I was out at Stanford a couple of weeks ago, giving a talk (about ideology) in the philosophy department. I corresponded a bit afterwards with philosopher Jorah Dannenberg, who had asked me a good question at the workshop. In the course of our correspondence, he pointed me to his paper on the ubiquity of "normativity" talk in philosophy, and his skepticism about it, which is coming out in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. Here's a taste:
Many philosophers thinking about morality evidently do believe this recent turn toward talking in terms of ‘normativity’ constitutes real
progress. My aim is to encourage much more skepticism and circumspection concerning whether this is so, particularly as compared to the optimism right now being enforced throughout our profession.I really do mean enforced. Indeed, I invite you to think in a more “political” register while reading this paper, than you are perhaps accustomed to when reading a piece of contemporary analytic philosophy. For what is ultimately at stake in the question about how we choose to use the term ‘normativity’ is, I think, how power is wielded within our discipline: the complex ways it is exercised and justified, both within and across the various branches and subfields of academic philosophy, as these are now identified and defined. Ideas about ‘normativity’ and its importance or relevance in thinking about morality, when operationalized within the discipline, becomes claims to various forms of intra-disciplinary authority, made on behalf of those studying or debating ‘normativity’. Their work-product, it is supposed, is of great value or import for the rest of us.
The sociology (or politics, if you prefer) of the discipline is, alas, far more relevant to explaining the content of what gets discussed than philosophers like to admit. I am glad to see Professor Dannenberg calling attention to this in one important context.
