Abstract
In this article the author reads the German philosopher Karl-Otto Apel as a communication theorist. After a brief biographical introduction, the author examines five fields of significance pertinent to Apel’s thought and to the study of communication: First is Apel’s work on the so-called understanding and explanation controversy, or Erklaeren-verstehen (E-V) in German; second is Apel’s theory of discourse ethics; third, there are a series of essays through which the readers also get a fuller account of Apel’s use of Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatic approach to philosophy; and fourth, there are several articles’ that reflect Apel’s contributions to global politics based on his transcendental pragmatic framework. Finally, there is a lengthy discussion of a few other areas of significance that reveals Apel’s conceptual relationship to theories of communication. The first of these areas or fields consists of the way in which Apel takes up hermeneutics. The second is his definition and use of the “self-recuperative principle” while the third consists of his ongoing conversations with social philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Enrique Dussel.
Karl-Otto Apel is a prolific philosopher whose contributions to the discipline of communication often goes unnoticed. In this article, I read Apel as a communication theorist par excellence interested in the pragmatic basis of communication; where communication is understood to occur continuously with human co-subjects in a discourse community. Briefly, we can understand the discipline or field of communication as interested in processes of meaning-making that transcend, and yet are constituted by, technologies, culture, public policy, art/aesthetics, politics and economics. The definition of communication held by my home institution, namely Simon Fraser University, claims that it is the study of the “complexities and interplay between numerous and diverse dimensions of communication” as constituted by the following five fields:
Cultural policy and politics
Globalization, social change, and social justice
Media and cultural studies
Political theory
History and theory of communication. 1
It is this basic definition that forms my understanding of communication as well as this article’s. Specifically, Apel expresses an explicit interest in communication in several of his texts, including the aptly titled “Communication and the Foundations of the Humanities,” in which he argues that the “primary understanding of data in the world [e.g., scientific data] is internally connected with the understanding of human language and forms of life” (Apel, 1972, p. 19). I take this to mean that, for Apel, the study of language and forms of interaction between human subjects are foundational to scientific as well as philosophical thought.
I begin this article with a brief biographical introduction of Karl-Otto Apel, followed by a discussion of several of his conceptual contributions with respect to how they connect to an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of communication. While this particular article does not make any intensive interventions into existing theoretical debates, what I have done is introduce and unpack some of these debates, which others will, I hope, take up in the future.
To begin, it is important to recognize that Apel’s significance to postwar German and European philosophy cannot be understated. Eduardo Mendieta, a philosopher who has written extensively on Apel, refers to him as the “one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century” (Mendieta, 2002, p. xvii) whose work is made even more significant by an interest in redeeming German philosophy after the atrocities of World War II. It is notable, however, that Apel’s transcendental approach been taken up by many thinkers in Latin America and Europe but has not gained the attention it perhaps deserves in Canada or the United States.
Karl-Otto Apel was born on March 15th, 1922, in Dusseldorf, Germany. In 1940, at the age of 18, he volunteered for military service and ended up as a prisoner of war while fighting on the Russian front. After World War II, Apel entered the University of Bonn, where he began studying such thinkers as Kant, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Hegel, and Peirce under the tutelage of Erich Rothacker, whose own work contributed to the development of Apel’s transcendental-pragmatic approach to philosophy and language. After writing extensively on hermeneutics, phenomenology, and the philosophy of language in the 1940s and 1950s, Apel turned his attention to developing reconstructive approach to philosophy, which he coupled with a critique of nomological or positivist science. In the 1970s and 1980s, Apel incorporated transcendental semiotics into his approach, which “allow[ed] Apel to establish the impossibility of reducing the rationality of communication to the rationality of strategic, or ends-oriented, interaction . . . and furthermore, to discover in the self-referentiality of speech acts the self-reflexivity of language . . .” (Mendienta, 2002, p. xxv).
At present, Apel’s self-described areas of interest and expertise are in ethics, philosophy of language, and the human sciences, all seemingly differentiated areas of research that he successfully unites using a distinctive account of communication, epistemology, and language (the latter of which is firmly rooted in philosophical pragmatism). His most recent work reflects an interest in discourse ethics and the conditions of understanding achieved intersubjectively through discourse with others. Since 1990, Apel has held the position of Professor Emeritus at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Frankfurt, Germany.
