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Discourse Ethicsas a Response to the

Novel Challenges of Today'sRealitytoCoresponsibility

Karl-OttoApel / University f Frankfurt

Considering the topic exposed by our present conference, I first tried tofind out what are-or may be-the specifically novel and simultaneouslyimportant aspects of today's reality that may be said to issue a challengeto ethical responsibility. As an answer to this question, I came to identifytwo classes or types of problems, each of which can again be subdividedinto subclasses.

The two main classes of novel problems may be characterized, it seemsto me, as follows. First, there are problems that are completely novel inso far as they are brought about only by the present stage of civilization,that is, of human sociocultural evolution. Second, there are problems thatare not completely novel, as we may recognize finally, but we are broughtto full awareness of their relevance only now, that is, in connection withthe realization of the first class of problems.

In what follows I will first elucidate what I mean by the first class of

problems, which appear to be completely novel in our time. Then, in the

second part of my article, I will try to show that the second class of prob-lems, which are not completely novel, take on a novel quality as a conse-quence of the rise of the first class of problems. Thus, it will turn out thatboth classes of novel problems imply a challenge to ethics to which mostof our current types of philosophical ethics cannot provide a response.Finally, in the third part of my article, I will introduce the transcendental-pragmatic oundation of discourseethics,and I will try to show that it mayeventually provide a response to precisely those challenges that are posed

bythe novel

problemsof

globaljusticeand

coresponsibility that are raisedby our present-day reality.

? 1993 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/93/7304-0002$01.00

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Discourse Ethics

I. NOVEL PROBLEMS OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY THAT HAVE EMERGED IN

OUR TIME AS A RESULT OF SOCIOCULTURAL EVOLUTION

The first type of problems have been brought about, it seems to me,

through interconnected sociocultural processes like the following: On theone hand, there is the constant growth of the range and efficacy of hu-man technological power based on scientific progress. This aspect of evo-

lution, which amounts to a progress in our capacity of increasing the ef-fects and risks of our actions or activities, can of course be furtherdifferentiated into a variety of dimensions: we can make a distinction be-

tween, on the one hand, our interventions into nature-which may be

exemplified by the agricultural revolution or emissions of industry andtraffic-and, on the other hand, technological changes within the realmof human social relationships, ranging from the technology of warfare

through communication technology to the technological rationalizationof organization in administrative bureaucracy and economy.

These latter application fields of social technology may lead our imagi-nation to conceive of quite another dimension of sociocultural evolutionthat also has led to completely novel challenges to moral responsibility.For the applicability of modern technology to the social dimension is in-

terdependent, it seems to me, with the simultaneous process of the so-called differentiation of social life into functional-structuralocialsystems r,

respectively, subsystems, as for example, political administration, law,

economy, education, science, and so on. In order to realize the novel

problems of ethical responsibility that are brought about by this seconddimension of sociocultural evolution, we have first to reflect on the fol-

lowing fact: The human institutions from which the social systemsemerged-as for example, law, exchange by trade, and political power as

a capacity of steering and decision making-have been the main focalpoints throughout history for the formation and differentiation of moralnormsfrom the background of the customs and habits of the life world.But now, I would assert, precisely these institutions, as they have devel-

oped into large and complex functional-structural systems, governed bytheir specific types of systems rationality, have themselves become a novel

type of challenge for our ethical responsibility.For today we have become responsible, not only for the risky effects

and side effects of all the different actions or activities of science-based

technology, but even for the complex institutions or, rather, social systemsthat until now have mainly steered or regulated our professional respon-sibilities. Thus, on the level of a postconventional or posttraditional formof morality, we have become responsible not only for the particular formof government or administration we have-each of us in his or her coun-

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The Journal of Religion

try-but also, somehow, for attempts to organize a global order of inter-national law and political cooperation, and beyond that even a global eco-nomic order that could deal with

problemslike that of

providing justframework conditions of the terms of trade, say, between the first worldof rich countries and the third world of partly extremely poor countries.The same holds with regard to our responsibility for all the technological,economical, and political activities of the national industries and the mul-tinational organizations in the face of the so-called ecological crisis.

Now let us ask provisionally, in what respect do the results of the twokinds of processes I have mentioned issue in completely novel problemsto ethics? Which are the specific features of these problems? I would an-

swer as follows: For the traditional or conventional types of morality, atleast three dimensions of difficulties are linked up with the novel prob-lems I have pointed to.

First, there is the enormous range and scope of those actions or activi-ties that are made possible by science-based technology. Since their effectsand side effects transcend every face-to-face encounter with the affectedhuman persons, it becomes very difficult to compensate for this loss of

proximity to one's fellow human beings, say, through imagining what

they might have to suffer from our actions or activities.

An infamous example, in this context, would be the dropping of atomicbombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; although, from the point of view of

hindsight, it is no longer so difficult to imagine what happened to the

people affected down there in the cities. More difficult than imaginingthe effects of nuclear bombs or rockets appears to me imagining the eco-

logical effects and side effects of industrial emissions into the air or therivers or the ocean, and even this seems to me to be easier for the laymenthan imagining the economic effects and side effects of our ordinary ac-

tions like producing and consuming goods, considered, as it is necessarytoday, within the whole context of the global system of trade, say betweenthe First and the Third Worlds. However, if we have to believe the LatinAmerican representatives of the so-called dependency theory, then thetransactions of trade between the First and the Third Worlds, which aresaid to be regulated by neocolonialist terms of trade, amount to a scandalof unjust exploitation and thus have become the main cause of the impov-erishment of millions of people. I shall come back to this problem later.

