Knowing the Normative World: On the Epistemologies of Ethics and Aesthetics

What does it mean to know that something is beautiful, just, or wrong, not as an article of theory, but as something that presses upon us and demands a response? Knowing the Normative World offers a sophisticated account of how we come to apprehend the normative world, not as idle spectators but as engaged evaluators. It provides not merely a technical treatment in epistemology, but a vision of the kind of normative knowledge that matters to us in living meaningful lives.

This is an epistemology not of distance but of acquaintance, where normative truths are not just deduced, but disclosed. Knowing the Normative World brings together the epistemologies of ethics and aesthetics under a unified framework, showing how our encounters with value are shaped by acquaintance. Such encounters yield appreciative knowledge, a form of knowledge that provides the ability to respond appreciatively to the normative parts of the world.

At once theoretically ambitious and attuned to the subtleties of experience, this book reshapes how we think about the epistemology of normativity. It invites us to see that value is something the world makes available if we are oriented toward it with the right kind of sensitivity. Knowing the Normative World offers not just an account of how we come to know what matters, but a vision of what it is to be formed by such knowledge.

Errol Lord, Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania

Errol Lord is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He works in a broad range of areas connected with normativity, including ethical theory, epistemology, and aesthetics. His first monograph, The Importance of Being Rational, appeared in 2018 from OUP. In 2016, OUP published Weighing Reasons, a collection he co-edited with Barry Maguire. His essays have appeared in Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, and Ergo, among other places.