The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy
Karl-Otto Apel's Semiotics and Discourse Ethics
By (author) Eduardo Mendieta Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University
Publication date:
23 July 2002Length of book:
256 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
232x156mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780742512207
Karl-Otto Apel is one of the most important German philosophers of the 20th century, and is finally coming to be recognized as such. However, his work is still poorly understood and inadequately treated throughout most of the world. In The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy, critical theory scholar Eduardo Mendieta examines the philosophical origins of discourse ethics through the prism of Apel's thought. Mendieta finds that Apel fundamentally transformed German philosophy, which had become stagnant in the years before World War II, and deeply influenced later thinkers such as JYrgen Habermas. Apel's turn toward pragmatism and analytic philosophy helped him bring the concept of a linguistic paradigm shift to Germany.
Mendieta has brilliantly succeeded in bringing to our attention the seminal work of an unjustly neglected master philosopher. His is the only major study of Karl-Otto Apel, a philosopher whose introduction of Peircian pragmatism and Anglo-American philosophy of language into the German academy led to the transformation of an entire tradition of philosophizing. Mendieta's meticulous tracing of Apel's career—including Apel's pioneering development of discourse ethics (before its Habermasian incarnation) and his recent engagement with the Latin American liberation philosopher Enrique Dussel over the problem of globalization—represents a tour de force of scholarship that will likely stand as the leading study of this great thinker for years to come.