The fact/norm distinction became thus a methodological dichotomy that, claiming Hume’s philosophical authority, evolved to a kind of episteme for jurisprudence and the social sciences. According to this scheme, normativity is always thought of as inspired by the philosophy of practical reason. This paper will try an alternative explanation for legal normativity inspired by the rule-following issue around Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. To do so, I intend to demonstrate that there isn’t solely one normativity mode. Section II advances the hypothesis that normativity (in general, not only legal normativity) is better understood as a continuum, not in a dichotomic relation to facts. This spectrum of normativity is structured by a matrix that connects normativity regimes with different types of rules. As I see it, there is a historical connection between different meanings for the concept of ‘rule’, to which correspond three different normativity regimes: algorithms, models/standards, and laws/norms correspond each to three different normativity modes, namely: ‘raw’, implicit, and explicit normativity. We will see that normativity demands learning and acquiring skilled competencies, which forces us to leave philosophy and enters the realm of socialization, an interdisciplinary mixture of sociology, psychology, and anthropology.

João Paulo Bachur teaches Legal Theory and Constitutional Law in Brazil. He holds a PhD in political science, and has been visiting scholar in the Free University of Berlin (2011-2013) and at the Max-Planck-Institut for Interdisciplinary Legal Theory in Frankfurt (2022-2023). Main books: Bachur, J. P., Kapitalismus und funktionale Differenzierung: Eine kritische Rekonstruktion (“Capitalism and Functional Differentiation: A Critical Appraisal“), Baden-Baden, Nomos, 2013 (on Luhmann and Marx), and Bachur, J. P., Schrift und Gesellschaft: Die Kraft der Inskriptionen in der Produktion des Sozialen (“Writing and Society: The Power of Inscriptions in the Production of the Socia”), Weilerswist, Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2017 (on writing theory and sociology, Derrida and Latour)

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