Transcendental Pragmatics

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Transcendental pragmatics (Latin transcendere , “to go over, to cross”, and Gr. Πράγμα, pragma , “to act”) is a philosophical trend that goes back to the work of Karl-Otto Apel . It is close to the universal pragmatics developed by Jürgen Habermas and integrates u. a. other pragmatic approaches, such as by Charles S. Peirce . The transcendental pragmatics examines the transcendental , i.e. H. enabling conditions for human action.

Retorsion is at work in Apel's school . H. the "turning back" of possible objections as a central analytical tool. An objection is to be understood as a linguistic act . The aim of turning back is to uncover performative contradictions that arise when the objection is actually raised in conversation. Apel uses the method in particular to prove that the fundamental validity of normative obligations cannot be disputed without contradiction. The transcendental pragmatics should be such a final justification u. a. of the beginnings of moral philosophy .

introduction

Transcendental pragmatics claims to be a philosophy "which sees itself in a very special way as an answer to the present situation of philosophy" . She still sees this situation as determined by the Kantian questions:

  • What can we know
  • What should we do?

For her, Kant's transcendental philosophical approach is unprecedentedly exemplary, "the attempt to justify philosophy in a reflexive return to the subjective conditions of the possibility of valid knowledge or of free, responsible actions" .

However, the following points would have to be modified from Kant's approach:

  • the narrowing of the subject concept
  • the underestimation of the role of language
  • the thesis of the basically unknowable thing in itself

The subject concept

One can understand transcendental pragmatics in such a way that the transcendental philosophy of Kant is transformed from a “theory of the subject ” into a “theory of intersubjectivity ” (as the sphere of common action). Transcendental pragmatics rejects Kant's view of a rigid, transcendental subject, i.e. H. a (principally solipsistic ) lonely self that can have knowledge independently of communication with others. Transcendental pragmatics, however, emphasizes u. a. with Ludwig Wittgenstein's private language argument that knowledge is only possible within a community of speakers. She would therefore like to come to “richer and more concrete concepts of subject and reason” , combining different approaches such as hermeneutics , the linguistic philosophy of pragmatism (especially by Charles S. Peirce ), Marxism and existential philosophy (especially the philosophy of Martin Heidegger ).

On the one hand, it is necessary that the subject be “drawn at least partially into history, society, social and material practice, and the living environment” . On the other hand, it is important to emphasize that “ a pure (theoretical) consciousness alone cannot make sense of the world” . In order to arrive at a “constitution of meaning”, man must be physically involved in the here and now. Apel therefore speaks of a so-called "Leibapriori" - d. H. the localization of the subject in a real, historical situation and as part of a historically grown speaker community - "that is responsible for the problems of the constitution of meaning and that is realized in bodily interventions in what is to be known, supported by various interests, ie the interests of knowledge" .

The role of language

In the eyes of transcendental pragmatics, the most essential philosophical development in the 20th century was the “ linguistic turn ”, that is, the breakthrough of language-analytical philosophy into the dominant paradigm. The language was thus moved to the place of a decisive subjective prerequisite for knowledge. For transcendental pragmatics, the philosophy of language thus becomes a kind of prima philosophia , so that the question of the conditions of the possibility of reliable knowledge is now transformed and specified to the question of the conditions of the possibility of intersubjectively valid statements about the world . Instead of private facts of consciousness, “publicly accessible structures of signs and language” must now be analyzed.

Transcendental pragmatics is interested in this v. a. for the so-called pragmatic dimension of language, i.e. for what language users do with language and which (sometimes implicit ) prerequisites are made. She was mainly influenced by the speech act theory of Austin and Searle . In every speech act four validity claims are made, which, according to Apel, indicate the intersubjective dimension of language:

  • the intelligibility of the utterance,
  • the truth of their propositional content,
  • the correctness of their normative content,
  • the truthfulness of the speaking subject.

The ultimate reason

Transcendental pragmatics no longer understands synthetic judgments a priori as conditions for the possibility of experience, but as “ necessary preconditions for (philosophical) argumentation” . This is the only way to counter the objection that " one relies on a purely epoch-specific concept of (scientific) experience ... only then can a classic 'transcendental deduction' become a really compelling argument" .