Notably, in an essay titled, ‘The Impact of Analytic Philosophy on My Intellectual Biography” (which can be found in From a Transcendental-Semiotic Point of View), Apel gives an enlightening first-person account of the path he took, intellectually, through the works of Wittgenstein, Morris, Peirce, Gadamer, and Heidegger, in order to reach his own transcendental-pragmatic model of language, communication, and philosophy. His own recounting of this intellectual path, following the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy, reveals and explains much with respect to how Apel acquired not only his grounding in pragmatism and semiotics but also his critical-reconstructive method. Prior to his critical-reconstructive turn, Apel’s framework, as articulated through his investigation of the foundation of the sciences in Towards a Transformation of Philosophy (1980), thematizes the pragmatic language use of a community of scientific coinvestigators as essential to scientific consensus. By rooting communicative actors in (a) a community of others; (b) counterfactually presupposed rational argumentation; and (c) intersubjectivity, which is understood as a guiding principle; and (d) a model of understanding that must “presuppose the regulative principle of hypothetical justification” (Apel, 1980, p. 247), Apel successfully breaks with the crude empiricism of natural science that is further shown to require both self-reflection and hermeneutic mediation.
This foundation led Apel to the formulation of the method of hermeneutic-reconstructive science, which he claims is aimed at mediating between “causal explanations of quasi-natural processes and of normatively relevant reconstructions of good or bad rules and reasons. . . .” (Apel, 1982, p. 12). Its guiding norm, moreover, is the regulative principle of consensus-based truth.
Apel and Communication: Five Fields
The most revealing way to go about concretely relating Apel’s work to the study of communication, and in doing so unpack his contribution to philosophy, is thematically. There are five primary themes or fields of significance that are pertinent to this article: (1) Apel’s work on the so-called understanding and explanation controversy, or Erklaeren-verstehen (E-V) in German, discussed in his book of the same name, Understanding and Explanation: A Transcendental-Pragmatic Perspective; (2) Apel’s theory of discourse ethics, which he outlines in detail in The Response of Discourse Ethics; (3) a series of essays published in Karl-Otto Apel: Selected Essays, which adds considerable philosophical weight to Apel’s existing theory of communication and knowledge (In these essays, we also get a fuller account of Apel’s use of Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatic [or pragmaticist] approach to philosophy.); (4) several articles’ that reflect Apel’s contributions to global politics based on his transcendental pragmatic framework (These pieces are significant in that they ground his theory of discourse ethics in contemporary, practical, and often intractable, sociopolitical problems.); and (5) a rather lengthy discussion of a few other areas of significance included by this author in this article, which reveals Apel’s conceptual relationship to theories of communication. (The first of these areas or fields consists of the way in which Apel takes up hermeneutics. The second is his definition and use of the “self-recuperative principle,” while the third consists of his ongoing conversations with social philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Enrique Dussel.)
Understanding and Explanation: The E-V Controversy
This particular text, Understanding and Explanation: A Transcendental-Pragmatic Perspective, is perhaps Apel’s best known. It was published in 1984 and in it Apel engages in an exhaustive reconstruction of three phases of philosophy that, he maintains, offer competing avenues through which to study and account for social phenomenon. Apel’s central thesis is that the alternating philosophical thematization of either understanding (Verstehen) or explanation (Erklaeren) in the study of social science can be solved through a transcendental-pragmatic account of language and communication based on the contributions of Jürgen Habermas, Charles Sanders Peirce, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and others. This controversy is essential to history of philosophy since, according to Apel, it involves the resolution to the question of what is the appropriate methodology when attempting to account for, understand, and explain our social and physical world. It also asks whether this prospective methodology, or methodologies, is the same for social and physical phenomena. Finally, it inquires as to how one might reconcile the historical with the natural sciences (and thus the hermeneutic and causal methods).
The following summary provides a brief overview of these three phases of philosophical thought, as outlined by Apel, which is then followed by his solution to this debate.
The first phase of the so-called E-V controversy began with a questioning of the scientism that was popularized in the 17th century. Through Galileo and Hume this scientistic approach rejected an internal understanding of nature and replaced it with a mathematical one. However, through the contributions of Kant and Hegel, this framework was somewhat tempered by theories that thematized the interpretive elements Geisteswissenschaften. These thinkers, Apel contends,
were . . . prepared to hold their concept of science open, in view of the peculiar problems of practical and perhaps even aesthetic reason . . . they . . . nonetheless recognize that historical-social reality represents a novel phenomenon and problem situation that, in contrast to nature, its components exhibit a fundamentally different relation to human being themselves. (Apel, 1984b, pp. 34-35)
It should be noted, however, that the scientistic point of view in this first phase, and its attendant demand for value-free objectivity, nevertheless, continued to hold considerable sway.
The second phase, best known as the deductive-nomological stage, tends to dismiss the contribution of the hermeneutic or interpretive approach entirely and, instead, draws on unified science to argue that even in the realm of the social, the best way to acquire knowledge is through empirical science. Interpretive methods, according to this phase, is relevant “only in discovering hypothesis that can be employed in a causal-nomological explanation, that is, in an explanation viewing motives as causes and maxims as laws” (Apel, 1984b, p. 21).
