normative

Normative is an adjective used to describe judgments, statements, or theories that prescribe how things ought to be, rather than how they actually are. Normative claims express values, duties, or norms and are evaluative in nature. By contrast, descriptive or positive claims attempt to describe the world as it is without prescribing a course of action.

In philosophy, normative ethics asks what people ought to do and why, seeking to justify moral duties and evaluate actions or policies. This area is distinguished from meta-ethics, which examines the status of moral judgments, and from descriptive ethics, which surveys what people believe or do. A classic issue is the is-ought problem identified by David Hume, the difficulty of deducing normative conclusions from descriptive premises. Influential approaches include Kantian deontology, consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism, and virtue ethics.

Normative analysis also appears in law, political theory, and economics. Normative legal theory evaluates how laws ought to be structured to promote justice or rights. In economics, normative statements advocate specific policies or outcomes (as opposed to positive economics, which describes what would happen under certain conditions). In social sciences and education, normative perspectives address standards, norms, and prescriptions for behavior or practice.

In language and culture, normative or prescriptive approaches prescribe correct usage or conduct according to established norms, as opposed to descriptive accounts of how language or social behavior is actually used. Etymology traces normative to Latin norma, meaning a rule or standard.