DEĞERLER, CEZALAR VE NORMLAR ARASINDAKİ İLETİŞİM

Abstract

When a person crosses a road without a pedestrian crossing, he or she commits a criminal offense. Admittedly, there is hardly an adult in the world who has not committed this act. But these people are very likely to be punished more in Switzerland, for example, than in Turkey. Without any doubt, these divergent practices can be explained by the cultural background, value system and infrastructure in these countries. First question is what does this observation and explanation say about the norms, everyday practices, habits and laws in general? The related question is, how is it that in everyday life we follow informal habits and cultural-religious obligations at least as much as formal laws? That there is a difference between them is usually not consciously perceived. At the same time, independent of the actors’ conscious perception of their difference, they influence, indeed determine the way in which action is taken, thought about, and how the facts and concepts that present themselves are evaluated in the respective situations. Consequently, the third question is what are values and, related to this, in what they differ from norms. To answer these questions, a methodological distinction is made between sociology and philosophy. This differentiation allows on the one hand to look at norms and values from their genealogy and on the other hand to subject one’s own orientations to a critical examination in the light of certain principles and these not only in everyday life, but also in science.