This perspective is held by such philosophers as Karl Popper and Karl Hempel. In a disconcerting move, its central focus on causality, falsification, and intention in the explanation of events was extended to the realms of practical reason and morality as well. As such, interpretive hermeneutics, as it is recognized in this phase, is relegated to a heuristic device useful solely as a derivative source of knowledge, if at all.
In between this second neopositivist phase and the final third phase, which Apel avers to resolve the understanding/explanation controversy, is an examination of the approach to social science offered by Wittgenstein’s contemporaries, including von Wright. While I do not have the space to carry out a lengthy discussion of their frameworks, it should be noted that, according to Apel, von Wright succeeds in drawing on the language game thesis made by Wittgenstein to move beyond the traditional deterministic causal explanation of the social sciences.
Specifically, von Wright comes very close to solving the understanding-explanation antinomy by showing how even causal laws are grounded in the capacity to generate a realm that is transcendental, pragmatic, and is, a priori, based on the experience of the lived body. Put another way, von Wright’s contribution is significant in that it “Seems to represent . . . the thesis that action represents the subjective condition of the possibility of definitely establishing causal relations in the objectified world of experience” (Apel, 1984b, p. 97). This rooting of causality in intentional lived-bodily action is noteworthy in that it draws into this debate a focus on understanding the reasons for action and, in doing so, considers “the goals that human beings have posited as worthy of their aspirations, as well as the ways or means they regard as suited to attaining them” (Apel, 1984b, p. 100).
However, and despite this, Apel concludes that even this approach fails to go far enough in thematizing communication, action, and understanding in the resolution of the E-V controversy. He claims that all these perspectives, in differing ways, are unable to account for the significance of meaning, communication, and moral determination in the social sciences. Apel concludes that in focusing disproportionately on quasi-nomological explanations and empirical validity, we are unable to “reflect [on] the true nature of human beings and society” (Apel, 1984b, p. 207).
Thus, finally, in the third phase, Apel demonstrates how, through a careful overview and critique of various approaches close to his own (including that of Quentin Skinner and William Dray), it can be deduced that these frameworks are, in the end, unsatisfactory accounts of knowledge. In contrast, the solution he offers, which speaks directly to his connection to communication studies, is deeply connected to the study of knowledge production through the thematization of hermeneutics, pragmatics, and interpretive understanding.
Apel argues that we must embrace a mode of study that involves “‘the continuum of understanding’, or, more precisely, of a ‘hermeneutic circle’ formally derived from the ultimate normative foundation and involving the revision of our preunderstanding of rules and meanings on the basis of an empirical understanding of concrete rules and meanings” (Apel, 1984b, p. 40). In other words, there are normative understandings that presage nomological rules that deserve study since it is these understandings that form the basis of postmetaphysical knowledge.
The most crucial aspect of Apel’s approach is contained in the following. He argues that we must ground social science in the transcendental reflection on knowledge and the public redemption of validity of claims (claims to truth, sincerity, normative rightness, and meaning) based on argumentation and philosophical discourse. Apel is clear that this linguistic, argumentative, and a priori reflection on validity “cannot be considered contingent, for we cannot think a thought that could go beyond the point of the transcendental reflection on validity” (Apel, 1984a, p. 195). Moreover, argumentation and dialogue, it should be noted, always take place with other interested cosubjects in a communicative community of discourse.
One further concept of note, which grounds the connection of Apel’s theory of communication, is his theory of complementarity. Briefly, this approach aims to demonstrate how hermeneutic understanding can deliver an alternative theory of science based on interests other than that of causal explanation. Apel contends that hermeneutic understanding (Geisteswissenschaften), based on the historically grounded and intersubjective justification of good reasons, is essential to forming a comprehensive account of the social sciences.
However, this hermeneutic alternative, it must be emphasized, does not contradict or eliminate the significance of causal explanation in toto. Rather, it forms a complementary relation to causality and, in doing so, forms two interrelated and methodologically significant dimensions of knowledge. As Apel succinctly puts it, on the one hand,
We must interact with human beings in both a strategic and cooperative manner. . . . The hermeneutic understanding of the Geisteswissenschaften thus arises in situations where crises emerge either in the process of understanding between human beings or in the mediation of tradition. On the other hand, we assume a theoretically distanced relation to human being, that is, to the human quasi-nature that is fixed and objectified in actions . . . [and] suspend communication and focus on observation and data control (Apel, 1984b, p. 203).
In expounding the complementarity thesis, Apel rounds out his transcendental-pragmatic account of knowledge with that of hermeneutic and quasicausal understanding in order to come to theory of communication and meaning that resolve the explanation–understanding controversy.
