The Response of Discourse Ethics to the Moral Challenge of the Human Situation as Such and Especially Today: Mercier Lectures, Louvain-la-Neuve, March 1999The need for a global ethics has its origin in the human situation as such (i.e. in the fact of hominisation that has dismissed us from the natural security of animal instincts and thrown us into the state of freedom) and especially in the present situation of humankind that is characterised by an extreme increase of external challenges to our co-responsability, brought about by the results of natural science, technology, politics and economy, and - as it appears - lacking internal resources of ethical reason. The present book tries to show that the transcentendal-pragmatic approach to discourse ethics can reconstruct the genesis of this situation and provide a rational response to the external challenges to and the internal deficits of global ethics. |
Contents
Second lecture Third and Fourth Course of a Reconstruction | 13 |
Postconventional Perspectives of Philosophical Ethics since | 20 |
The Sharpening of | 27 |
The Ethical Aporetics of Western Liberalism | 35 |
The Novel | 39 |
6th lecture | 65 |
The Response of the TranscendentalPragmatic Foundation | 70 |
Discourse Ethics as Historyrelated Ethics of CoResponsibility | 90 |
Common terms and phrases
affected persons already Apel aporetic application of discourse apriori argumentative discourse being-in-the-world Calculus of Consent categorical imperative challenges to ethics Communitarianism complementarity system conception consensus contract course ethics critique cultural evolution Descartes dialectical discourse community discourse ethics Diskursethik Engl.transl ethics of responsibility existentialism external challenges fact foundation of discourse foundation of ethics Frankfurt a.M. functional constraints game theory Gehlen Gerechtigkeit global Habermas Hegel Heidegger hence hermeneutic hermeneutic phenomenology historism-relativism history-related human situation institutions internal resources justice Kant Kant's Kantian Karl Popper Kommunitarismus lecture loc.cit market economy Marxism-Leninism Max Weber metaphysical moral norms moral problems morally relevant norms of discourse phenomenology philosophy political Politik Popper positive law practical discourses pre-structure presuppose presuppositions primordial discourse procedures Rawls real discourses reason reconstruction regard social sphere strategic sub-systems suggest Suhrkamp supposition systemic constraints tion traditional transcendental transcendental reflection ultimate foundation universal validity validity claim value-decisions value-neutral Wittgenstein world-understanding