Critical normativity in law, ethics, and politics

Project leader

Elena Namli

Project period

2016 - ongoing

Project description

The main purpose of this project is to map out a new approach to the controversy between legal positivism and natural law theory regarding the views on how law and morality are related. While previous research has focused on arguments for and against legal positivism and natural law, the originality of this project lies in a critical analysis of the dialectics of the concepts of law, politics, and morality.  This project aims to contribute to fundamental research within moral and legal philosophy, as well as to the public discussion about the rule of law. 

The aim is to offer an analysis of the dialectics of the concepts of law, morality, and politics in order to scrutinize and to some extent redefine the controversy between legal positivism and natural law. The main research question is how legal and moral normativity is/should be understood and how these understandings are related to different conceptualizations of politics.  

The expected outcome of the analysis is a new theoretical framing of the discussion on how relations between law, morality, and politics should be understood.