For the moment, let us keep in mind that the main global crisis phe-

nomena of the last decades-namely, the threat of a nuclear war, the eco-logical crisis, and the conflict between the First and the Third Worlds-

may in a sense be considered as consequences of the increase of the rangeand scope of our actions or activities, in particular, as consequences of theloss of immediate proximity between the cosubjects of human interaction.

A second aspect of the completely novel problems posed to ethics in

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Discourse Ethics

our day is constituted by the fact that for morally relevant decision mak-

ing we often need scientific knowledge concerning the complex structureof the relevant facts and the

possibleeffects and side effects of our

actionsand sustainable activities. Whereas Immanuel Kant could still say that thedifference between theoretical and practical reason consists in the factthat with regard to morals the common man can always know, by lis-

tening to his inner voice, what he ought to do,1 this can no longer be said,I suggest, on the level of an up-to-date ethics of responsibility for decision

making. What is now characteristic for people in charge of relevant deci-

sions-especially politicians and managers, but also engineers and physi-cians-is that they constantly need the consultation of other experts-of

technicians and natural scientists as well asjuridical, economic, and evenanthropological specialists (say,with regard to developmental politics).

Decision makers in our time need experts in order to assess the circum-stances and consequences of their decisions. But can they in fact rely on

experts? There is a vast range of intricate problems today relating to get-ting reliable expertise in all dimensions of human knowledge, and the

intricacy of these problems is not only due to the many different economi-cal and political interests that are in play but also due to the different

perspectivesand research

paradigmsthat make

upthe

backgroundof

our different scientific disciplines.I will mention here only one field of ethically relevant problems where

I myself as a philosopher have tried to make use of experts in the lastmonths.2 My problem was to come to an ethical assessment of the North-South conflict in development politics, especially regarding the so-calleddebt crises. But I had to realize that, from 1945 on, there were and stillare at least four quite different paradigms of developmental theory in

play-roughly distinguishable as Keynesianism, Neoclassical theory,

pragmatical syncretism, and (mostly on the side of the Latin Americanintellectuals and politicians) dependency theory. According to these dif-ferent approaches, of course, very different answers are given to the

question concerning the reasons or causes of the present poverty of theThird World, and also with regard to the ethically relevant duties and

responsibilities to be assumed by the different countries, ranging fromthe suggestion that everything depends on liberalization of trade and de-mocratization of government (in connection with birth control), up to theverdict that all the economically disastrous

developmentsin the Third

World, including the ecological ones (as e.g., the fire clearing of the tropi-

1 See I. Kant, GrundlegungderMetaphysik erSitten,Akademie-Textausgabe (Berlin: W. deGruyter, 1968), 4:403.

2 See K.-O. Apel, "Diskursethik vor der Herausforderung der 'Philosophie der Befrei-ung': Versuch einer Antwort an Enrique Dussel," Concordia in press).

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The Journal of Religion

cal rain forests) are a consequence of the unjust terms of trade, such that

only a complete transformation of the global order of economy could

help.As far as I can see, the problem situation is very similar, that is, equallycontroversial, in many other fields of responsible decision making, say,with regard to the question of genetic technology, or abortion, or eutha-

nasia, and so on. One important consequence of this situation is the factthat even so-called value-free or value-neutral science, that is, technicallyrelevant natural science, has indirectly, because of its possible practicaleffects, become a matter of the highest ethical responsibility, and this not

only with regard to science-immanent values like methodological care-

fulness and loyalty to the truth but also with regard to the costs and aimsof the very research projects. In addition, new fields of inquiry havealso opened up for the critical-reconstructive social sciences, which, in myopinion, have the task of working into the hands of philosophical ethics

through non-value-neutral reconstructions of current trends of sociocul-tural evolution.3

The third aspect of the difficulties that arise for traditional morals fromthe novel problems of our time is different in kind from the first two

aspects but nevertheless is internally connected with them. What I havein mind is a phenomenon that results from the technicalization of ouractions and activities as well as from the differentiation of the life worldand the life praxis into, or according to, the different functions and orga-nizational structures of the social systems and subsystems I mentionedbefore. The novel quality of the phenomenon I have in mind is consti-tuted by the fact that in our day those actions and activities whose effectsand side effects are most far-reaching and risky are usually not caused

by individual actors. Hence, individual actors in a sense cannot be held

accountable for these actions and activities in the way that individualshave been held responsible for their actions according to traditional mor-als. Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge that we somehow are respons-ible also for the effects of collective activities: for those effects of industrial

technology that have brought about the ecological crisis,4 for example,and for those economical and political activities that may have caused, atleast partially, the crisis of the North-South relationship.

