• Ethics
• Norm
• Normality
• Georges Canguilhem
• Michel Foucault
• Natura umana
• Normalità
• Norma
• Etica
• Human nature

The concept of normality has a strong guiding value in our historical moment. Enjoying a particular polysemy and being rooted in different domains of knowledge, such as medicine, psychology, psychiatry, statistics, law, and biology, it almost seems, to use Canguilhem's words, that no anthropology can exist without making use of it. Starting with a reflection by Roberto Esposito on the relationship between life and norms, which reached its most reprehensible outcomes in National Socialist's anthropology and law, this paper aims to reconstruct the history of the concept of normality and develop its implications. The concept of normality is the result of a particular use of the norm that initially differs sharply from the legal norm; in fact, it derives from medicine and statistics and then spreads within different knowledge to the point of being the key to the famous disciplinary device described by Michel Foucault. It is precisely the latter and Georges Canguilhem who have carried out the most fruitful reflections on the theme of the norm, having a way of repeatedly interacting with each other and contaminating each other. A comparative study of the two authors makes it possible to better understand the topic, to outline how normality relates to nature, biology, and life, and, last but not least, to illuminate some aspects that remain more obscure in their respective reflections, especially with regard to the ethical perspectives that in different ways both authors conclusively outline.