Constitutivism's Missing Theorem: Agency, Initiality and Normative Force

Metaethical constitutivism promises normativity without an external foundation: practical norms bind because they are constitutive of agency itself. We reconstruct that ambition through weak transcendental deduction, closure-stability, and strong initiality. Weak constitutivist arguments identify the least hidden structure needed to reconstruct public agency under selected invariants such as attributability, intelligibility, reasons-responsiveness, and diachronic unity. This explains why constitutivists disagree over constitutive aims: they often solve different reconstruction problems while treating their adequacy constraints as theory-neutral. We argue that weak reconstruction and reflective endorsement do not by themselves secure strong constitutivism. Reflective endorsement is a closure test: a standpoint must survive exposure to itself, repair, and re-entry. Closure classifies admissible standpoints, but it does not show that one least admissible standpoint gives all others their normative form. Strong constitutivism therefore needs an initiality theorem in a category of admissible practical standpoints. On this reconstruction, Enoch's shmagency objection splits in two. One challenge targets unearned initiality: agency-like standpoints may branch without a demonstrated least core. The other targets the normative bridge: even if a least standpoint exists, structural inheritance may not yet amount to authority. Ferrero's inescapability reply answers only the opt-out version of the worry; it does not supply uniqueness for determinate normative transmission. We conclude that constitutivism is not refuted but priced. Strong constitutivism by inheritance requires practical C-classicality: local deliberative structure must determine a unique global practical world. If practical pluralism undermines that assumption, the viable remainder is constructed initiality: framework-bound, immanent constitutivism whose constructive regime and normative bridge are explicit.