4.4.1 |
FROM ANANORM TO ANANORM |
The system of
disciplinary thought centering
round
the norm of neutrality or 'ananorm' is
neutralism.
Neutrality is the ultimate end,
purpose or 'telos' of neutralism.
The system of disciplinary thought centering round both the norm of
neutrality and
the norm of inclusivity is
neutralism-inclusivism or neutral-inclusivism.
Neutral-inclusivity is the general,
ultimate value of neutral-inclusivism. The system of disciplinary
thought centering round the norms of neutrality and inclusivity and
the veridicalist interpretation of the
principle of truth is what we have called
"the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity" or
"DNI".
This doctrine is a goal-duty-based doctrine, and so are the
neutral-inclusivistic and neutralistic components of it.
Goal is, then, to be understood in a wide, past-, present- and
future-regarding, causal and noncausal sense.
In the DNI rights are recognized too, but they are
intrinsic rights derived
from neutral-inclusive or truth-related,
doctrinal goals.
That is why our
ideology is, doctrinally speaking,
goal-duty-based or teleological.
On the other hand it is,
metadoctrinally speaking,
right-duty-based or rights-theoretical.
This agrees with an interideologically inclusive attitude towards
adherence to the DNI itself.
The extrinsic right in question
is
the right to personhood which
is based on the sole practical metadoctrinal principle espoused by us
in addition to the principles of the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity.
Within the bounds of neutral-inclusivism itself, the recognition of the
doctrinal principle of neutrality leads to the formulation of both
distributive goals like those of equality and nondistributive goals like
well-being and the minimization of unhappiness or suffering.
Besides this, the recognition of the doctrinal principle of
relevance demands from us
nondiscrimination and respect for persons.
Altho the ananorm
and the norm of inclusivity together seem sufficient to guarantee people's
autonomy and bodily integrity, personhood requires that every person be
treated as such regardless of the first-order doctrine
'e or anyone else embraces.
While in our case the DNI is fully compatible with the right to personhood,
there are but too many ideologies or normative doctrines to which this
does not apply.
To those who distinguish first- from second-order reasons it may be said
that the doctrinal principles of the DNI provide us with first-order
reasons to act or not to act in a certain way.
Or, it may be said that the doctrine's intrinsic rights and duties are
first-order reasons.
The right to personhood, or the metadoctrinal principle of personhood,
however, provides us with a second-order reason not to do a
certain act. In general second-order reason has been defined as
reason to act or to refrain from acting for some reason. Since
rights of personhood are nonactivating, the second-order reason
concerned is always a reason to refrain from acting for some
reason. Such second-order reasons have been termed "exclusionary",
but they have nothing to do with the type of exclusion or
exclusiveness as denounced in the norm of inclusivity.
So the metadoctrinal principle can —if not in
practise, then at
least in theory— confront us with a so-called 'exclusionary' reason
not to act in accordance with the DNI.
The reason is then that acting on one of our doctrine's principles would
infringe a right of personhood, that is, the extrinsic right of a person
who is not willing to cooperate with us, while having the right
not to cooperate with us.
But the knife cuts both ways: if adherents of the DNI do not have the right
to impose their own principles on nonadherents of the DNI (and they do not
have that right), then adherents of supernaturalist, exclusivist,
extremist and lesser
unneutralist doctrines do not have the right either to impose their
beliefs, institutions and symbols on adherents of the DNI.
The doctrine of neutral-inclusivity is a normative doctrine,
and the principle of personhood a normative principle.
The normative system of disciplinary thought which comprises both, and
which is our
comprehensive ideology in the
widest sense, may therefore be referred to as "the Norm".
The Norm is a proper name but obviously not an arbitrary one.
No other proper name can more clearly and adequately express that
our ideology is a normistic instead of a theocentrist one. (In
the last chapter of this book we will further
discuss the position of this proper name in the antithesis between
normism and theocentrism.)
To emphasize that our
denominational doctrine is not
just a normistic denominational doctrine, we shall speak of
"the Ananorm", that is, the Norm of neutrality or the Norm of
neutral-inclusivity.
The proper adjective belonging to it is Ananormative.
There is one pillar which supports neutralism, namely the
ananorm. There are two pillars which support neutral-inclusivism,
namely the previous one and the norm of inclusivity.
There are three pillars which support the DNI, namely the previous ones
and the principle of
truth.
And finally, there are four pillars which support the total normative
edifice of the Ananorm, namely the previous ones and the right to
personhood.
It is these four normative pillars we shall hold onto in
this Model.
They are listed in
figure F.4.4.1.1.
