v. 1. Towards a transcendental semiotics -- v. 2. Ethics and the theory of rationality.

In his preface to the English edition, Apel (identified with critical theory) explains that the title of his two-volume German collection connotes both a reconstruction of the process of hermeneutic transformation in recent philosophy and the author's semiotical transformation of transcendental logic. The emphasis here is on the latter with discussions of the a priori nature of language per Wittgenstein, Peirce, and Chomsky, and its implications for a rational foundation for ethics in modern science. Includes a new foreword. Name (...) index only. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Sprachanalytik, Semiotik, Hermeneutik. Bd. 2. Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft.

Inhalt: K.-O. Apel: Vorwort - G. Calabro: Gesprach uber Hobbes mit Karl-Heinz Ilting - I. Grundfragen der praktischen Philosophie: H.-G. Gadamer: Die Gegenwart der sokratischen Frage in Aristoteles - P. Lorenzen: Politische Ethik - J. D'Hondt: Die Ethik und der Weltlauf - K.-O. Apel: Faktische Anerkennung oder einsehbar notwendige Anerkennung? - H. Schnadelbach: Rationalitat und Normativitat - F. W. Veauthier: Vom sozialen Verantwortungsapriori im phanomenologischen Denken - K. Lorenz: Der Antagonismus von Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit - P. Rohs: Moralische (...) Praferenzen - H. Hoppe: Normenbegrundung ohne naturalistischen Fehlschluss? - W. Kuhlmann: Solipsismus in Kants praktischer Philosophie und die Diskursethik - R. Maliandi: Anerkennung oder Argumentation? - L. H. Meyer: Anerkennung, Zumutbarkeit und Diskussion als praktische Prinzipien - A. Cortina: Substantielle Ethik oder wertfreie Verfahrensethik? - R. Zimmer: Der Selbstbezug des asthetischen Zeichens - II. Zur Geschichte der praktischen Philosophie: P. R. Franke: Zu einem Munzbildnis des Stoikers Chrysippos - V. Hosle: Recht und Geschichte bei Giambattista Vico - M. Riedel: Imputation der Handlung und Applikation des Sittengesetzes - A. Buha: Moral und Geschichte - C. Cesa: Zum Begriff des Praktischen bei Fichte - N. Bobbio: Hegel und das Recht - L. W. Beck: Reformation, Revolution und Restauration in Hegels politischer Philosophie - D. Losurdo: Moralisches Motiv und Primat der Politik bei Hegel - P. Becchi: Die Wurzeln der Ethik der Uberzeugung - R. Pozzo: 'Bourgeois' oder 'citoyen'? Zu Hegels Begriff der burgerlichen Gesellschaft - Die Veroffentlichungen K.-H. Iltings von P. Becchi - Personenregister - Sachregister. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary teaching can be a hard sell to the legal academic community. Over almost three decades, I have spoken at conferences on a variety of subjects. When I have presented on this particular topic, however, I have drawn my most meager crowds. Is it because we think interdisciplinary pedagogy is a bad idea, that we are ill-equipped, or that it is generally too difficult to do successfully? After a dozen years of creating and teaching an interdisciplinary course in law and (...) medicine, I confess that it is now my other, law-only courses that I feel I have to justify. Why is an interdisciplinary approach to teaching law the exception rather than the rule?My path to creating an interdisciplinary course in law and medicine began indirectly and with impatience at my own teaching of family law. I had been a professor of family law for decades, and I had developed a sophisticated set of simulations that asked students to negotiate a settlement in a marital dissolution case. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel's writings span the theology of liberation, critiques of discourse ethics, evaluations of Marx, Levinas, Habermas, and others, but most importantly, the development of a philosophy written from the underside of Eurocentric modernist teleologies, an ethics of the impoverished, and the articulation of a unique Latin American theoretical perspective. This anthology of original articles by U.S. philosophers elucidating Dussel's thought, offers critical analyses from a variety of perspectives, including feminist ones. Also included is an essay by Dussel that responds (...) to these essays. (shrink)

