ABSTRACT
Aristotle, Kant, and Schelling shed different kinds of light on the history and theory of the nature-law/normativity relationship. Humans, like all animals and all life, are co-emergent with their habitat and subsist according to a normativity that is immanent to life. For Canguilhem, the norms of nature emerge from the polarity of normal and pathological, from the effort the organism makes to repair itself and avoid suffering, and from the dynamics of adaptation. Both autopoiesis and – more recently – sympoiesis have been used to explore legal systems and legality. Living norms exist in the imperative of organisms to survive and avoid pain, to grow, and to replicate. They are the product of life’s ongoing experimentalism; following pathways that work and re-forming incrementally as needed.
