc.) have to be clarified in the scientific process that led from every-day
experience to the conceivability of these objects (Hua VI).

Without taking a position on these different approaches, we stress the

following shared conviction of both transcendental phenomenology, as well
as phenomenological and contemporary ontologies: that non-institutional
life, institutional life, and ethical-political life are levels of social life. Social
life is characterized by two cardinal features, which distinguishes it from
both natural life, and from non-social intentional life:

1. In contrast to natural life, social life needs the intentionality of

individuals in order to exist. It is mind-dependent.
2. In contrast to non-social intentional life, social life needs,
in order to exist, the intentionality of a plurality at least of two
individuals3. It is plural-minds-dependent.

The question of whether social ontology should admit intentional but not
social forms of life is to be left open4.

2.2 Non-institutional life, institutional life, ethical-political life are not only
Social Life as a different areas of social life, they are also normative levels of life. What we
Normative Level mean is that social reality as such is a normative dimension of life.
of Life
In particular, we make two claims:

3 As Francesca De Vecchi says, social entities do not depend on solitary intentionality; they
involve “heterotropic intentionality” (De Vecchi 2012, pp. 17-18).
4 Gilbert claims for such a position, Williams addresses in the present issue his criticism to
her opinion.

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 Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
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1. Social reality has its own eidetic laws, which differ from the
causal laws of nature and the motivational structures of mere
individual minds (if they exist).
2. Social reality is characterized by different types of normativity,
which vary depending on the level of social life we meet5.

2.3 Non-institutional life, institutional life, and ethical-political life are not
Hierarchical Levels only levels of social life, nor are they only normative levels of life. They
of Social Life are also hierarchical levels of life: non-institutional life, institutional life,
and ethical-political life are levels of social life in ascending order of
complexity. This implies that social-ontology has also to answer the formal-
ontological question about the type of relation among its components.
In the contemporary debate, different solutions have been proposed
to formalize the inner hierarchy of social reality (e.g. Supervenience
Theory, Constitution Theory, Emergentism). We distinguish at least three
hierarchical domains of social life: non-institutional, institutional life and
ethical-political life.

Non-institutional life is the basic level of social life. It is the domain of social
life precedent or besides its institutional normation. The first section of this
issue is devoted to the topic of non-institutional life.

Institutional life is the level of social life that is characterized by the

phenomenon of norm stricto sensu: it is the social life in the typical
institutional forms. The second section of this issue is devoted to the topic of
institutional life.

Ethical-political life is the level of social life that implies the translation of
values and duties in political and juridical systems. It represents, in some
sense, the apex of the phenomenon of normativity. It is concerned with
the level of both social and institutional life regarded in their ontological,
deontic and axiological components. Meta-ethical and political topics are
discussed in the third section.

3.1 The first section presents contributions exploring the social world besides
First Topic: its institutional types, focusing on early imitation (Zhok), the embodied
Non-Institutional constitution of normality (Spina), the relations between individual persons and
Life personal groups (Ssonko, Williams), and the nature of cultural objects (Salice).

5 See Zaibert&Smith (2007).

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Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
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Zhok attempts in A Phenomenological Discussion on Early Imitation to apply

Husserl’s phenomenological approach to early imitation, makes an
interesting comparison with empirical researches in developmental
psychology (especially by Meltzoff), and questions their theoretical
premises concerning the nature of the mind. Finally, he sketches
a phenomenological theory about embodied access to feelings and
expressions, stressing the relevance of rhythmic structures of experience
for the attunement of interpersonal fields that enable the first steps of
socialization.

Spina’s paper Norm and Normatility. Starting from Merleau-Ponty shows the
conceptual tension and ambiguity of Merleau-Ponty’s description of
normality and norm by analysing his phenomenology of perception and
facing the task of abnormality.

Kisolo-Ssonko and Williams both work against the background of Gilbert’s

Plural Subjects Theory6. Kisolo-Ssonko deals with the social-ontological
relevance of love. Following Westlund’s account, he claims in Love, Plural Subjects
and Normative Constraints that lovers become a plural subject. But if Westlund
refuses Gilbert’s theory of a direct normative constraint claiming that love
liaisons are much more flexible, Kisolo-Ssonko argues against this rejection,
still claiming for a revision in Gilbert’s account, and suggests the distinction of
various levels of possible identification of the lovers with the plural subject they
form.

