Responsibility, Respect, and Justice: Skepticism about Metanorms

Abstract

Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen present a compelling argument for a responsibility-based account of liberal politics in preference to a respect-based account. A key move in their argument against respect-based accounts is the pivot from normativity to metanormativity. The concept of metanormativity is used to tether politics to ethics in way which preserves the normativity of political rules, without collapsing them into the same kind of rules that govern individual, normative conduct. The concept of metanormativity, however, may be unnecessary, given that the content of metanorms is already included in what is normatively required (in the non-meta sense) of our social relations anyway. A necessary condition for our social relations contributing to our individual flourishing is that they be just in the political sense. Whilst the notion of metanormativity describes an important function of political rules, I do not think it is needed as a source of obligation.

Keywords: Normativity, Rights, Eudaimonism, Perfectionism, Aristotle, Liberalism

JEL Classification: B10, B31