Transcendental Semiotics
A second area of research Apel contributes to, and is worth noting because of its connection to the theory communication, is his examination of the genesis of transcendental semiotics. Through such texts as From a Transcendental-Semiotic Point of View and his selected essays in Towards a Transcendental Semiotics, Apel draws an intellectual map of sorts that takes his readers through the various stages leading to his formulation of transcendental semiotics.
Apel claims that the emergence of transcendental semiotics came out of the rejection of ontological metaphysics and the solipsistic transcendental philosophy of consciousness, both of which were grounding philosophies that attempted to account for knowledge and reality (epistemology and ontology). As a result of the shortcomings of both approaches, Apel submits his own first philosophy, transcendental semiotics, which he argues successfully explains “the possibility of the constitution of a common world of meaning and for the possibility of truth as inter-subjective knowledge” (Apel, 1998, p. 51).
Apel asserts that analytic philosophy also, in its reliance on scientific causality, intentionality, semantics, and its uneasy relationship with the philosophy of Geisteswissenschaften—and through the works of Wittgenstein, Husserl, Carnap, and others—makes it impossible to accurately describe the formation of intersubjectively valid theoretical knowledge. Transcendental semiotics, on the other hand, gives an explanation of
the actual function of signs or, respectively, language as condition of the possibility of intersubjectively valid thought and hence knowledge may be conceived of as reflective radicalization, so to speak, of that reflective knowledge that is first brought to verbal expression through the self-referential performative parts of constative speech acts. On the level of transcendental semiotics that reflective knowledge takes the form of propositions that are self-referential by their universal truth claim. (Apel, 1998, pp. 116-117)
The preceding quote goes quite a long way toward outlining Apel’s basic approach. More specifically, transcendental semiotics combines the best from post-Heidegerrian hermeneutics, the language games theory of Wittgenstein, speech act theory (Austin and Searl) and the constructivist pragmatics of language, and Peirce’s pragmatic semiotics in order to argue for a model of language and meaning that is based on the following assumptions (Apel, 1994, pp. 233-234):
A belief in the rules underlying language, that is, universal presuppositions of discourse that are taken for certain (and are transcendental and universal).
These rules are comprised of the central four validity claims that must be justified rationally in open discourse. These claims sustain a rich lifeworld of background understandings and learning processes.
A holding of the following principle: “All those principles can be considered to be grounded ultimately [letztegründet] that cannot be denied without committing a performative self-contradiction of arguing and, precisely for that reason, cannot be grounded in deduction without committing a ‘petitio principii’” (Apel, 1998, p. 60).
A model of truth in which truth is understood as attainable via intersubjective consensus formation (the give and take of validity claims) and where even scientific evidence is seen to be linguistically interpreted.
And, most important, a transformed understanding of the semiotic relationship between real objects, the interpreter, and signs (and, therefore, of the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic relationships) that thematizes the role of the sign-interpreter who, it is argued, “must . . . establish a communicative relationship with regards to the signs to be interpreted—actual utterances or texts—which relation is determined by the heuristic anticipation of the possible intersubjective consensus of all possible sign-interpreters about the claims to validity (sense, truth, truthfulness, normative rightness) that are bound to speech acts” (Apel, 1994, p. 251).
Taken together, I argue that transcendental-pragmatic semiotics, as Apel constructs it, is in its very core an account of communication that is rooted in pragmatic discourse and intersubjective consensus formation. This model also has much to contribute to the field of communication, as it currently exists, not only in its elaboration of a semiotic approach to meaning already studied in such areas as advertising and media (using, for example, Barthes, Saussure, and various other forms of linguistic and image-based analysis) but also in more fully elaborating an account of communication rooted in particular beliefs about the status of truth, morality, and meaning.
Discourse Ethics
The most complete account of Karl-Otto Apel’s theory of discourse ethics can be found in his text, The Response of Discourse Ethics to the Moral Challenge of the Human Situation as Such and Especially Today, published as part of the Mercier Lectures in 1999. Prior to this, Apel wrote a detailed account of discourse ethics in the yet-to-be-translated (into English) Diskurs und Vertantwortung (1988). In Diskurs und Vertantwortung, Apel first articulates his comprehensive and discourse-based theory of an ethics of communication that comes to form the foundation of his later work on politics, technology, and globalization. This framework, to reiterate, is based on the assumption that rational argumentation and responsibility to others constitute the ordering principles of communication. Apel is clear in his explanation of discourse ethics, that all types of discourse are rationally grounded and, as such, are capable of not only fashioning consensus, through the redemption of claims to truth, rightness, and authenticity, but also functioning as a basis for critique.
In his “response” lectures, Apel argues that in order to resolve the contradictions that make up our contemporary world, which is increasingly characterized by social, political, cultural, and economic interdependence, we require a transcendentally based, rationally grounded, and universally valid metaethics based on a shared sense of justice and coresponsibility.