In Against Individualism in Plural Subject Theory Williams tests the plausibility

of Gilbert’s assumption that non-social individuals can autonomously form a
plural subject by applying Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory. He shows
that communication already presupposes some forms of communality among
the players. Therefore, he concludes that Plural Subject Theory needs the
notion of an already socialized individual as its primary methodological unity,
rather than the atomic individual. This conclusion implies that Gilbert’s Plural
Subject Theory can be maintained as a sub-regional description of social-
ontological group phenomena, but that we need a more comprehensive theory
in order to describe socialization itself, since only socialized persons can join
in the form of plural subjects.

6 Also in phenomenology we find descriptions of superindividual subjects or plural subjects:

Scheler’s term Gesamtperson (Scheler 1913; 1916), Stein’s überindividuelle Persönlichkeit (1922), and
Husserl’s Personalität höher Ordnung (Hua XIV).

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 Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

Salice draws in Social Ontology and Immanent Realism the distinction

between social and cultural facts, claiming that, while the former are
culturally universal, the latter are individuated in singular cultures.
Salice suggests that cultural objects, being context-dependent, have to
be seen as being “immanent objects” of collective beliefs of the members
of the contextual culture. Thus, his contribution, after a historical
confrontation with Brentano’s position, gives insight into his current
work on a theory of cultural entities in the framework of what he calls
a “pseudo-Brentanian immanent realism”. Paying particular attention
to Searle’s theory of social construction, he tries to show its limits
regarding this particular form of cultural objects, and to sketch a way
to explain these phenomena.

3.2 The second topic, “Institutional Life”, is concerned with the level of social
Second Topic: life characterized by the phenomenon of norms or rules stricto sensu.
Institutional Life
Although the distinction between the institutional level of social life and
the non-institutional level of social life is not always adequately pointed out
in the literature, we consider it very important.

According to us, the distinction between the institutional level of social life and the
non-institutional level of social life is illuminated by the fundamental distinction
between nomic regularity and anomic regularity, pointed out by Amedeo G. Conte (2004,
2011)7. Anomic regularity is the regularity of actions which are performed regularly,
but without a rule – anomic regularity is a regularity without rules – nomic regularity
is the regularity of the actions which are performed regularly with a rule – nomic
regularity is a rule-related regularity.

While the non-institutional level of social life is characterized by anomic

regularity, the institutional level of social life is characterized by nomic
regularity. Typical examples of anomic regularity are iterative imitation acts
such as what happens in early imitation; cooperative actions characterized
by collective intentionality but not by status functions assignment (e.g. in
tribal hunting or in a tribe’s use of a boundary wall, Searle 1995); uses and
customs. These last ones have social normative powers, but they are not
explicitly governed by rules: some families use to have a particular dinner on
7 Conte highlights three forms of nomic regularity – nomonomic regularity; nomophoric regularity;
nomotropic regularity – and he distinguishes them from anomic or nomological regularity. Nomonomic
regularity is the regularity of actions which are performed for the sake of a rule. Nomophoric
regularity is the regularity of the actions which are performed according to a rule. Nomotropic
regularity is the regularity of the actions which are performed as a function of a rule.

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Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
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a particular day, partners use to devote themselves particular moments of the

day. Uses and customs have their own anomic normativity, since they involve
implicit commitments, which can be expressed in the form “we are used to
A” or “A is normal”z. Therefore it is important to distinguish in the domain of
normativity between normality (anomic) and norms (nomic). If not normal
behaviors happen, it could be that a rule is imposed: regularities become
rules. For example if kids do not help to clean after dinner (given the case they
did it normally in ideal “innocent” times), parents could institutionalize the
use (maybe through sanctions or premia).

On the opposite side, typical examples of nomic regularities are the habit of a
community to pray for the sake of a rule; the habit of a person to remove the cap
entering the church because of the fear of social blame or the habit of a person
to observe traffic rules because of the fear of police sanctions (to perform
action according to a rule)8; the habit of the cheat to cheat as a function of a rule
– a rule of a game – to which he does not conform his behavior, etc.9.

The fact that non-institutional level of social life is characterized by anomic

regularity does not therefore imply the absence of normativity. As much
as they share normativity, both non-institutional levels of social life and
institutional levels of life have deontic powers: they both imply duties, claims,
and commitments. But while non-institutional duties are motivated by
values and commitments, institutional ones are primarily ruled by norms.

