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Literary notes about NORM (AI summary)

The term “norm” has found a versatile role in literature, often serving as both a measure and a marker of human behavior and cultural values. In some writings, norm reflects the natural tendencies and contextual influences that shape human conduct, suggesting that our standards arise from the environment and inherent habits of humanity [1]. Philosophers like Kant and Nietzsche extend this idea: Kant sees norm as an indeterminate common-sense benchmark that underlies aesthetic judgments [2], while Nietzsche imbues norm with the force of instinctual power, a standard imposed by one instinct over others [3, 4]. The concept also appears in more practical or societal frameworks, such as when deviations from expected standards in folk narratives are noted [5] or when an individual establishes personal rules as gauges of behavior [6]. Additionally, norms have been depicted as instruments of social evaluation with significant implications, from the devaluation of entire groups to the shifting nature of standards over time [7, 8, 9, 10], even showing up briefly in everyday discourse [11].
  1. Only human nature, its habits, idiosyncrasies, and its contemporary environment can give us any norm.
    — from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross
  2. This indeterminate norm of a common sense is actually presupposed by us; as is shown by our claim to lay down judgements of taste.
    — from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant
  3. Every instinct is a sort of thirst for power; each has its point of view, which it would fain impose upon all the other instincts as their norm.
    — from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Nietzsche
  4. Is a permanent norm, "pleasant or painful," their basis?
    — from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Nietzsche
  5. And yet there are not a few deviations in our version from the norm, if Grimm’s tale may be considered representative of the cycle.
    — from Filipino Popular Tales
  6. The meaning of a rule, of a norm which the man sets up for himself.
    — from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
  7. A general norm of valuation was applied to woman and the result showed that woman is simply a less worthy creature.
    — from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross
  8. Yesterday the norm may have been subject to no exception; to-day exceptions are noted; and to-morrow the exception has become the rule.
    — from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross
  9. One has but to read their favorite scripture, to see the norm upon which the gorgeous art of Japan has been developed.
    — from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis
  10. It is joined to Ki, and may be called, by nature, one decreed, changeless Norm.
    — from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis
  11. norm.
    — from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers

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