normatiivisuus

Normatiivisuus, or normativity, is the quality or status of being governed by norms, standards, or rules that prescribe how things ought to be or are expected to be. It is often contrasted with descriptive accounts that merely describe how things are. The term is used across disciplines such as philosophy, law, political theory, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and economics to analyze what counts as legitimate, appropriate, or valuable within a given domain.

In philosophy, normativity distinguishes prescriptive or evaluative claims from factual descriptions. Normative statements express oughts, shoulds, or reasons for action and belief. They raise questions about justification, moral obligation, rationality, and value. The is–ought distinction, famously discussed by David Hume, highlights the challenge of deriving normative conclusions from purely descriptive premises. Kantian, utilitarian, virtue-ethical, and other ethical theories offer different bases for normative guidance.

Other major areas include epistemic normativity (rules governing rational belief and justification), legal normativity (laws and institutions prescribing conduct), social normativity (shared expectations and conventions), and linguistic normativity (prescriptive rules for language use). Aesthetic normativity concerns judgments about beauty or artistic value, while normative economics evaluates policies and outcomes according to value-laden criteria.

Ongoing debates address the objectivity or constructivism of norms, the naturalistic fallacy, and how norms relate to power, culture, and context. Normativity remains central to understanding how standards shape reasoning, behavior, institutions, and social life.