According to Searle’s seminal insights, institutional life is characterized by

constitutive rules and status functions, while non-institutional social life
is not. Let us clarify this distinction. The institutional level of social life
contemplates both constitutive rules and status function. Constitutive rules
are those rules which create the possibility of the entity they rules (Searle
1969). For example, the rules of chess or rules which regulate Parliamentary

8 Distinction between nomonomic regularity and nomophoric regularity is instantiated

by Kantian distinction between morality and legality: while nomonomic regularity is the
regularity of actions which are performed for the “goodness” of the rule itself (for the sake of a
rule), nomophoric regularity is the regularity of the actions which are performed not necessarily
for the goodness of the rule (according to a rule). As highlighted by Amedeo G. Conte, while “for
the sake of a rule” translates the Kantian “um des Gesetzes Willen”, reformulated by Conte as “um
einer Regel Willen”, “according to a rule” translates the Kantian “gemäss dem Gesetze”, reformulated by
Conte as “gemäss einer Regel”.
9 While non-institutional level of social life is a case of anomic regularity – it would be cases
of anomic regularity that are not examples of social life, such as the habit of a person to wash the
teeth before sleeping – institutional level of social life exhausts the cases that are characterized
by nomic regularity.

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Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
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acts are those rules without which the game of chess or Parliamentary
acts would not exist. They differ from regulative rules, which simply rule
behaviors pre-existing to them, such as the rule that prohibits smoking.
According to Searle, social entities are essentially status functions, i.e.
entities created by constitutive rules or, according to some revisions of his
theory, by Status Function Declarations (Searle 2010).

Now, the existence of institutional facts, such as “the President of United

States”, the “owner of a property in Berkeley”, “the 20 Euro note” depends
on constitutive rules and Status Function Declarations. On the contrary,
the existence of social facts, such as love, friendship, solidarity phenomena
and so on, seems not to depend on constitutive rules and Status Function
Declarations. It sounds very strange to argue for the existence of rules in
absence of which love, friendship, solidarity phenomena and so on, do not
exist. These phenomena seem to be more spontaneous than institutional
ones. Similarly, it seems difficult to consider such phenomena as Status
Functions: lovers or friends are supposed to be for each other something
different from mere Status Function.

The distinction between constitutive rules and regulative rules gave rise to a
great deal of research on the topics of constitutive rules, such as, in Italy,
those of Gaetano Carcaterra and those of Amedeo G. Conte’s School10, which
distinguished between eidetic constitutive rules and anankastic constitutive rules
(Conte 2007). While eidetic-constitutive rules are a necessary condition for
their object, anankastic-constitutive rules impose a necessary condition for
their object. Eidetic-constitutive rules create the type of their object, such as
the type of the game “chess” and its praxems (example of rule: “one cannot
castle when the king is under the check”); anankastic-constitutive rules
determine the tokens of pre-existing types, such as the tokens of the type
“wills” (example of rule: “wills ought to be signed by the Testator” (Conte
2001, 73).

While eidetic-constitutive rules are context-independent, anankastic-

constitutive rules are context-dependent. Eidetic-constitutive are typical of
games, anankastic-constitutive rules are typical of juridical systems.

10 The distinction between regulative rules and constitutive rules (Searle 1969) have an important
precursor in the Polish philosopher Czesław Znamierowski’ s distinction between “coercive
norms” (normy koercytywne) and “constructive norms” (normy konstrukcyjne). See Znamierowski
(1924).

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Nevertheless, there is a level of human juridical systems at which context-

independent rules are expected to be recognized. It is the level of common
values. At this level neither constitutive rules nor regulative rules are
enough to define human juridical system: an inquiry into values is open.

The second section of this issue, “Institutional Life”, regards the question of
what essentially characterizes institutional entities. Differently from the previous
section, which primarily involves research on modalities of the constitution
of non-institutional life, the present section does not correspondently involve
research on modalities of the constitution of institutional life. Contributions
of this section welcome institutional reality as already constituted and focus
on what essentially characterizes it.

We would like to mention each contribution, which points out very relevant
aspects about institutional reality, as well as about the phenomenon of
constitutive rules. Some of them are also critical of the classical paradigm of
constitutive rules and of Searle’s institutional reality account.

Lorenzo Passerini’s Institutional Ontology as an Ontology of Type formulates the

hypothesis that the ontology of institutional phenomena is primarily an
ontology of types, while the ontology of natural phenomena is primarily an
ontology of tokens. In detail, the author shows four essential characteristics of
institutional phenomena.

Wojciech Żełaniec’s On the Constitutive Force of Regulative Rules argues for

the constitutive force of regulative rules, although he maintains that they
remain a genus of their own. The author points out four main reasons in
virtue of which regulative rules have a constitutive import; one of these is
that regulative rules define new forms of behavior, the behavior compliant
with them. The behavior is not new in itself, but it is new depending on what
the motives are: abstaining from smoking since we have no wish to smoke is
not “doing the same thing” whether we acts out of respect for the law.

