ABSTRACT
Detachment Theory endeavours to reconstruct the emergence of normativity in a fully naturalistic fashion without requiring recourse to the metaphysics of Absolute Idealism. After sketching the naturalist basis of detachment theory's normative standpoint, this chapter offers a critical assessment of new materialist theorist Karen Barad's post-humanist project and initiative. The legacy that detachment theory both draws upon and continues to "dialogue with" is one in which Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel are all principal contributors. New materialism is one among several emerging academic research trends oriented toward non- or even anti-anthropocentric ontologies drawing to a greater or lesser extent, directly or indirectly, on the work of Gilles Deleuze. The identification of normativity within nature by way of Aristotle's characterization of the relationship of formal and final cause within the living organism can be specified as a "normativity-in-itself". Detachment theory will endeavour to expand and articulate the characterization of normativity-in-itself in nature.
