Abstract

We live in a “nomosphereµ, a world of norms that we are often not aware of. But how do norms affect reality and human behaviour? To answer this question, Amedeo Giovanni Conte conceives the idea of “nomotropismµ, which is the idea of “acting in light of normsµ. As in the case of phototropism, in which a sunflower turns to follow the sunlight, in the case of nomotropism an agent acts in light of norms. With this new concept, Conte innovates the classic image of the effectiveness of norms, also thanks to his articulate typology of constitutive rules. A new image of humankind emerges from this research, which expands the traditional image of humans as “social animalsµ, “teleological animalsµ and “symbolic animalsµ: humans as “nomic animalsµ.