Abstract

Truth, right, and beauty are normative. In other words, our theoretical, practical, and aesthetic judgements are founded only if they correspond to standards for truth, rightness, or beauty respectively. The book at hand is not primarily interested in the differences between kinds of normativity—in fact, it treats normativity in a more or less unified way—nor does it spend much time on listing criteria for truth, right, or beauty. Rather, its primary aim is to discover what metaphysical status any normative foundation should possess in order to perform its grounding function with respect to knowledge, action, and aesthetic experience. Early in the book we find out that there are two possibilities cast in the form of a dilemma: either foundations will be external to the normative domain they purport to ground, as in some Archimedean/ transcendental foundation for truth, right, or beauty; or normative domains will be autonomous, in the sense of being capable to ground themselves.