In this article the author tries to give an answer - from the point of view of the transcendental pragmatic foundation of discourse ethics - to the title question, which was raised by the Unesco conferences entitled `Universal Ethics' in Paris (27 March 1997) and Naples (December 1997). The article should be understood as a supplement to the empiristic-comparative responses of S. Bok and H. Küng, and especially to the communitarian approach of M. Walzer, proposed at the first conference. Unlike (...) traditional rationalism, this approach does not try to deduce concrete moral norms from axiomatic first principles; it begins with transcendental reflection on the undeniable moral presuppositions of argumentative discourse (which is not circumventable in philosophy). The approach first deduces from these presuppositions only the ideal procedures for the moral discourses through which all concrete moral problems ought to be solved, if possible. The second step provides a strategic-counter-strategic supplementation principle for those cases where undistorted moral discourses are not possible. (shrink)

Reflecting a revival of Peirce studies and the rediscovery of the pragmatist tradition in American philosophical thinking, this study articulates a contemporary and relevant interpretation that may offer a challenge to neo-pragmatists.

Collected together for the first time in English, Karl-Otto Apel’s most recent work covers a broad spectrum of philosophical issues. Highly original, this work will be valuable to academics and students concerned with (post-) analytic philosophy, epistemology, history of science, Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, current debates about transcendental modes of argument, second-generation Frankfurt School thinkers and American pragmatists. It will be no less useful to all those interested in reformulations of Kantian themes and redefinitions of older ideas within the linguistic (...) paradigm, as well as those who, being familiar with Habermas’s work, wish to know more about the controversies and debates within the circle of the Frankfurt School itself. (shrink)

[A communicating society as a transcendental precondition of the social sciences; ].

Was sind naturwissenschaftliche Phanomene und inwiefern kann die Beantwortung dieser Frage zu einer besseren philosophischen Einschatzung der wissenschaftlichen Praxis beitragen? Dieses Buch untersucht die wissenschaftstheoretische Unterscheidung zwischen Daten und Phanomenen, um ihre Bedeutung fur die Debatte um den Wissenschaftlichen Realismus zu klaren. Ausgehend von einer Analyse des Phanomenbegriffs werden sowohl realistische als auch antirealistische Anwendungen der Unterscheidung auf ihre Uberzeugungskraft gepruft. Auf Grundlage der Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchung wird fur ein realistisches Phanomenverstandnis pladiert und erortert, wie exakt Wissenschaftstheoretiker die wissenschaftliche Praxis (...) beschreiben mussen, um zutreffende philosophische Schlussfolgerungen ziehen zu konnen.". (shrink)

The paper tries first to show that P. Strawson’s and J. Searle’s proposal of explicating the illocutionary meaning of speech-acts in terms of the conditions of fulfilment or satisfaction is unsatisfactory. It provides no full understanding of the meaning of speech-acts, at least not of non-constative acts, as e.g. orders, requests, demands, confessions, promisses, etc.; for, through its quasi-verificationist horizon, it provides no unterstanding of the illocutionary force in terms of the conditions of accepting the validity-claims that are connected with (...) the performance of the act. Thus far the paper complies with Habermas’ approach. There remains however an ambiguity with regard to the good reasons for accepting a speech-act, since on the level of life-world communication and interaction not only validity-claims and pertinent arguments but also threats and offers are functioning as socially binding illocutionary forces. How is it possible to show by a cogent argument that openly strategical acts as offers and threats cannot fulfill the role of providing good reasons for accepting speech-acts in the sense of unrestricted Verständigung but are parasitic upon non-strategical ways of consensual communication by understanding and accepting validity-claims?The paper argues that this suggestive contention cannot be proved, i.e. grounded by a descriptive analysis of the normal function of communicative actions in the life-world but only - indeed - by transcendental pragmatic reflection on the normative conditions of argumentative discourse which cannot be denied without committing a performative self-contradiction. (shrink)

In reconstructing and commenting upon the Kosovo conflict, the cognitive interest of practical philosophy does not evade a political judgment but is primarily led by the interest in answering the question of what normative yardsticks are available (to politicians and to the public) for coping with a situation where the international order of law fails to provide a legal solution to the problem of preserving peace and, at the same time, protecting human rights that are severely violated by a sovereign (...) state. The paper proposes an answer from the point of view of an ethics of history-related responsibility, which takes into account three normative levels based on ethical, legal and political considerations. In this light the action of NATO must be judged. (shrink)

To celebrate the 270th anniversary of the De Gruyter publishing house, the company is providing permanent open access to 270 selected treasures from the De Gruyter Book Archive. Titles will be made available to anyone, anywhere at any time that might be interested. The DGBA project seeks to digitize the entire backlist of titles published since 1749 to ensure that future generations have digital access to the high-quality primary sources that De Gruyter has published over the centuries.

