Contribution and Challenge: Rethinking Apel's Transcendental Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophical Context

Transcendental pragmatics is the core of Apel's philosophical thought and the basis of his discourse ethics. Apel constructs the characteristic transcendental pragmatics through his program of " transformation of philosophy, " which is based - on one side - on the method of self-reflection and the rationalistic ideas of transcendental philosophy, and - on the other side - on the pragmatic dimension of modern philosophy which is embodied in Gadamer's hermeneutics, Wittgenstein's theory of language games, Peirce's semiotics and epistemology, and Austin's and Searle's theories of speech action. The purpose of transcendental pragmatics is to argue for a universal discursive reason (Diskursvernunft) and to establish a discourse ethics as a universal ethics by transcendental pragmatic self-reflection on the conditions of the possibility of the a priori ideal communicative community. This is also Apels' effort of ultimate grounding. His discourse ethics of transcendental pragmatic approach differs thus from that of