Guglielmo Feis and Umberto Sconfienza’s paper Challenging the Constitutive

Rules Inviolability Dogma tries to challenge the dogma of the inviolability of
constitutive rules. The authors develop an interesting parametrical approach
to constitutive rules, according to which it is possible to violate a constitutive
rule. Finally, they also introduce two different ways of exiting a game.

Emanuele Bottazzi and Roberta Ferrario’s paper Appearance Counting as

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Reality? Some Considerations on Stability and Unpredictability in Social Institutions

argues for a revision of Searle concept of objectivity. According to their view
objectivity has a crucial role in institutional systems as a requirement, but
objectivity is not a necessary condition for them to be institutional systems.

Finally, Gaetano Albergo’s Does Ontogenesis of Social Ontology Start with

Pretence? considers the case of pretend play. The author claims that, like
the other games, pretend play depends on status function assignment and
constitutive rules. Nevertheless, in order to consider the new scenario as
a possible world and to abandon the natural necessity implicit both in the
stipulation and in successive possible implications, we should admit that
rules of pretend-inference have a robustly objective status.

The third topic, “ethical-political life”, concerns the level of translation of

values and rules in political and juridical systems. It represents the apex of
the phenomenon of normativity. In what sense?

3.3 Following Husserl’s masterful universal-ontological project values and

Third topic: norms are integral parts of both formal and material ontologies. Formal
Ethical-Political logic and ontology are therefore to be integrated by formal ethic and formal
Life deontics (see Hua XXX, Mulligan 2004). Material ontologies should be
further integrated by corresponding material ethics (Scheler, Hartmann)
and by the desideratum of scientific policies or (Praktik, see Hua XXX).
Regarding the region of social ontology research a lot is still to be done on
the systematization of its peculiar substrates, relations, wholes and parts
and on their respective axiological and deontic characters.

Values are not a specific object of social ontology. Other regional ontologies
show values: unorganic material and natural life, for example, can carry
own values. Every realm of reality can be a bearer of values. Concerning
the nature of values, phenomenology stands within metaethics for a
realistic, objectivistic and cognitivistic position. There are plausible
phenomenological reasons to argue for an enlargement of the rationality
sphere to emotional life, which provides the possibility of an ethics of
values, integrating the Kantian formal rational view of ethics (see Scheler
1913-1916, Hartmann 1925). Although values, as such, are not specific to
social ontology, to this region correspond specific regional values, such as
sincerity, fidelity, fairness, human dignity, etc. and their corresponding
normative features, such as duties, commitments, claims. Furthermore,
specific values emerge at the level of institutional life: institutional life

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Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

coincides with the social life step in which the constitution of norms or
rules – obligations, duties, rights, permissions, prohibitions, authorizations,
licenses, etc., is given. Norms are, in opposition to values, specific social
ontological objects. The constitution of norms could be given without any
relation to an order of values, like the rules of a game: norms are ideally
independent from values, as Hume teaches. Otherwise, peculiar duties
correspond to every value, since the nature of values founds affordances in
the form of “to-be-ought”, and therefore motivates and justifies actions. If
norms are independent from values, duties are not.

Nevertheless, there is a level of social reality in which the inquiry into

the truth of norms, their relation to duties stands out: it is the level of life
together, i.e. the ethical-political level, which demands the translation of
values and claims into norms. It is the level of life in which the fundamental
principles of our Constitutions, the political debates about the reasons for
both regulative and constitutive rules are involved. If we are willing to
consider values not as what enjoys critical immunity, but as what is liable
to discussion and review, we can rely on a possible inquiry into the truth of
norms11. In this sense, another big task is open for social ontology: not only
the study of relation between values and duties, but also the study of relation
between values and norms. Two main research areas for social ontology stand
out: “axiology”, which contemplates the study of values and their grounds –
“what make good things good” – (Spiegelberg 1947); and “praktology”, which
contemplates not only duties and claims, but also rights (Spiegelberg 1933). In
this view, rights are conceived as the institutionalized recognition of claims,
which are then motivated by values (Spiegelberg 1939).

The contributions of this section have the merit to reconstruct the classical
paradigm of rationalism, in ethics and politics, and to criticize or integrate it,
providing interesting directions of research, worth of developments.

Massimo Reichlin’s The Neosentimentalist Argument against Moral Rationalism:

Some Critical Observations deals with the clarification of neosentimentalist
approaches to metaethics, according to which our moral judgments are the
expression of our sentiments and affective reactions, without any intentional
and cognitive character. After having illustrated a sophisticated formulation
of the neosentimentalism, which make it possible to overcome weaknesses of

11 The opposite point of view is argued by Max Weber, who claims that ethical-normative
beliefs have the status of ultimate value axioms (letzte Wertaxiome), which enjoy critical
immunity and so they are not liable to discussion. See Weber (1917) and see Fittipaldi (2003, 263).

