I Don't Know What the Word "Normative" Means

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This title is not intended to convey any deeper meaning whatsoever.  It’s just a statement of fact. 

There’s a word, “normative,” which I see from time to time in the things I read.  But I don’t know what it means. 

Last week, I was reading a promising article in these very pages of Substack.

John Rawls and the death of Western Marxism

The author, Joseph Heath, was trying to explain why there are so few Marxists nowadays (apparently, because they all became liberals).  I regarded it as promising because the writing style was straightforward and did not presuppose too much prior knowledge.  Nonetheless, even though I was earnestly following along for most of the piece, eventually I started to lose the thread. Why?

Because the author started using the word “normative.”  And then he used it some more.  And then this:

This argument made [philosopher Gerald] Cohen extremely uncomfortable, because it constituted a direct challenge to the normative foundations of Marxism-as-critique-of-exploitation . . .

Why were Cohen’s American colleagues so quick to embrace egalitarianism? Because they were Rawlsians. What Rawls had provided . . . was a natural way to derive the commitment to equality, as a normative principle governing the basic institutions of society. Rawlsianism therefore gave frustrated Marxists an opportunity to cut the Gordian knot, by providing them with a normative framework in which they could state directly their critique of capitalism, focusing on the parts that they found most objectionable, without requiring any entanglement in the complex apparatus of Marxist theory . . .

But beyond this, the collapse of academic Marxism – as a body of normatively motivated social criticism – has been complete.

Seriously, what am I supposed to do with that?  

You might be asking yourself: if there’s a word you don’t know, why don’t you just look it up?  Schoolchildren have been taught that trick for generations.  They even make it easy nowadays.  Everyone has a definition machine in their pocket at all times.  No heavy dictionaries necessary.

Sure, I could look it up, but I’m not going to.  In fact, I know I’ve looked it up before — probably a dozen times — over the years.  Although I remember trying to learn what it means, I don’t remember what it actually means. It never stuck.  Either I’m cognitively impaired, or there’s a problem with the word itself.  Perhaps it’s not a word that lends itself to human communication.  I’ve been around long enough to suspect that there is no concept in politics that can’t be explained using plain English.  This isn’t quantum mechanics, it’s political theory.  A reasonably thorough comprehension of the operations of governments and societies should not require specialized jargon.  It should be something that can be communicated effectively to the smart people who are tasked with helping to run governments and societies.  And let’s be honest.  Think back to the smartest kids you knew in college.  How many of them were political science majors?  Why are we trying to make this more complicated than it needs to be?      

Returning to the original passage, what word can be substituted for “normative” all four times to make it more understandable to the likes of me? I guess it’s tempting to think “normative” should mean something like normal, but that would be stupid because we already have a word that means exactly that, which sounds very similar.  That word is “normal.”  I throw my hands up.    

There must be a reason why an otherwise clear and effective writer insists on using the same word four times in two paragraphs.  If I use the word “beautiful” twice in the same essay, I change one of them to “pretty.”  I suspect the reason he chooses not to is the same reason I never found a suitable substitute for “normative” when I’ve looked it up in the past.  It’s because there is no suitable substitute.  It’s not supposed to be digested like ordinary language.  “Normative” seems less a word than a concept.  It has all the earmarks of a defined term that is only used in academic circles, typically, perhaps only, by social scientists.  I was not surprised to find out that the author of the above passage is a university professor.  I bear no ill-will against social scientists—I’m sure they have their value—but I have to ask: do they talk like that at home to their families? 

“Can’t we just be normative for one goddamn night?!”

Here’s the point.  I’m not ashamed one lick about the fact that that I don’t know what this word means.  I’m old enough to know what I know and what I don’t know, and I will sleep soundly tonight with that gap in my knowledge.  That ship has sailed. 

So, writers, it’s up to you.  If you are tempted to use the word “normative,” know that you’re probably going to lose me.  I have a sneaky suspicion that I’m not alone, even if most people would rather pretend otherwise.  You’re better than that, anyway.  I recommend sticking to English. 

Because I might not know what the word “normative” means, but I generally know bullshit when I see it.