Morality and Socially Constructed Norms

Observe social distancing. Tip your waiter. Give priority to the elderly. Stop at the red light. Pay your taxes. Do not chew with your mouth open. These are imperatives we face every day, imposed upon us by norms that happen to be generally accepted in our environment. Call these ’socially constructed norms’. A constant presence in our lives, these norms elicit mixed feelings. On the one hand, we treat them as valid standards of behaviour and respond to their violation with emotions such disapproval, resentment, and guilt. On the other hand, we look at them with suspicion: after all, they are arbitrary human constructs that may contribute to oppression and injustice. In light of this ambivalence, it is important to have a criterion telling us when, if ever, we are morally bound by socially constructed norms and when we should instead disregard them. Morality and Socially Constructed Norms systematically develops such a criterion. It traces the moral significance of those norms to the agential commitments that underpin them, and explains why those commitments ought to be respected, provided the content of the corresponding norms is consistent with independent moral constraints. The book then explores the implications of this view for three core questions in moral, legal, and political philosophy: the grounding of moral rights, the obligation to obey the law, and the wrong of sovereignty violations. Morality and Socially Constructed Norms shows how much progress can be made in normative theorizing when we give socially constructed norms their (moral) due.

Laura Valentini, Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Laura Valentini is Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory at LMU Munich. Prior to coming to Munich, she held faculty positions at UCL, LSE, and KCL, postdoctoral positions at Princeton and Oxford, and visiting positions at ANU, SCAS, Uppsala University, Harvard University, and the University of Frankfurt. Her work is situated in contemporary political, social, and legal philosophy. Her first book, Justice in a Globalized World: A Normative Framework, was published by Oxford University Press in 2011. In 2015, she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize.