Éducation, normativité et historicité

Abstract

The author investigates a relation between a constructivist theory of normativity and a macro-historical consideration of socialization. Studies on theories on the workings of the mindpresent the opportunity to outline a genealogy of ordinary understanding towards action and its increasing complexity. At every step, our understanding generates a kind of 'playground of possibilities' characterized by increasingly complex virtual forms of action which increase the indecisiveness of our responses to the same context. Rules and regulations, also based on our understanding, channel the expression of these virtual acts. Our 'relational forms', constantly threatened by an explosion of possibilities (virtual reversing of given situations), come forward at this borderline. Every shift in possibilities and/or in standards gives rise to new social forms. This outlook leads one to conceive social systems in terms of autonomous hierarchies and standards of dependence between the multiple categories of people involved. The socialization process of certain standards happens principally through direct intervention in the dynamics of reversibility and deregulation such as they present themselves in our everyday acts and relations, at once respectful and also disobedient to a social-historical order. Such a model can be applied to the characteristic changes in modern relationships between, on the one hand, the State and, on the other hand, the Church, the economy and individuals.