Apel goes about defending this thesis in his characteristic way, that is, through the rational reconstruction of relevant modes of thought. He roots the genesis of postconventional morality, reason, and reflexive understanding—all vital to his theory of discourse ethics—in the history of cultural evolution based on the contributions of such social psychologists as Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget.
Apel argues that discourse ethics evolved following the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy that demonstrated that “thought has always already the structure of public argumentation and . . . [as such] transcendentally presupposes a public language and, together with this, a communication or discourse community” (Apel, 2001, p. 46). After delineating this evolution, Apel justifies his discourse ethics both theoretically, through the philosophies of Kant, Habermas, and Hegel, and concretely, using an analysis of the subsystems of politics, law, and the market economy.
This theory of discourse ethics, Apel claims, is more explanatorily complete when compared to competing accounts of morality as given by scientific rationalism, logical positivism, existentialism, and historical materialism because of its emphasis on communication and sociality. It also, as I have stated, builds on the Kantian model of ethics, which he argues remains too metaphysical and idealized (i.e., not rooted in reality and thus does not address the material content of morality).
Specifically, Apel draws on Jürgen Habermas’ very similar model of discourse ethics, which defends the thesis that we, as cosubjects of a universal communication community, must always presuppose the “transcendental-pragmatic ultimate foundation of the ideal procedural norms of discourse ethics, i.e. of settling moral problems through practical discourses of the affected persons or their advocates” (Apel, 2001, p. 85). 2 This transcendental-pragmatic foundation, Apel claims, covers both ideal and real discourses. 3
Specifically, discourse ethics is comprised of the four universal validity claims of argumentation discussed above, that is, meaning, truth, sincerity, and normative rightness (morality), which are all presupposed, although only one is explicitly thematized, in discourse. The speaker must defend his or her claim through the public use of good reasons that their respective cosubjects can either accept or reject. It is the validity claim of normative rightness that is of particular interest to Apel since it requires, in the course of validation, that the speaker and hearer be locked in a relationship between intersubjective validation and consensus formation that is, at its core, both intrinsically binding and profoundly ethical:
everyone who philosophizes, and that means everyone who argues seriously, must already—at least implicitly—have recognized an ethical fundamental norm. If one is prepared to reflect on the implicit meaning of one’s argumentative acts, then one must see that one already presupposes, together with the possibility of linguistic meaning and truth, that all claims to meaning and truth must in principle be resolvable through arguments—and through arguments alone—in an unlimited community of communication. That means that one has already recognized that as arguer one presupposes an ideal community of communication composed of all human beings as equally entitled partners, a community in which all differences of opinion—also those which involve practical norms—should be solved in principle only through consensual arguments. (Apel, 1996, p. 196-7).
Finally, the discourse ethical framework developed by Apel also holds that once society and its subjects have developed the cognitive capacities necessary for a transcendentally grounded discourse ethics, they then have the attendant ability to deal with contemporary global problems, including ecological crises, uneven global development, unstable democracies, and errant technologies. The last few sections of The Response of Discourse Ethics deal specifically with these issues. In these sections, Apel makes it clear that even democratic elections need to be legitimized by the discourse community “whose members are the co-subjects of a co-responsibility that is completely unspecific and transcending all institutions” (Apel, 2001, p. 103). He argues that our moral responsibility, in real-life contexts, must balance between the systemic constraints of law, politics, and so on, while at the same time generating legitimacy through moral discourse.
It is noteworthy that contemporary communication studies have also, like Apel, focused on the subjects of environmental degradation, democratic reform, global development, and technology studies using, for example, political economy and drawing on the literature surrounding risk communication, globalization studies, and the critical theory of technology (rooted in the Frankfurt School and the Sociology of Science and Technology Studies). In light of this, I claim that Apel has much to contribute to these ongoing debates.
Globalization, Politics, and Human Rights
Another important area of Apel’s work, which further grounds his standing as a scholar of communication, is his later and more recent work on globalization, politics, and human rights. Notably, this foray into global politics mirrors that of many of his contemporaries, including Jürgen Habermas. Apel’s work in this area began in the late 1980s but became a major part of his philosophy in the early 2000s. In an interesting article that presages his political turn, titled “The Problem of a Macroethic of Responsibility to the Future in the Crisis of Technological Civilization: An Attempt to Come to Terms With Hans Jonas’s ‘Principle of Responsibility’,” Apel undertakes to explain the relationship between humanity and nature in a situation of self-described ecological crisis. His solution to this problem is to balance Han Jonas’ ethic of conservation with that of human progress rooted in language and a community of communication.