3See K.-O. Apel, "The Common Presuppositions of Hermeneutics and Ethics: Types ofRationality beyond Science and Technology," in Studies n Phenomenologynd theHuman Sci-ences,ed. J. Sallis (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1979), pp. 35-53, "Types of Rationality Today:The Continuum of Reason between Science and Ethics," in RationalityToday, d. T Geraets(Ottawa: University Press, 1979), pp. 307-40, and "The Hermeneutic Dimension of SocialScience and Its Normative Foundations," Man and World25 (1993): 247-70.

4 See K.-O. Apel, "The Ecological Crisis as a Problem for Discourse Ethics," in EcologyandEthics,ed. A. 0fsti (Melbu: Nordland Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1992), pp. 219-60.

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Discourse Ethics

But even if or when we somehow feel responsible, or coresponsible, forthese effects of collective activities, as we may do sometimes while reading

newspapersor

listeningto the

broadcastingmedia or

attending con-gresses, we-that is, the single persons who make up the factor "we"-

may at the same time feel quite powerless in the face of all those problemsI have mentioned.

Now, in this situation somebody-perhaps a conservative or neocon-servative philosopher-may tell us that all this talk about our responsibil-ity for the human ecosphere or the Third World or the like amounts to akind of "hyperethics" or utopism of the "principle of responsibility," andhe may remind us that, according to traditional morals, each person can

be held responsible only for actions he or she can be held accountablefor, that is, actions or activities of whose performance he or she can be in

charge, say, by virtue of his or her status or role within the functionalcontext of a social institution or social system.5 But this answer, I think,would be an escapist one-an answer that obviously could not solve thenovel problems.

It is this type of situation-I want to emphasize-that in my opinionpoints to the deepest layer of the novel problems of responsibility thatare

posed bythe results of those

processesof sociocultural evolution I

have dealt with so far. Hence, the question arises whether we do not actu-

ally need a novel ethics of responsibility. But in posing this question we

may call to mind, by retrospection into the history of practical philosophy,that for a long time there have been institutional devices for dealing withthe problems of collective responsibility, for example, contracts and asso-ciations like the state-under-law and even agreements and associationsbetween states. Is it not a task for these superindividual institutions totake over and to organize the moral responsibility for the effects and side

effects of our far-reaching collective actions and activities in all dimen-sions of our scientific-technological civilization?

Yet, as you will recall, I stated earlier that in our day-that is, on thelevel of a postconventional morality-we have also to bear responsibilityfor our institutions and social systems, even for the international ones.Thus, we now have to enter into the second part of our discussion, inwhich we deal with the question whether the current types of ethics-

especially those dealing with contracts and legal associations-may ormay not cope with the novel

problemsof

responsibilityfor the effects of

collective actions or activities.

5 See Arnold Gehlen, MoralundHypermoral (Frankfurt am Main:Athenaum Verlag, 1973),p. 151, and my discussion of this tenet in K.-O. Apel, "The Problem of a Macroethic ofResponsibility to the Future in the Crisis of Technological Civilization: An Attempt to Cometo Terms with Hans Jonas' 'Principle of Responsibility,"'Man and World20 (1987): 3-40.

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The Journal of Religion

II. THE NOVEL QUALITY OF APPARENTLY OLD PROBLEMS OF COLLECTIVE

RESPONSIBILITY IN OUR TIME AND THE FAILURE OF CURRENT TYPES

OF ETHICS TO COPE WITH THESE PROBLEMS

In a sense it is true that the problems of dealing with the effects of collec-tive actions or activities are not completely novel. For in early days humansocieties coped with these problems by cooperation and associations.

Thus, archaic institutions of collective responsibility came about. Fur-

thermore, since the time of the Greek enlightenment people have

explicitly asked the question as to the ethical-normative foundation ofinstitutions and set themselves the task of grounding institutions, as

for example, even the state and its laws, by lawmakers and/or by con-tracts. Thus, they succeeded in taking over and organizing collective

responsibility.In the modern period, as is well known, very sophisticated philosophi-

cal theories of the social and governmental contract have been developed.And in these theories-in particular, in the classical conception ofThomas Hobbes-a special problem of collective responsibility was posedand to some extent even solved. What I have in mind is the problem ofthe risk faced

bythe individual actors to become the losers in

taking overcoresponsibility for the commonwealth cause, given the nonsolidarity of

competition or even egotistic parasitism of the other actors. The solutionfor this problem, proposed by Thomas Hobbes, consisted of putting re-strictions on everybody's egotistic claims by a social contract in connectionwith a governmental contract which was to ensure the keeping of thesocial contract by the sanctioned power of the sovereign.6

Now, the structural point of this solution to the problem of the risk of

responsible cooperation in a society of competing egoists and potential

parasites was refined by the modern welfare-economical theory of strate-gic games. But this theory made clear as well that Hobbes's solution ofthe problem was by no means a solution of the moral problem just bystrategic means-ends rationality, as Hobbes himself and all his followers

up to J. Buchanan have thought.7 For, from the point of view of strategi-cally rational self-interest, the most rational solution for the individual isnot keeping the contract but taking the parasitic surplus profit from the

6 See K.-O. Apel, "Normative Ethics and Strategical Rationality: The Philosophical Prob-lem of Political Ethics,"in ThePublicRealm:EssaysonDiscursiveTypesn PoliticalPhilosophy, d.R. Schiirmann (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 107-31.

