Argumenta 4,1 (2018): 9-19 © 2018 University of Sassari ISSN 2465-2334 DOI 10.14275/2465-2334/20187.int The Background of Constitutive Rules Introduction Giuseppe Lorini* and Wojciech Żełaniec** * University of Cagliari ** University of Gdańsk 1. Two Revolutions in the Philosophy of Norms In the twentieth century two revolutionary turns were accomplished in the phil- osophical research on norms and normativity: The first was the creation of a full-fledged deontic logic, a decade-long development which went through stag- es 1 before it culminated in the publication of the essay “Deontic Logic” by Georg Henrik von Wright in 1951. The second was the conceiving of the idea of a constitutive rule. The first turn opened a new field of study, to wit that con- cerning logical relations between norms (recall e.g. the question asked by von Wright (1951: 5) if there are any “logical truths peculiar to deontic concepts”) and the logical structure of norms themselves; the second, by contrast, had con- sequences for the typological research of norms, the analysis of the functions that a norm can perform, and hence also the extension of normativity as such, that is, the inclusion in the extension of “normativity” of such phenomena as would not have been considered normative before the invention (or the discov- ery) of constitutive rules. The present special issue of Argumenta, entitled “The Background of Consti- tutive Rules”, is devoted to some aspects of that second revolution in the philos- ophy of norms, accomplished in the past century. It consisted, as we have briefly said, in putting forward the hypothesis that, beside the traditional roles of rules in regulating human behaviour by bestowing upon it deontic qualifications such as “obligatory”, “prohibited”, “permitted” or “facultative”, some rules may well influence our life in a more radical manner, viz. changing the ontological and conceptual structure of our everyday world. Aside from the function of giving prescriptions and regulating (in the strict sense of this word, i.e. presupposing that that which is to be regulated already exists or at least is conceivable), a new normative function is revealed: the “constitutive” one. New ground is about to 1 Regrettably, a true history of deontic logic has still to be written. However, in the words of Morscher (1975: 255), the book by Kalinowski (1972b) “könnte ebensogut den Titel ‘Ge- schichte der Normenlogik’ tragen” (could just as well have been entitled “A History of the Logic of Norms”), i.e. deontic logic, more or less. The German translation (Kalinowski 1972a) by Wolfgang Klein is in certain respects improved (by the translator).