Abstract
Georg Jellinek’s concept of a ‘Normative Force of the Factual’ offers a powerful explanation as to how normality and normativity interrelate. This essay discusses the problems underlying the transition from fact to norm and shows how this phenomenon may be aligned with Kelsensenian positivist theory; notwithstanding the strict separation of “Is” and “Ought” essential to it.
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Notes
- 1.
For a closer analysis see Grimmer (1971), pp. 11–12.
- 2.
See Lepsius’s essay in this volume.
- 3.
I.a the “Two-Sides”-Theory, questions of the state’s self-imposed commitment or the constitutional law perspective, in general.
- 4.
For this position see i.a. Gálvez (2014), p. 43. For a closer analysis of Kelsen’s position see Nicoletta Bersier’s contribution to this volume.
- 5.
For this point also see Klatt in this volume who introduces the ‘regarded-as-normative power of the factual’.
- 6.
For a careful analysis of von Wright’s critique of Searle’s approach see Klatt in this volume.
- 7.
- 8.
Sellars (1980), p. 138 hit the nail right on the head by stating: “To say that man is a rational animal is to say that man is a creature not of habits, but of rules. When God created Adam, he whispered in his ear, ‘In all contexts of action you will recognize rules, if only the rule to grope for rules to recognize. When you cease to recognize rules, you will walk on four feet’”
- 9.
The norm’s emancipation from the fact, thus taking effect within the individual, allows Jellinek—without contradiction—to exhibit factual recurrences at one point as actuality and at another—close to Kelsen’s understanding—as an interpretative scheme by observing that “[a]ll law is an evaluative norm, and thereby never coincides with the state of affairs that is being evaluated.”
- 10.
Supra § 5.
- 11.
Supra § 3.
- 12.
See Lepsius in this volume.
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Acknowledgements
This essay is based on the author’s inaugural lecture at University of Graz on May 12th 2017. Many thanks to my team: Myriam Becker, Christa Pail, Jürgen Pirker, Renate Pirstner-Ebner, Susanne Rufer and Hannah Schöffmann for their support in organizing the event and for immensely facilitating my transition to University of Graz, Faculty of Law.
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Bezemek, C. (2019). The ‘Normative Force of the Factual’: A Positivist’s Panegyric. In: Bersier Ladavac, N., Bezemek, C., Schauer, F. (eds) The Normative Force of the Factual. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 130. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18929-7_5
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