Consequently, Apel returns to his core thesis that states that “whenever we are thinking seriously, we have already acknowledged an ethic of discourse and of responsibility in the sense of the universalized reciprocity that belongs to a potentially unlimited community of argumentation” (Apel, 1987, p. 22). Drawing from this discourse ethics framework, Apel makes it clear that the only way to negotiate between strategic or systemic rationality and communicative rationality in the realm of politics is to work “assiduously at the long-term alteration of relationships in such a way that the regulation of conflicts by means of discourse and consensus can take the place of strategic regulation” (Apel, 1987, p. 36). This particular article, written in 1987, is intimately connected to the position Apel takes in his work on multiculturalism and globalization. Significantly, these three themes of technology/ecology, multiculturalism, and globalization are taken up consistently in contemporary communication studies through such thinkers as Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Andrew Feenberg, and Bruno Latour.
Turning to his work on globalization and multiculturalism, there are two specific articles worth discussing since they both reveal how (a) Apel intends to apply his theory of discourse ethics to sociopolitical problems, and (b), further concretizes a connection between his work and topics of considerable interest in contemporary communications studies. In “Plurality of the Good? The Problem of Affirmative Tolerance in a Multicultural Society From an Ethical Point of View,” Apel makes a case for an affirmative approach to tolerance that rests on an open understanding of other cultures but which simultaneously restricts the tolerance of practices that violate our sense of shared moral values (e.g., in the case of female circumcision or religious sacrifice).
The answer to this quandary, Apel claims, is in a transcendental-pragmatic approach to discourse ethics that combines the open hermeneutic understanding of the value-traditions of different cultural communities while measuring them, critically, to the “one good that is acknowledged, [the] regulative idea of solidarity (i.e., justice and equal co-responsibility) in the ideal communicative community” (Apel, 1997, p. 209). However, Apel does admit that, in addition to the discourse ethical mediation of “. . . hermeneutic understanding and appreciation of particular value traditions and the universally valid standards of the morality of the ideal communication community according to the regulative idea of the complementarity of affirmative tolerance and its necessary restrictions . . .” (p. 210), we must also contend with the political discourse of compromise and the juridical discourse of positive law in order to realize the possibility of a multicultural society rooted in a just cosmopolitan order. Moreover, Apel underlines that all members of the so-called universal discourse community are responsible for the outcomes of our actions. As such, we have the capacity to transform our institutions into ones that are more just, inclusive, and responsive. Significantly, Apel’s concentration on multiculturalism, belonging, and tolerance, I argue, can foster further growth in areas of communication studies that focus on transnationalism, postcolonialism, and multiculturalism in general.
Finally, in his article “Globalization and the Need for Universal Ethics,” Apel defends his thesis that the moral presuppositions of argumentative discourse (discourse ethics based in the transcendental reflection on the necessary presuppositions of the rationality of argumentation) form the primary means by which to deal with concrete moral problems—even those arising out of processes of economic, communicative, and political globalization. In an interesting passage, Apel argues that the two parts of postconventional ethics, Part A and B, respectively—where Part A is modeled after discourse ethics while Part B deals with situations where strategic communication is necessary—must remain wedded to the underlying presupposition that in compensation for this tragic deviation from the procedural norms of discourse ethics (in Part B), all strategic and counterstrategic practices are subject to the moral duty of not just fulfilling the function of crisis management but also of collaborating in attempts to shape the institutional conditions of the postulated implementation of Part A of discourse ethics (Apel, 2000, p. 153).
In light of this statement, it becomes clear that for Apel it is not the case that we require, in order to deal with the manifold aporias introduced by globalization, the creation of common values ascertained empirically; rather, we must draw on discourse ethics as the rational frame “of possible agreement about any material proposals that can be made with regard to common duties and responsibilities in our time . . .” (Apel, 2000, p. 153).
As such, when dealing with, for instance, the side effects of technology (which happens to take up a large portion of work in communication studies through the works of Frankfurt School theorists like Marcuse, Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, and others, for example, Latour, Serres, etc.), Apel makes it patently clear that a scientistic understanding of value-free rational technology leaves much to be desired, particularly in its ignorance of the moral challenges such artifacts introduce. Hermeneutics and transcendental reflection, on the other hand, provide a possible solution through their emphasis on ideal discourse, inclusiveness, fallibility, and transcendental grounding. It also, when considering the subjects of human rights and social justice under conditions of economic, political, and technological globalization, draws on a postconventional model of morality that “represents the interests of those virtual discourse partners—such as the members of the next generations or the poor in the Third World—who may not be sufficiently represented” (Apel, 2000, p. 142). It can be argued that Apel’s approach, therefore, can add further insight to the subfields of communication studies that focus on international development, social justice, and globalization in the larger sense.
