I describe and evaluate Harald Wohlrapp’s proposal in The Concept of Argument that we should see reasonable argumentation as guided by the “principle of transsubjectivity... that, beginning with my subjectivity, I put my actual ego up for consideration as well as heighten and transcend it by seeking to participate in a general human potential, which is only attainable by recognizing the subjectivity of the Other”, and thus as having a quasi-religious meaning.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the epistemology of Johannes Volkelt, its main arguments and the relation of Volkelt's theory of certainty to Kant and other contemporary philosophers, such as Edmund Husserl. Volkelt's problem of scepticism is closely related to the positivist principle, which aimed at limiting all knowledge to our individual sphere of representations. This principle in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason means the unknowableness of the thing in itself. Volkelt seeks for answer to the question about (...) the trans-subjective knowledge. He finds a basis for the certainty in the dispresuppositional theory of the transsubjective minimum. The acceptance of the trans-subjective minimum determines too the possibility of metaphysics. (shrink)

A recurrent topic among philosophers as well as social scientists since Novalis, Comte, Weber, modem existentialists, and post-modern sociologists, etc. is that in the absence of what Tocqueville called "dogmatic beliefs” values cannot be grounded : you prefer liberty, I prefer equality; none of us would be neither right nor wrong. Contemporary writers as Rawls and Habermas defend, against this current view, the idea that value statements can be grounded rationally. Habermas' theory of communicational rationality remains procedural, formal and on (...) the whole mysterious, however: how can this peculiar type of rationality be definied and made analytical? A cognitive theory of axiological rationality is developed here starting from the basic point that normative statements and axiological beliefs should be analyzed as grounded on reasons with a transsubjective validity, as positive statements are. This theory is checked in a tentative fashion against some examples of axiological belieft from ordinary experience and against a few pieces ofdata drawn from experimental social psychology. (shrink)

The author introduces the existential psychology of the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. The article describes several theoretical ideas and perceptual metaphors derived from Frankl’s scholarship that make it useful as a philosophical and historical underpinning for the practice of autoethnography. Frankl asserted that each individual’s disposition, situation, and position work together to create a uniquely valuable and incommutable individual perspective. This incommutability suggests that the value of autoethnographic social science is based on the opportunities derived from the (...) particular, not the general. Frankl’s work also demonstrates that transsubjectivity is best facilitated when several autoethnographers take advantage of their unique combinations of disposition, situation and position rather than when a single autoethnographer tries to move into multiple positions simultaneously. Psychologists who publish autoethnography may find Frankl’s ideas and metaphors useful for conceptualizing and defending their own scholarship. (shrink)

The discussion “scientism vs. dialectic” centers around the problem of value-judgements since Max Weber.Scientism holds the thesis that in all scholarly disciplines (whether politics, economics, law or the sciences) the value-free methods of the sciences should be followed. The dialectical scholars, following Kant, Hegel and Marx claim on the other hand the primacy of practical reason, i.e. that reason can (and should) justify norms. After an historical introduction into the controversy, this lecture sketches how the dialectical thesis can be proven. (...) The new approach consists in a critical reconstruction ofall the words relevant for the discussion, beginning with such ethical modalities as “obligatory,” “permissible.” With these words we judge about aims: the judgements are norms of the form, e.g., “Under the condition C, the aim A is obligatory” (in Symbols: C Δ A).The task in practical reason is to justify such norms. Practical philosophy has to provide the basic vocabulary and the principles of justification. It starts with basic terms of the philosophy of mind as “wanting” and “willing.” The teaching method has to be described without using these words. (For all details cf.Normative Logic and Ethics, B.J. Mannheim, 1969.) In the same sense as “true” opinions are the result of reasonable discussions in which all participants try to overcome (“transcend”) their merely subjective opinions, it is the result of “transsubjective” argumentation whether in a certain situation an aim is (morally) required or forbidden. This categorical imperative of transcending all mere subjectivity is a “formal” principle for justifying norms. Material norms are justifiable only by investigating the genesis of the cultural situation in which they are applied. This leads, in a critical reconstruction of a method of Hegel (especially in his “philosophy or right”), to the formulation of a “dialectical” method as a spiral movement from factual geneses to normative geneses.By this method philosophy does not prescribe any “values” but prescribes how the cultural sciences should proceed in establishing material norms. (shrink)

Previous chapter Towards a non-Platonic Ethics of Rhythm This conclusion gives already a hint on the ethical implications of Nietzsche's new conception of eurhythmy. Eurhythmy means successful symbolization of affects throught the creation of infinitely open signifying systems that is to say of poetic subjects which are also transsubjects. But we must get here into specifics because the ethical power remained the subject of a quite numerous series of later texts—among which, it - Sur le concept de rythme – Nouvel (...) article. (shrink)