7 See James Buchanan, Freedomn ConstitutionalContract:Perspectivesf a PoliticalEconomist(London: College Station, 1977). See also K.-O. Apel, "Diskursethik als Verantwortung-sethik und das Problem der okonomischen Rationalitat," in SozialphilosophischerundlagenokonomischenHandelns, ed. B. Biervert et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), pp.121-54.

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Discourse Ethics

others' keeping the contract by practicing the method of the "freerider" oneself.

Hence, Hobbes's solution of the problem is at best an amoral solutionof the type that was proposed by Kant with regard to the constitutionof a state-under-law ("Rechtsstaat")for empirical human beings, who-

according to Kant-must be considered to be determined only by selfishmotives. For this empirical problem Kant indeed, as is well known, pro-posed a completely amoral solution following a quasi-Hobbesian inspira-tion. He postulated that the state-under-law should be established andfulfill its function "for a people of devils, if only they would be intel-

ligent."8

I would think, however, that this amoral solution cannot work even inthe best-organized police state precisely for the reason that it is not a

morally relevant solution. For in the best-organized police state for intelli-

gent devils, all the members-including the government and the police-would of course be merely strategic rationalists, that is, devils in the Kant-ian sense. Hence, we would be thrown back to the Hobbesian "state of

nature," where everybody is everybody's wolf. As John Rawls wisely re-marked on the occasion of his own-apparently Hobbesian-proposal ofthe rational choice of the

justsocial order in the

"original position,"the

order of the state cannot function-that is, contracts would not be kept-without the voters' having-in addition to their strategical rationality-a"sense of justice" as "fairness."9Now, if this is true with regard to everystate-under-law where, after all, legal sanctions executed by the policeprovide a deterrent against parasitic behavior, how much more must itbe true with regard to those problems of assuming coresponsibility forthe effects of collective actions I have discussed, addressing the globalproblems of coping with the ecological crisis or the international prob-

lems of a just order of economical exchange between North and South?Thus, we come to realize that the novel problems of taking over and

bearing coresponsibility for the effects and side effects of collective actionsand activities pose an ethical problem that is by no means already solved

by the traditional theories of the social contract, provided they are based

only on the strategic rationality of well-understood self-interest. However,has not John Rawls's theory ofjusticeasfairnessprovided a better basis for

8 I. Kant, ZumewigenFrieden,Akademie Textausgabe (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1968), p.366.

9See J. Rawls, A Theory fJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), sec.25. It is however only in the "Devey-Lectures" of 1980 that Rawls clearly recognized that"it was an error in Theory and a very misleading one) to describe a theory of justice as partof the theory of rational choice", i.e., of a Hobbesian theory of rectaratio as strategical ational-ity. See J. Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy77, no. 9(1980): 515-72. See also my papers on types of rationality, nn. 3, 6, and 7 above.

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The Journal of Religion

the contract theory and thus for our problem of collective responsibility?I think indeed that Rawls's solution is better than the Hobbesian one,

and, in particular, I am an admirer of Rawls's two principles of justice,especially of the second one, which may provide an economically intelli-

gent solution even for the global problem of social justice. Nevertheless,I do not think that Rawls has solved the problem of providing a rational,that is, universally valid, foundation for a global ethics of justice, not to

speak of an ethics of global responsibility. This negative verdict holds, Ibelieve, for two reasons.

The first reason is that Rawls did not succeed in providing a rationalfoundation for the universal validity of his principle of justice as fairness

by taking recourse in the principleofreflectivequilibrium, s he recently hasadmitted himself.'? The second reason, in my opinion, is that Rawls's

theory ofjustice, as before him the whole tradition of abstractdeontologi-cal ethics since Kant, presupposes a point zerosituation for answering the

question of the just social order. Thus, he does not-as little as all his

deontological predecessors-provide an answer to the question how weshould proceed in our concrete historical situation, where everything has

already begun and, at least in part, has gone the wrong way; that is, wherethe

applicationconditions for an ideal

deontological ethics, to a greatextent, are not-or not yet-given. This latter problem, I suggest, is thatof a historically situated ethics of responsibility, especially of political re-

sponsibility, as it has been posed as a problem, at least in certain respects,partly by Max Weber and partly, in our day, by Hans Jonas."l

Let me first try to answer the first question as to why, or in what re-

spect, Rawls did not succeed in providing a rational foundation for his

theory and finally had to give up his original universality claim. Thismuch at least became quite clear to Rawls on retrospection to his opus

magnum that his "original position" of rational choice did not providethe original foundation for his own principle of justice as fairness. Henow saw quite clearly that it was rather the principle of fairness that wasto be grounded ultimately because it made him impose the necessaryconstraints on the original situation of rational choice. But for this ulti-mate foundation he had considered, in his main work, only the "reflectiveequilibrium" between his own commonsense intuitions and those of hisaudience or, respectively, of the voters in the original position. Now, withregard to the commonsense intuitions that entered into the test of re-

'0 See J. Rawls, 'Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical," Philosophy nd PublicAf-fairs 14, no. 3 (1985): 223-51.

l See Max Weber, "Politik als Beruf," in GesammeltepolitischeSchriften(Tiibingen: J. C. B.Mohr, 1958), pp. 493 ff.; and Hans Jonas, Das Prinzip VerantwortungFrankfurt am Main:Insel, 1979).

