ABSTRACT
Take any normative ideal for how society should be organised and directed. If its defenders wish to make a claim on its behalf, arguing that the ideal is of sufficient importance and attraction to command general allegiance, then they must presumably think that it is intimately related to the things for which people reveal a concern and capacity in their own actions and lives. But if a normative ideal can be shown to have a psychological resonance of this kind, then presumably it must point us towards a basis on which to explain many of the things that people individually do and many of the patterns to which they collectively give rise. It must point us towards a useful explanatory category.