Further Significant Concepts, Themes, and Debates
Hermeneutics
Although I have discussed the role of hermeneutics in Apel’s philosophy above, I feel that few more words on the subject are required because of its strong connection to an understanding of communication. Essentially, Apel’s hermeneutic approach is rooted in the works of several theorists, including Winch, Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. He claims that it is in the hermeneutic model of understanding that meaning is finally seen to be shaped by a preunderstanding of the world, tradition (prejudices), history, and others in dialogue. However, Apel makes it clear that this process still allows us to challenge our settled beliefs. For example, in the case of textual meaning Gadamer states that it
Is always co-determined also by the historical situation of the interpreter and hence by the totality of the objective course of history. . . . Not just occasionally but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. That is why understanding is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity as well. (Gadamer, 1992, p. 296)
For Apel, this basic framework, which solidly backs his contention that dogmatic objectivism is a distortion of authentic understanding and reflection, forms a central theoretical underpinning of his approach, which holds that it is the
Normatively oriented hermeneutic, one which holds a progress of understanding and judgments of claims to validity to be possible, can do justice—as Gadamer, among others has maintained—to the internal relationship of hermeneutics with practical philosophy (Apel, 1998, p. 167).
However, Apel’s use of hermeneutics, it should be made clear, emerges in conjunction with a semiotically transformed model of transcendental philosophy. This novel approach marries an understanding of the “subject and intersubjective conditions” of the sciences with the transcendental semiotic insight that “the thinking (and by this I mean ‘arguing’) subject must necessarily conceive of itself as a member of a communication community” (Apel, 1981, p. x). Overall, it is this grounding of hermeneutics in the a priori argumentation that forms the foundation of Apel’s philosophy of communication.
The Self-Recuperative Principle
What Apel terms the self-recuperative principle can be understood in two distinct ways. The first is in the context of moral evolution through which we get an account of the internal resources of morality and how they have developed as they have. In this sense, the self-recuperative principle of reconstructive reason refers to a particular phase in our moral evolution that can be characterized as “a meta-institutional re-mobilization of the early morality of reciprocity, close to language communication: a re-mobilization of communication reason that, above the level of institutions, can itself be institutionalized as a sphere of ‘reasoning public’” (Apel, 2001, p. 8). As Apel makes clear, this remobilization allows us to integrate discursive rationality, reflexivity, and openness into our communicative encounters with others.
This postconventional phase, based on the self-recuperative principle, is intimately connected to Kant’s ethics of good will but goes beyond it by expanding the reach of universality to cover not only the ideal world but also the material contents of history. Apel’s self-recuperative principle also highlights his central thesis on morality that, to reiterate, centers on the assertion that the validity of the categorical imperative, introduced by Kant, has a transcendental and not a metaphysical foundation. As Apel states, the validity of the assertion that one should act in a manner consistent with your action becoming a universal law is a “synthetic judgment apriori of practical reason” (Apel, 2001, p. 24). This principle, as such, sets the foundation for how the communicative relationship with others is formed and unfolds.
The second element of the self-recuperative principle worth discussing is expressed in the context of hermeneutics and the history of science. Apel makes it clear in his writings on this subject that the history and achievements of natural science are not value neutral and, therefore, can be seen as a “paradigmatic case of what has been called Geisteswissenchaften” (Apel, 1998, p. 234). Apel maintains that we must employ the presuppositions of argumentation even in the natural sciences. As such, history can be understood not as founded on a teleology but on communication and critical evaluations, that is, on the “self-recuperative principle of hermeneutic reconstructions of history” (Apel, 1998, p. 240). This hermeneutic and linguistically based evaluation of good reason, in the end, constitutes progress in cultural and scientific evolution.
Habermas and Dussel
Finally, there are two so-called encounters between significant thinkers and Apel that are worth noting. The first encounter with Jürgen Habermas comes in the form of much agreement, following the linguistic turn in philosophy, on the subjects of communication, understanding, meaning, and democracy. The significance of the so-called Apel–Habermas debate to the subject at hand is that it gives further insight into the place Apel holds theoretically in the study of communication as well as further unpacking a few of his more difficult concepts and assumptions.
Both Habermas and Apel owe a debt to, and are connected to, the thinkers of the Frankfurt School of philosophy and have been termed, by many, as second-generation Frankfurt School theorists. While their approaches have many similarities with one another, I think a focused examination of the debates between them will illuminate certain important aspects of Apel’s work.
Overall, Habermas’ theory of communicative action and ethics is similar to Apel’s transcendental-pragmatic framework in that both, in their accounts of communication and knowledge, thematize: (a) discursive consensus formation, (b) the redemption of validity claims with cosubjects in a communication community, (c) a prioritizing of communication over strategic relationships, and (d) a commitment to a linguistic-centered account of social reality.
