Recently, Bengson et al. (2023) has put forth the Arché Question (i.e. What non-normative facts provide a fully adequate metaphysical explanation of the fundamental normative facts?) regarding the source of normativity and provides an essence-based strategy to answer this question. This essay, however, argues that the metaphysical machinery used by them is flawed within their metanormative picture. The attack is due to the mismatch between the normative and metaphysical status of the essence fact (as the non-normative Arché) and the grounding fact (as the normative principle): (i) it is ill-motivated to treat the essence fact (e.g. it is essential to being required that it maximizes utility) as non-normative while the grounding fact (e.g. an action is required in virtue of it maximizing utility) as normative; (ii) their construal of the naturalism/non-naturalism distinction is also in tension with the stipulated non-normativity of the essence facts and the normativity of the grounding facts, thus making the whole strategy inapplicable for metanormative theorizing.
