Animal norms: an investigation of normativity in the non-human social world

A human being is not only a social and teleological animal, she/he is also a nomic animal, a creature that can act in light of rules. Starting from this new image of humankind, the author extends the investigation of normativity to other members of the animal kingdom, posing the question of whether other nomic animals exist outside the human species. Generally, the consensus tends toward the idea that non-human animals are incapable of acting in light of rules, as if this capacity were a specific characteristic of humanity excluded to all other species. The author instead assembles three impactful answers that counter this consensus, posited respectively by a legal expert, an ethologist, and a philosopher, responses that may pave the way for a new field of research: the ethology of normativity. In conclusion, the author points out how these new inquiries advance novel ideas of normativity that deserve investigating further, such as a “normativity without language,” and a “normativity without norms.”