The That

This chapter discusses what I call the ‘Existentialist Fallacy,’ that the process of our normative self-constitution is something to be undertaken ex nihilo, right now, from a standing start. I argue that this is indeed a fallacy. It isn’t like that, and it can’t be. The project of making our normative world is a collective enterprise, one we inherit and pass on. It should not be understood in an individualistic spirit. This is a point that might seem to weigh against understandings of the normative that are deflationary and Humean in spirit, but I argue that that too is an error and there is no tension between these things.