ABSTRACTFrom 1797 to 1801 a controversy played out on the pages of the Medical Repository, the first scientific journal published in the United States. At its centre was the well-known feud between the followers of Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley, the lone supporter of the phlogiston model. The American debate, however, had more than two sides. The Americans chemists, Samuel Latham Mitchill and Benjamin Woodhouse, who rushed to support Priestley did not defend his scientific views. Rather, as citizens of a (...) republic, they defended his right to have them. They also castigated the assertions of the “French chemists,” whose claims that the new chemistry obviated debate seemed unsettlingly similar to the dictatorial ambitions of the French state. Using the Medical Repository, Mitchill and Woodhouse sought a compromise that validated the new chemistry, but united it with a more egalitarian form of discourse. The desired balance eluded them. Priestley proved too stubborn, and as the French Revolution descended into dictatorship and war, Mitchill and Woodhouse came more to realize that truly prising French chemistry from the culture of the revolutionary era. The episode left Mitchill and Woodhouse disillusioned with chemistry and hoping to redirect scientific enthusiasm to more pious ends. (shrink)

I. Introducción: el horizonte verificacionista de la explicación del significado de las oraciones constatativas en la filosofía analítica del lenguaje.II. La aporética de la explicación verificacionista del significado en la filosofía analítica del lenguaje.II. 1. Explicación del significado ilocucionario de las oraciones o actos de habla no constatativos en los términos de "condiciones de realización". -Sobre la aporética del paradigma verificacionista en P. Strawson.II. 2. Explicación del significado ilocucionario de las oraciones o de los actos de habla no constatativos en (...) términos de las "condiciones de satisfacción" referidas a intenciones. -Sobre la aporética del paradigma verificacionista en J. R. Searle.III. La explicación pragmática universal o trascendental del significado ilocucionario de las oraciones o actos de habla en términos de las condiciones de validez.III. 1. El planteo de la pragmática universal sobre la explicación del significado ilocucionario en términos de aceptabilidad de las pretensiones de validez y el problema residual de la aceptación fáctica de las pretensiones ilocucionarias de poder.III. 2. La solución habermasiana del mencionado problema residual mediante la comprobación de la "dependencia parasitaria" del uso encubiertamente estratégico del lenguaje con respecto al uso del lenguaje orientado al entendimiento y el nuevo problema residual del uso abiertamente estratégico del lenguaje.III. 3. La resolución del problema residual del uso abiertamente estratégico del lenguaje por medio del recurso a la reflexión pragmático trascendental sobre las presuposiciones del discurso argumentativo. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary teaching can be a hard sell to the legal academic community. Over almost three decades, I have spoken at conferences on a variety of subjects. When I have presented on this particular topic, however, I have drawn my most meager crowds. Is it because we think interdisciplinary pedagogy is a bad idea, that we are ill-equipped, or that it is generally too difficult to do successfully? After a dozen years of creating and teaching an interdisciplinary course in law and (...) medicine, I confess that it is now my other, law-only courses that I feel I have to justify. Why is an interdisciplinary approach to teaching law the exception rather than the rule?My path to creating an interdisciplinary course in law and medicine began indirectly and with impatience at my own teaching of family law. I had been a professor of family law for decades, and I had developed a sophisticated set of simulations that asked students to negotiate a settlement in a marital dissolution case. (shrink)

In what follows I wish to raise and eventually to suggest an answer to the following question: What is the rationality of human communication? Why should we ask this question? By way of a first approach I would place the problem within the context of the so called “pragmatic turn” of analytic philosophy, i.e. within a context in which the concept of the rationality of logical syntactics and logical semantics of language systems has been integrated into, or superseded by, the (...) rationality concept of the human use of language—say, e.g., of arguments. (shrink)

Starting from the problem of tolerance in a multicultural society, the author undermines the limits of a classical‐liberal foundation (negative tolerance) and suggests the need for a new meaning: a positive concern of tolerance implying appreciation of a variety of social cultures and value traditions. On an ethical level, positive tolerance can be grounded in the Discourse Theory, developing the classical Kantian deontological ethics in a transcendental‐pragmatic and in a transcendental‐hermeneutic sense. In this way, discourse ethics can answer two questions (...) posed by tolerance in a multicultural society: the duty to support all in the pursuit of their ideals and realize positive tolerance as well as its restrictions. (shrink)