Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts

In this chapter, I explore Husserl’s theory of specifically normative concepts (or “thin normative concepts,” in contemporary idiom) as presented in his lectures on ethics (1920/1924). In the first section, I examine Husserl’s account of normative judgment in the Prolegomena. I argue that it is insufficient because it does not appreciate the irreducibility of normative to non-normative concepts. In the second section, I turn to Husserl’s later account of normative concepts in his lectures on ethics and explicate the meaning and significance of his claim that such concepts refer to posita (Sätze) rather than ordinary objects. I also explain how, on Husserl’s account, the normative stance that makes specifically normative concepts possible can be extended to ordinary objects and acts of consciousness. I conclude with some remarks about the significance of Husserl’s analysis for metanormative theory