Few notions are more intricate and difficult to operationalise than that of “normativity”. In the collection of essays entitled Normativity and Power: Analyzing Social Orders of Justification, the leading philosopher Rainer Forst makes a seminal contribution to the academic debate on the subject by critically hinging normativity on the working logic of rational justificatory practices. In particular, starting from the premise that “human beings [are] justifying beings” (21; emphasis in original), Forst understands normativity as what results from practical reason's ability to bind us through its explanatory, and ultimately convincing, power.
To understand Forst's view, we ought to take a step back and appreciate what recent phenomenological accounts have made clear—namely, that normativity inevitably involves an act of measurement based on some accepted meaningful standards (S Crowell, Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger (2017) 2). In this sense, meaning is the core of normativity: “the making sense relation is the basic normative relation”, as recently observed by David Owens (Shaping the Normative Landscape (2012) 12; emphasis in original).
In Forst's case, the normative standard through which power operates is provided by practical, justifying reasons, of which the book offers a “critique” (24) in the form of a “critique of relations of justification” (17; emphasis in original). The author embarks upon this delicate enterprise in the full spirit of the Frankfurt School, to whom he belongs (he was a student of Jürgen Habermas). The reader should, however, be warned that this is by no means an easy book. Its difficulty is not only due to the fact that the author delves into central and pervasive themes spanning from the philosophical to the sociological, political, economic, and legal realms but also, that both the overall argument and writing style require some familiarity with the technicalities which characterise – what has come to be known as – the “German Philosophy” of the Frankfurt circle (as opposed to the “French Theory” and “Italian Theory” on which see R Esposito, A Philosophy for Europe: From the Outside, trans Z Hanafi [2016] (2018)).
Among these technicalities, there stands the strategic use that Forst makes of reason throughout his analysis. Indeed, practical reason is not only the target of Forst's account but also the very device he deploys to support his claims. “Critical theory”, we read at the very beginning of...
