On Constitutive Normativity

There has been much discussion in philosophical literature in recent years about what has come to be known as ‘constitutivism’, or the ‘consti-tutive strategy’. The main ambition of this strategy is to find a solution to the so-called normative question, namely, the search for the ultimate grounds of moral obligations, by showing that these grounds are to be found in the constitution, or essential make-up, of human agents. This solution is clearly and explicitly the offspring of a Kantian approach to normativity, based on an explanation of the inherent constitution of agency – of our ability to act – and on a series of transcendental arguments. In this work, Korsgaard’s and Apel’s work are discussed as paradigmatic of the two afore-mentioned approaches and are brought into comparison by underscoring how they complement each other.