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Discourse Ethics

acting a reflective equilibrium, Rawls later no longer wished to claim uni-versal validity. He rather admitted-in accordance, I guess, with the cur-

rent mainstream of hermeneutic and communitarian philosophy-thathis fairness intuitions were just an outcome of the Western tradition andits political institutions.12 Statements like these then were interpreted andhailed by Richard Rorty as a remarkable confession of relativistichis-torism.13

Now here, I suggest, we have reached the characteristic aporeticalproblem situation of ethics in our day. On the one hand, we are con-

fronted, for the first time in history, with global problems of humankindas a whole, problems like those of peaceful coexistence of the different

cultures (e.g., of human rights to be acknowledged in all cultures) and,beyond that, problems of responsible cooperation of the different na-

tions, in order to cope with the common crisis problems I have pointedto. All of these problems obviously call for a common, universally validfoundation of an ethics of justice, solidarity, and coresponsibility. On theother hand, however, we are told by some, or even the majority, of ourmost sophisticated philosophers that a rational foundation of a univer-

sally valid ethics is impossible. We are told so by thinkers who went

through the linguistic-pragmatic-hermeneutic turn of contemporary phi-losophy after Wittgenstein and Heidegger and also by those-calledCommunitarians-who rightly recognized that the liberalistic traditionof methodicalsolipsismor individualism,especially that of Hobbes-cannot

provide a basis for solidarity and coresponsibility.14 But the Communitari-ans tell us as well that there is no other (nonindividualistic) basis for soli-

darity or even for reaching a consensus about values or norms exceptour belonging to a particular community and its historical tradition ofsubstantialmorals("substantielle Sittlichkeit") in Hegel's sense.

Now, if this should be the whole message of contemporary ethics, itwould obviously be impossible to provide a binding normative foun-dation for the most urgent ethical problems of humankind in our day.However, is it really true that the linguistic-hermeneutic insights intoour dependence on the "background" of a historically determined pre-understanding of the life world compel us to recognize-along with

12 See J. Rawls, 'Justice as Fairness."13 See R.

Rorty,"The

Priorityof

Democracyto

Philosophy,"in his

Objectivity,Relativism,and Truth(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 175-96. See also my critiqueof this position in K.-O. Apel, Diskursund VerantwortungFrankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,1988), pp. 318 ff. (English trans., New York:Columbia University Press, in press).

14 See K. Baynes, "The Liberal/Communitarian Controversy and Communicative Ethics,"Philosophy nd SocialCriticism14, nos. 3/4 (1988): 293-313; and C. Mouffe, "AmericanLiber-alism and Its Critics: Rawls, Taylor, Sandel, and Walzer,"PraxisInternational,vol. 8, no. 2;and C. Reynolds and R. Norman, eds., Communityn America:TheChallengeof Habitsof theHeart (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).

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Rorty and MacIntyre-that there are no context-transcendent universalcriteria for morality, or that even the rationality of justice is perspectively

anchoredin

our cultural tradition, or that we have no other foundationof consensus formation than the "contingent consensus basis" of our tra-ditional form of life?

Or, furthermore, focusing on the concerns of the Communitarians: is it

really true that transcending the egoistic-strategicalationalityof Hobbesianindividualism or the pure formalismof the Kantian universalizationprin-ciple-that is, using the latter as a testing principle for grounding materialnorms within concrete situations-that all this compels us to rely exclu-

sively on the moral tradition of a particular community? In other words,

is it impossible, or morally illegitimate, for an individual person to playoff his or her autonomy of conscience against the moral authority of hisor her particular community-as was indeed asserted by Hegel with re-

gard to the relationship of the individual conscience to the authority ofone's state?

I do not think that all this is true. I myself have passed through the

linguistic-hermeneutic-pragmatic turn of contemporary philosophy, butI have not found good reasons for completely abandoning the transcen-dental universalismof Kantian

provenience. Hence,I will

tryin the last

part of my discussion to introduce a pertinent response to the challengeI have exposed-a response that I call discourse thics n a transcendental-

pragmatickey.15

III. THE TRANSCENDENTAL-PRAGMATIC FOUNDATION OF DISCOURSE

ETHICS AS A RESPONSE TO THE GLOBAL PROBLEMS OF JUSTICE AND

CORESPONSIBILITY

In what follows I will try to show that discourse ethics in a transcendental-

pragmatic key is a postmetaphysical transformation of Kantian ethics that

may fulfill three different tasks.

First, it has to provide a rational foundation of its universal validitywithout making use of the traditional type of grounding through deriv-

ing something from something else, that is, through deduction, induc-

15See K.-O. Apel, Towards Transformationf Philosophy(London: Routledge & KeganPaul, 1980), Diskursund Verantwortung,nd "The Problem of a Universalistic Macroethicsof Co-responsibility," in WhatRight Does EthicsHave? ed. S. Griffioen (Amsterdam: VrijeUniversiteit Press, 1990), pp. 23-40. For my relationship to Jurgen Habermas's closely re-lated conception of discourse ethics, see K.-O. Apel, "Normatively Grounding 'CriticalThe-ory' through Recourse to the Lifeworld? A Transcendental-Pragmatic Attempt to Thinkwith Habermas against Habermas," in Philosophical nterventionsn the UnfinishedProjectofEnlightenment, d. A. Honneth et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 125-70.

