The author tries to give an explication of the concept of a performative expression as well to show the practical application of this idea for the analysis of juridical and ethical language.

Moral norms usually have the form of statements of obligation containing the words, ‚should’, ‚ought to’, ‚It is required … ‚, etc.; the form proper to a legal norm is the declarative sentence. In both these forms norms with good sense be preceded by the sing of assertion, ‚It is true that … ‚ and construed as a logically true statement affirming the existence of a duty or state of affairs ordained by a legislative institution. Hence, the contrary opinion denying (...) norms to be statements in the logical sense and attributing to them the function of command or recommendation, is incorrect: for, for a norm to be realized an additional act of decision motivated by a norm of either kind, is required. That decision is expressed by an imperative sentence, addressed to the person due to realize the norm. Occasionally imperative sentences replace a norm – as, eg., in the Decalogue; in such cases, they should be regarded as elliptic expressions with an implicit motivating norm understood. (shrink)

Among ethical norms teleological and formal ones are distinguished. The former admit that a behaviour which tends to a realisation of a moral Good is ethical, and the latter determine an ethical behaviour as consonant to a norm. Teleological norms determine a behaviour showing its purpose, and the formal norms emphasize the relation to other people as their characteristics. The former determine a duty through the Good, the latter instead adopt the concept of duty as primordial. Therefore, the former may (...) be called axiological norms and the latter deontic ones. The deontic norms are either egalitarian, when they contain a postulate of equal rights: what I should have, under certain conditions, the same should have everybody when he fulfils these conditions, or elitarian, when they deny the postulate of egalitarism and grant larger rights to some chosen individuals or to some groups to a detriment of others. A possible third situation, when the rights of other people are considered to be above our owns can be connected with any of the two mentioned. A full system of norms should determine both a complex of Goods being aims of an ethical action and behaviour towards other individuals. It must contain, therefore, both axiological and deontic norms. In various ethics, in which only norms of one kind are specified, norms of the second kind are included in the former. (shrink)