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 Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

a naive formulation of neosentimentalism, the author still suggests that such a

formulation weakens neosentimentalism attacks against moral rationalism. Then
the author outlines a personal proposal which tries to integrate rationalistic and
sentimentalist approaches, leading to a cognitivistic approach to ethics.

Christian Blum’s Determining the Common Good: a (Re-)Constructive Critique of

the Proceduralist Paradigm reconstructs the classical proceduralistic paradigm
in politics and provides a revision of the paradigm. Arguing that traditional
proceduralism cannot explain the citizens’ possibility to be in error about
the common good, the author proposes to integrate democratic procedural
criteria with specific substantive and objective standards of adequacy that
should be determined by experts.

Finally, Roberta Sala’s Reasonable Values and the Value of Reasonableness.

Reflections on John Rawls’ Political Liberalism criticizes Rawls’ proceduralistic
account of reasonableness, since it assigns to the “reasonable” only a place
in the political debate, while the “unreasonable” are expected to become
reasonable or to be paid control. The author maintains that, in order to
realistically deal with pluralism, political liberalism should open public
debate to those persons who are not “reasonable” – they offer reasons that
are neither public nor shared by other reasonable citizens – but who do not
represent a danger for the just society.

Given the above phenomenological account on the rationality of norms, since

they are understood as liable to be related or not related to truth (related or
not related to true or false statements about values), it seems to us that Rawls’
Theory of Reasonability risks cutting the source of the rationality of the
norms, their possible relation to truth. Doing this, his position could be liable
to become in practice tyrannical in the exclusion of non-reasonable opinions
(according to which criteria?) and in theory relativistic, denying to the plurality
of public opinions the dignity of their pretension to be true. Otherwise, his
move could be understood as the request to public actors to switch from the
modality of certainty in the pretention of truth, to the modality of plausibility,
from rationality to reasonability, in order to avoid fundamentalisms in public
debates. Sala pleads for paying attention also to the opinions that refuse this
pragmatic attitude, motivated by liberal values to not exclude, but to include
non-liberal opinions in the public debate.

4 Finally, we are very happy to present in the last, special section of the
Interviews current issue two interviews that were conducted by the editors with

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 Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

4.1 Martha Craven Nussbaum and by Valentina Bambini, Cristiano Chesi and
Martha Nussbaum Andrea Moro with Noam Chomsky.
on Political
Emotions In her interview, Nussbaum gives us some insight into her current research
project, that will be published as “Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for
Justice” by Harvard University Press in 2013. Moving to her liberal account,
she stresses the role of emotions and liberal arts in the educations of the
citizens of a decent liberal society. Rationality and reasonability are not
enough in her account, since every person has to learn to master her passions
and to educate her sensitivity in order to have cognitive access to social
values. This project is linked with the general Nussbaum’s attempt to discern
human capabilities in order to formulate the fundamental constitutional
principles, that are always liable to be reviewed and improved. Here the role
of emotions and liberal arts stands out: they refine human sensitivity and
allow us to have cognitive access to renewable interests and claims, playing a
role in their recognition through rights, in the limits of what is ought by each
to everyone. The interview was held in Cologne, at the time of her Albertus
Magnus Lectures 2012 (June 19th-21st). For this opportunity, we would like to
thank the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne (http://artes.phil-
fak.uni-koeln.de/), which is an international partner of our Research Centre
PERSONA.

4.2 In his seminar conversation Chomsky starts from the mathematical

Noam Chomsky properties of language and discusses theoretical and epistemological
on the Biological consequences of the research on the biological foundation of language.
Foundation of He also poses new questions that such rational inquiry opens up and that
Language can possibly get an answer in a future. The seminar was held in Pavia, on
occasion of Chomsky’s visit to the Institute of Advanced Study (IUSS) on
September 15th, 2012, and was based on questions proposed by graduate and
undergraduate students and reorganized by the staff of the IUSS Center
for Neurolinguistics and Theoretical Syntax (NeTS). We thank for this the
NeTS and the IUSS (http://www.nets.iusspavia.it/), and we welcome them as
scientific partner of our Research Centre PERSONA.

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Norms, Values, Society: A Brief Phenomenological Overview
E. caminada Universität zu Köln, b. malvestiti Università degli Studi di Milano

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