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tion, or abduction. Instead, it makes use of a transcendental-reflexive andcommunicative rationality of grounding.16

Second,it has to

providea foundation not

onlyfor an ethics of

globaljustice and solidarity but also for an ethics of coresponsibility beyond the

individually accountable responsibility we suppose within the functionalcontext of institutions or social systems. It has indeed to provide a foun-dation for everybody's coresponsibility on the level of those discourses ofa communication community that must fulfill the function of a metainsti-tution with regard to all human institutions and functional-structural sys-tems. This transcendental-pragmatic conception of coresponsibility, I

think, should be the most characteristic novel feature of discourse

ethics.17

Third, it is from this feature of coresponsibility that the fulfillment of athird task of the transcendental-pragmatic foundation of discourse ethicsalso has to originate. It is the delicate task, which I mentioned already, of

providing a regulative principle for acting or decision making in thosesituations in which we have to mediate between ethical and strategic ra-

tionality because, in our historical situation, the applicability conditionsfor pure discourse ethics are not, or not yet, given.'8 I refer to this thirdtask as

partB of ethics.

The FirstTaskof DiscourseEthics

Turning now to the first point, I have in a sense to deal with the ultimatefoundation of part A and part B of discourse thics.This will become clearfrom the following arguments.

The noncircumventible presupposition for a strictly philosophical re-flection that is, in a sense, the "original situation" of the transcendental-

pragmatic approach to theoretical and practical philosophy, in my opin-ion, is just the situationof arguing. I do not say the situation of the I am

thinking,as Descartes, Kant, and still Husserl used to say,but I say arguing,and I thereby necessarily include certain features that transcend the tran-scendental or methodical solipsism of the classical philosophy of con-sciousness,19 and precisely these additional features make it possible to

provide an ultimate foundation for ethics, that is, a deciphering of the

16 See K.-O. Apel, "The Problem of Philosophical Fundamental Grounding in Light of a

Transcendental Pragmatic of Language," Man and World8, no. 3 (1975): 239-75, reprintedin K. Baynes, J. Bohman, and T. McCarthy, eds., AfterPhilosophy:End or Transformation?(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 250-90.

17 See my papers, quoted in nn. 4 and 5 above.18 See K.-O. Apel, Diskursund Verantwortung.19See K.-O. Apel, "The Transcendental Conception of Language-Communication and

the Idea of First Philosophy," in Historyof LinguisticThoughtand Contemporaryinguistics,ed.H. Parret (Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter, 1975), pp. 32-61, and "Transcendental

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Kantian "fact of (practical) reason." By way of strict reflection on my ar-

guing, I find myself already a working member of a communication com-

munity or, more precisely, of a particular real communication communityand, at the same time, of a counterfactually supposed and even antici-

pated indefinite ideal communication community.Why have I to presuppose both a real and an ideal communication

community? The answer of a correct transcendental-pragmatic reflectionis because I am, on the one hand, an empirical human being that, byusing a certain language, must belong to a particular community, and

nevertheless, by using arguments with universal validity claims, must onthe other hand transcend every particular community and anticipate the

judgment of an indefinite ideal audience, which alone could be able to

definitely understand and evaluate my universal validity claims. And Imust even address the real audience in a way as if it already representedthe ideal one. This fact, I emphasize, is confirmed by any phenomenonof serious arguing, especially by the arguing of somebody who-like a

skeptic or relativist-denies it through his argument and thus by his uni-versal validity claim commits a performative self-contradiction.

Now, I suggest, this dialectical double structure of the community pre-

supposition, which through strict and thorough reflection is found to bean undeniable prestructure of any serious arguing, provides the solutionto the aporetics of communitarianism and of relativistic hermeneutics.For I now can realize that, on the one hand, I can and must accept allthe arguments of the linguistic-hermeneutic-pragmatic turn concerningmy belonging to a particular community and my dependence on a histor-

ically determined preunderstanding of the life world, including normsand values. But, on the other hand, I can realize as well that, as an arguer,I must not only connect my thought with a contingent tradition of dis-

course and consensus formation, but also take recourse to certain non-contingent presuppositions of the post-Enlightenment metainstitution of

argumentative discourse, through which every contingent backgroundpresupposition of the life world and its traditions can be called into ques-tion. For if this radical questioning of particular traditions could not be

accomplished in principle, we would not even be troubled by the prob-lems of relativismand historism.Now, which are the noncontingent presup-positions of argumentative discourse I have in mind?

Ithink-roughly along

withJ.

Habermas20-that there are four such

Semiotics and the Paradigms of First Philosophy," PhilosophicExchange, 2, no. 4 (1978):3-22.

20 See J. Habermas, "WhatIs Universal Pragmatics?"in his Communication ndtheEvolutionof Society(Boston: Beacon, 1979), and The Theoryof Communicative ction (Boston: Beacon,1987), vol. 1, chap. 3.

