Abstract

After some introductory remarks on constitutive rules I proceed to one problem still insufficiently handled in the constitutive rules research: that of how coordinate the definitional exigence that constitutive rules should define new activities and, on the other hand, the claim that constitutive rules should be a disjoint class with that of regulative or prescriptive rules. I analyse briefly several examples, such as promises or interest-charging, or ‘sprezzatura’, and set out a number of problems and complexities inherent in these examples. Yet I also indicate commonalities shared by all of them.Short of offering a solution, I put forward the hypothesis that constitutive rules may in some cases be in rerum natura bound up with prescriptive norms and can be divided from them only in virtue of a theoretical analysis