The performative-propositional double structure of human speech discovered by speech act theory is decisive for the theory of the ultimate justification . According to this, all locutionary acts have an illocutionary force, which can be made explicit through “performative phrases” (Austin). According to the “principle of expressibility” (Searle), you can say anything you can think of. In addition to the semantics of the propositions , there is also a semantics of the speech acts. This approach gains importance for the final justification dispute, which was mainly fought out with critical rationalism .

For transcendental pragmatics, the starting point of the ultimate justification is the insight into the "inevitability of the argumentation situation". According to Wolfgang Kuhlmann, every argumentation situation contains the following structure:

“If I assert something, then I (the speaker) say something (predicate) about something (reference object) with something (the proposition), and this in such a way that I make a validity claim (e.g. of truth), first of all vis-à-vis the real communication community (or its representatives, who help to constitute the current conversation situation), but then also vis-à-vis the ideal unlimited communication community (to which I refer as the instance which, unlike the real communication community , is really able to adequately assess the right of my validity claim). If I do not take any of the listed moments into account, then my claim fails and does not do what it should "

Conclusions for ethics

From the analysis of the argumentation situation, transcendental pragmatics u. a. the following ethical standards:

  1. We must not act blindly, but must “try to find the right alternative with a rational argument”.
  2. All practical questions should be "resolved consensually"; H. A sensible consensus should be established, "to which not only everyone involved, but also everyone concerned must be able to agree".
  3. In all doing and leaving it must be about "ensuring the survival of the human species as the real communication community, and secondly about realizing the ideal communication community in the real one".

These and other norms can ultimately be justified from the perspective of transcendental-pragmatic discourse ethics, as they result directly from the universally valid structures of the argumentation. Criticism of the attempt of such a final justification was u. a. voiced by Jürgen Habermas , Hans Albert and Albrecht Wellmer .

See also

literature

  • Karl-Otto Apel: Transformation of Philosophy , 2 vols. Frankfurt a. M., 1976
  • Karl-Otto Apel: The Explanation: Understanding Controversy in a Transcendental-Pragmatic View , Frankfurt a. M. 1979
  • Karl-Otto Apel: Discourse and Responsibility. The problem of the transition to post-conventional morality , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main, 1988, ISBN 3-518-28493-2
  • Karl-Otto Apel: Confrontations in testing the transcendental-pragmatic approach , Frankfurt a. M. 1998
  • Vittorio Hösle : The crisis of the present and the responsibility of philosophy. Transcendental pragmatics, final justification, ethics , 3rd edition Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-39274-1
  • Wolfgang Kuhlmann : Reflexive ultimate justification. Studies on Transcendental Pragmatics , Freiburg / Munich 1985 ISBN 3-495-47568-0
  • Günther Witzany : Transcendental pragmatics and e-sistence. Justification of standards - enforcement of standards , Essen 1991, ISBN 3892063176
  • Andreas Dorschel, Matthias Kettner, Wolfgang Kuhlmann, Marcel Niquet (eds.): Transcendental pragmatics: a symposium for Karl-Otto Apel Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1993. ISBN 3-518-28681-1
  • CF Gethmann : Transzendentalpragmatik , in: Jürgen Mittelstraß (Hrsg.): Encyclopedia Philosophy and Philosophy of Science. 2nd Edition. Volume 8: Th - Z. Stuttgart, Metzler 2018, ISBN 978-3-476-02107-6 , p. 113 f. (detailed bibliography)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 12
  2. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 13
  3. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 15
  4. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 14
  5. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 30
  6. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 31
  7. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 16
  8. ↑ a b Kuhlmann: Reflexive last explanation , p. 309
  9. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 23
  10. ↑ Kuhlmann: Reflexive final justification , p. 28f.
  11. ↑ Including in: Habermas: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action , Frankfurt a. M. 1983, ISBN 3-518-28022-8
  12. ^ Albert: Treatise on critical reason Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen; 5. verb. & exp. Edition 1991; ISBN 3-8252-1609-8 . 1992: ISBN 3-16-145721-8
  13. ^ Wellmer: Ethics and Dialogue . Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1986. ISBN 3-518-28178-X