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Discourse Ethics

necessary presuppositions, all of which are implied in the fundamentalclaim of each argument to reach toward a consensus-if only in the long

run-with every possible member of the ideal communication commu-nity. The four presuppositions of consensus formation by argument maybe very roughly characterized as follows:

1) the claim to sharing an intersubjectively valid meaning with mypartners;

2) the claim to truthas claim for a virtually universal consent;3) the claim to truthfulness r sincerityof my speech acts taken as expres-

sions of my intentions; and

4) the claim to the morallyrelevantrightnessof my speech acts, takenas communicative actions in the broadest sense of addressing possiblecommunication partners.

Now, it is especially the fourth claim that is important in our context.It implies, so to speak, the ethics of an ideal communication community.And this is what I call partA of discourse ethics (which in a sense is the

postmetaphysical transformation of Kant's metaphysical ethics of therealm of

ends, i.e.,of the

communityof

purereasonable

beings). PartBof discourse ethics has later to be derived from the fact that the idealcommunication community, after all, does not exist in the real world butis merely a counterfactual anticipation and a postulate or regulative prin-ciple.

Roughly analyzed, the ideal communication ethics implies that all pos-sible partners have equal rights and equal coresponsibility for and in solv-

ing all possible problems the life world could pose to the discourse com-

munity, that is, for solving them only by arguments and not by open or

concealed violence. If somebody-say, an adolescent who has read toomuch Nietzsche-would ask the radical post-Enlightenment question,"Why should I be moral, for example, by assuming coresponsibility? Isthere a good reason-a rational foundation-for this?" then the answercould be, if you are asking seriously, then you have the answer. For youcan find out through radical reflection on the presuppositions of yourdoing that you have already taken over coresponsibility on the level of

argumentative discourse and thus have acknowledged the fundamentalnorms of the ideal communication

communityI have outlined.

This, of course, does not mean that certain material, situation-relatednorms of action have already been acknowledged. On the contrary,having acknowledged the fundamental norms of an ideal communi-cation community means precisely that concrete solutions of situation-related moral problems ought not to be anticipated at the level of the

transcendental-pragmatic foundation. Philosophy should not deduce

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concrete solutions from axiomatic principles as was postulated by classical

metaphysical rationalism; concrete solutions to moral problems rathershould be

delegatedto the

practicaldiscourse of the

peopleaffected or-

substitutionally, if necessary-of their advocates. However, there shouldbe an institutionalization of practical discourses for the solution of all con-troversial problems of social justice and responsibility on a global scale;this is indeed a direct postulate of our transcendental-pragmatic founda-tion of discourse ethics.

This means that discourse ethics is initially formal and procedural, butit does not mean-as certain people say-that its principles are without

any substantial content. For it is quite clear which regulative principles

are prescribed for the institutionalization and the carrying through ofpractical discourses about norms. Hence, the discursive transfer of thecontent of the fundamental norms to the winning of the material normsis ensured by discourse ethics-in contradistinction to what older typesof formal, deontological ethics can provide.

It is, furthermore, clear as well which restrictions or constraints are puton the life praxis and the values of the different individual and sociocul-tural forms of life. For, on the one hand, the fundamental norms of dis-course ethics do not prescribe the specific form of self-realization, or of

striving for a good life or happiness. On the contrary, they prescribe tol-erance and protection of the existing plurality of forms of life. On theother hand, however, discourse ethics prescribes indeed that all particu-lar individuals and sociocultural forms of life subject their morally rele-vant decisions and evaluations to those discourses-in foro internoorforoexterno-that bring to bear the priority of the universally valid norms of

justice and coresponsibility with regard to common problems of hu-mankind.

Bythis last sic

et non answer to the Neoaristotelian claims of an ethicsof the good life, discourse ethics, I would claim, again provides a solutionto an apparent dilemma of contemporary ethics. For it shows that playingoff universalism of fundamental norms and pluralism of life forms againsteach other-as is done, for example, by M. Foucault andJ. F Lyotard21-amounts to creating a pseudoproblem.

TheSecondTaskof DiscourseEthics

By my derivation of the fundamental norm of coresponsibility from thetranscendental-pragmatic reflection on seriously asking questions, I havealso prepared my answer to the second point of this last part of my discus-

21 See K.-O. Apel, "Der postkantische Universalismus in der Ethik im Lichte seiner ak-tuellen Mipverstandnisse," in Diskursund Verantwortung.

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sion, which, as I announced, concerns the most characteristic novel fea-ture of discourse ethics. In the preceding, I have intimated several times

that the traditional concept of responsibility, which is related to individu-ally accountable duties, especially within the functional context of institu-tions or social systems, cannot be adequately applied to the novel dutiesof collective responsibility which we human beings bear today. To illus-trate this, I pointed to the feeling of powerlessness that may overcomeand paralyze the single individual if he or she tries to take over, in a

personally accountable way, responsibility for what we have to collectivelyinitiate and organize in order to cope with the phenomena of global crisis.

I think that on the level of argumentative discourse, which is indeed

the metainstitutional level with regard to all institutions, conventions,contracts, and even functional-structural social systems,22we-that is, ev-

ery member of the argumentation community-have indeed acknowl-

edged a kind of responsibility-or, rather, coresponsibility-that a priorijoins us together through its grounding in an original solidarity with allthe other possible members of the argumentation community. This origi-nal solidarity of coresponsibility relieves single persons of being overbur-dened without allowing them to shirk their part of responsibility by wayof

escapismor even

parasitism.Now, how should we conceive the transfer of the original coresponsibil-ity, by means of practical discourses, toward solution of the concrete prob-lems of our time-say, of the ecological crisis or of the North-South crisisof economic relationships?