As well, William Rehg argues that the two primary themes that connect Apel and Habermas, in addition to their similarly strong conceptions of discursive reason, are “predicated on the confidence that (1) participants in argumentation can respond insightfully to the intrinsic force of reasons, (2) in such a way that consensus that results from discourse has a context-transcending reach” (Rehg, 2003, p. 176). Also both Apel and Habermas, in a significant shift away from the kinds of philosophy that came before them, are much more interested in answering the process-based “how” question of justification and communication rather than the more traditional “why” question.
Where there are disagreements between Apel and Habermas, they tend to center on the subjects of transcendentalism and foundationalism. Habermas’ theory of communication and society tends to be both antifoundational and internally critical of transcendentalisms, whereas Apel argues that the rational presuppositions of language, discourse, and communication are a priori (and, therefore, transcendental). Habermas argues that these same presuppositions are universal, and therefore, situated in a socioevolutionary context (i.e., they transcend context yet emerge out of human interaction), but are not transcendental or foundational since, for him, transcendentalisms of any sort replicate the errors of metaphysics.
Overall, Apel is insistent that the normative presuppositions of argumentation are inherently noncircumventible and that, as such, these “pragmatic rules of communication are similar to transcendental conditions” (Papastephanou, 1997, p. 48) since, without them, speakers would always be in danger of falling into a performative contradiction. 4 This device, as Papastephanou argues, also rejects Habermasian fallibilism “by virtue of its [the performative contradiction] positive role as a yardstick of the apriori or non-apriori character of statements” (Papastephanou, 1997, p. 49). The significance of Apel’s insistence on the transcendental a priori of the presuppositions of discourse to the study of communication lies not only in the explanation of the processes that make up communication but also in displaying how these processes are founded and grounded.
Apel and Dussel
Briefly, a second noteworthy thinker Apel has had a number of intellectual encounters with (in a series of North–South dialogues) is Enrique Dussel, a Latin American philosopher of considerable significance. The most interesting aspect of this debate is located in Apel’s professed incorporation of Dussel’s “liberation philosophy,” which emphasizes the importance of the “Third World” or “Other,” into his transcendental pragmatic framework.
In fact, it is Apel’s contention that the interpellation of the marginalized Other “in no way threatens [the] transcendental-pragmatic framework” because of the counterfactual demand of discourse ethics that “members of the privileged communication community must represent the interests of all . . . even if they are not at present participants” and that “relations be so established that no adult . . . be excluded from discourse because of structural forces” (Barber, 1998, p. 133). Dussel, on the other hand, argues that philosophy, including Apel’s, must more explicitly account for the contributions of dominated and excluded majorities whose antihegemonic project results in a communication community grounded in praxis, social justice, and liberation: “the praxis of liberation [rooted in discourse ethics that are applied] is the properly said mediation of the critical transformation of institutions” (Dussel, 1997, p. 20) that undermines unjust normality. Whether Apel is correct in his assumption that his approach takes this into account still remains to be seen. What is significant, however, is that the theme of marginalization and exclusion has increasingly become an important element of Apel’s framework.
Taken together, these two debates or encounters between Apel and Habermas and Apel and Dussel further illuminates Apel’s contribution to the subject of philosophy and to the field of communication. While it is clear that the Apel–Habermas encounter is thematically significant since Habermas is discussed regularly in communication programs throughout the United States and Canada, I think the subject of social justice introduced in the Apel–Dussel encounter carves out another way in which Apel can be read as a communication theorist, particularly in light of the importance placed on social justice in most communication departments.
Conclusion
As I have made clear throughout this article Karl-Otto Apel’s model of transcendental semiotics, discourse ethics and transcendental pragmatics should be considered in light of its potential contribution to contemporary communication thought. This is not only because connections made by Apel to science, hermeneutic understanding, communication, discourse, globalization, technology, multiculturalism, and social justice, in one way or another, forms the backbone of most communication programs in North America and Europe but also because Apel’s approach, in a novel way, accounts for the very nature of communication itself. His focus on the universal rules of language, lifeworld assumptions, rational discourse, intersubjectivity, truth based on consensus formation, and the centrality of rational argumentation forms the very ground of communication. That is, Apel gets to the root of communication, as it is used in practice, and, in doing so, aims to account for how communicative acts in a pragmatic sense are connected to and facilitate larger political and social processes.
It is thus unfortunate that his work tends not to be taken up in any significant way in most undergraduate and graduate communication courses. It is, therefore, important that we, in interdisciplinary programs like communication, and in light of the flexibility fields like ours afford us, examine the contributions made to the study of communication by theorists normally thought of as outside of communication proper. I argue that this mode of examination can only enrich and add another dimension to the field of communication studies as it exists today. Perhaps therefore, in light of this article, more thinkers whose works are traditionally considered to be beyond the scope of communication studies will become part of its corpus.
Footnotes
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.