Normativity and Intellectual History

Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, legal theorists and philosophers unanimously share the idea that human practices—even the production of knowledge, i.e., science—are regulated by a system of norms, a normative regime or what has more recently been called “normativity.” Normativity, or “oughtness,” is the set of norms to which an action should conform in order to be recognized as legitimate and, therefore, to be effective within a social group. Following sections depict the origin and the development of the term “norm” and the constellation of terms associated with it, such as anomaly, anomie, normality and abnor- mality; the reflections on norms inside philosophy, sociology, ethnology and history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United Kingdom and the United States, in France, in Germany and in Austro-Hungary; the recent developments of these reflections; finally, the scientific and ethical norms of practice of the disciplines related to intellectual history and the sociology of knowledge.