To be sure, at the end of this line of transfer there will always be person-ally accountable duties, but this is not the characteristic part of the trans-fer that is suggested and regulated by discourse ethics. The characteristicnovel task of discursively organizing and practicing coresponsibility for

complex actions or activities has rather to be fulfilled in our day by thegrowing worldwide network of formal or informal dialogues and confer-ences, commissions, and boards on all levels of national and especiallyinternational politics, including of course economical, cultural, and edu-cational politics. And it seems clear that the function of these means andmedia of discursively organizing humankind's collective responsibility is

nothing else than a generalization and projection of the function of democ-

racy-inasfar as democracy in its essence can be grounded by discourseethics.

This discourse-ethical interpretation and legitimation of democracy aswell as of the thousand dialogues and conferences about public problemsin our day is at least possible and indeed widely accepted. This fact is

22 See N. Luhmann, SozialeSysteme:Grundrif3 inerallgemeinenTheorie Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp, 1984).

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testified to by the following phenomenon. We know of course that thethousand conferences of our time are no ideal practical discourses-as

little as are most parliamentary debates. That is to say, we know verywell that most conferences have rather the character of negotiations or

bargainings between interest groups. Nevertheless, it is interesting to ob-serve that in the glare of publicity all of these conferences and debatesmust at least pretend that they are dealing with their problems by reason-able arguments and that they are representing thereby the interests of all

people affected. This phenomenon is of course an occasion for inquiryand analysis in the light of discourse theory; but, I suggest, it is an occa-sion not only for ironic smiling but also for a certain feeling of satisfaction.

For there is no other way of organizing the collective responsibility forthe effects of our collective activities than through the network of dia-

logues and conferences.

TheThirdTaskof DiscourseEthics

Nevertheless, the last mentioned problem of the ambiguity and ethicalambivalence of the structure and function of human communication-ofits

veryinstitutions and

media-shows us that there is a third problem ofdiscourse ethics as of any other type of principled ethics-a problem thatI announced in the preceding. There is the unpleasant fact that in ourreal life world the applicability conditions for discourse ethics are not, or,respectively, not yet, given or realized. In a sense this fact is trivial, andat any rate it cannot be taken as a principled objection against a deonto-

logical ethics as is sometimes done. Still, a really serious problem for anethics of responsibility is left; it is a problem that is very often ignored oreven suppressed by professional ethics: for discourse ethics it is the prob-

lem of how to proceed in those situations where it would not be reason-able and hence responsible to rely on the possibility of a discursive solu-tion to given problems, say, to conflicts.

I am not speaking here of exceptional situations, which in traditionalethics are considered as cases for "phronesis" (Aristotle) or "Urteilskraft"

("facultyofjudgment" in the Kantian sense). I am rather talking of thosecases where the general conditions for people's following moral normsare not given: for example, where the state-under-law has not yet beenestablished or does not function. This is the

given situation not onlywithin many countries of our world but also and especially on the levelof international relationships. Thus, the chances of a discursive settle-ment of the ecological problems or of the problems of a just economicworld order are seriously impaired by those conditions I have in mind.

Now, I do not think that the foundation of discourse ethics that I sug-gested in the preceding loses its universal validity in these situations or

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because of their existence. But I think indeed that the foundation of partA, which was oriented toward the conditions of an ideal communication

community, now has to be supplemented by a part B, which explicitlyrelates to the fact that within the real human community the conditionsof the ideal one are not (or not yet) realized but only, indeed, anticipatedby ethical reason. The main features of the supplementation that is now

required are the following (though I can only give a very insufficientoutline of them in the present context).

1. The strict separation between instrumental-strategicalnd consensual-

communicative, hat is, discourse-ethical, rationality of action cannot bemaintained in part B of ethics. Instead, we now need ways or methods of

mediatingbetween them-say, for example, according to the rule of seek-ing as much advance, in the sense of relying on discourse, as can be an-swered for in the face of the risk, and as many strategical provisos as are

required by our very responsibility for the forseeable consequences ofour actions.

2. Whereas this first principle of part B amounts to a deviation fromthe ideal principle of part A, the second principle in a sense has to com-

pensate for the problematic implications of the first one. It demands thatour mediations of

strategicaland consensual-communicative

rationalityof acting should not only stand in the service of actually effective crisis

management. They should moreover be motivated by the regulativeprinciple of contributing to a change in the human reality-a change,that is, toward realizing the applicability conditions for discourse ethics

or, in other words, toward realizing the ideal communication communitywithin the real one.

It remains to be said that both regulative principles of part B of dis-course ethics can be derived from the dialectical double structure of its

foundation and, furthermore, that even the first principle demands thatour deviations from the ideal discourse principle in favor of strategic ac-tion must be capable of being consented to by the members of an idealcommunication community, who could be supposed to be able to putthemselves into the difficult situations of all actors under the conditionsof part B.

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