Issues of Normativity in Past and Present

This book provides a multidisciplinary student-oriented introduction into issues of normativity. In its thirteen partially historical and partially systematic lectures it brings together the largely unrelated discourses of historians, legal scholars, theologians, and philosophers. The purpose of those thirteen lectures is to provide readers that are not familiar with the subtleties of the different discipline’s discussions with an overview on the core issues of contemporary debate. The contributions are therefore divided into a historical-descriptive and a normative-systematic part. The first eight lectures analyse the genesis of normativity. From a historical point of view, they address specific understandings and conceptions of normativity in former times: in old Israel, in medieval times in Europe and in the Islamic world as well as at the beginning of the 20th century. The systematic lectures collected in the second part of the volume address current issues concerning the justification of legal and moral norms as well as of theological beliefs in modern society.

Literature: Jansen, Nils/ Oestmann, Peter (eds.): Gewohnheit. Gebot. Gesetz. Normativität in Geschichte und Gegenwart: eine Einführung, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2011 (with contributions from Gerd Althoff, Thomas Bauer, Ulrich Berges, Matthias Casper, Thomas Gutmann, Nils Jansen, Peter Oestmann, Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Ludwig Siep, Sita Steckel, and Christian Walter).