Value neutrality

Norms are not stars, glittering on a horizon beyond being. They are an integral part of social reality. The norm of neutrality - besides the obvious fact that a normative demand for the absence of normative demands is a contradictio in adjecto - is nothing but the dictate of applicability. The results of research technique should be free from value statements so that they can be used broadly and efficiently. The measure of neutrality is the extent of capitulation to the existing. The attempt to eliminate the normative moment of cognition wrongs the object (unresolved antagonisms of society are paradoxes calling to be resolved) and the subject, equipping it with blinders that prevent it from seeing beyond the sensus communis. Research does not aim to satisfy a fickle curiosity as Popper had childishly imagined, it is productive work. As all productive work it aims to achieve an effect, that is provoke some change in the world. The question is therefore not whether research should or should not be value free, but what the nature of the values should be: should they be subjective, conforming to doxa (what is today deemed objective) or objective, following from the inherent paradoxes of the object (what is today deemed subjective).