TOWARDS A TRANSFORMATION OF PoncaKARL-OTTO APEL TOWARDS A TRANSFORMATION OF PHILOSOPHY TRANSLATED BY GLYN ADEY AND DAVID FISBY FOREWORD BY POL VANDEVELDE MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESSBy arrangement with Suhrkamp Verlag, this is a reprint, with a new Foreword by Pol Vandevelde, of the English translation of Transformation der Philosophie (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1972, 1973) first published in 1980 by Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd. Marquette Studies in Philosophy No. 20 Andrew Tallon, Series Editor All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher, except for quotation of brief passages in scholarly books, articles, and reviews. Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Apel, Karl-Otto. [Transformation der Philosophie. English. Selections] Towards a transformation of philosophy / Karl-Otto Apel ; translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby ; foreword by Pol Vandevelde. p.cm. — (Marquette studies in philosophy ; #20) Originally published: London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, in series: International library of phenomenology and moral sciences. With new foreword. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87462-619-6 1. Philosophy, Modern—20th century. 2. Analysis (Philosophy) 3. Semantics (Philosophy) I. Title. II. Series. B3199.A633T73213 1998 149'.94—dc2l 98-8230 MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS MILWAUKEE The Association of Jesuit University Presses MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS MILWAUKEE WISCONSIN USA 1998Contents Acknowledgments vii Preface to the English edition ix Foreword: “The A Priori of Language in Apel’s Transcendental Philosophy,” by Pol Vandevelde xii 1—Wittgenstein and the problem of hermeneutic understanding 1 2—Scientistics, hermeneutics and the critique of ideology: outline of a theory of science from a cognitive-anthropological standpoint 46 3—From Kant to Peirce: the semiotical transformation of transcen- dental logic 77 4—Scientism or transcendental hermeneutics? on the question of the subject of the interpretation of signs in the semiotics of pragmatism 93 5—The communication community as the transcendental presuppo- sition for the social sciences 136 6—Noam Chomsky's theory of language and contemporary philoso- phy: a case study in the philosophy of science 180 7—The apriori of the communication community and the founda- tions of ethics: the problem of a rational foundation of ethics in the scientific age 225 Bibliography 301 Index of names 306ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We wish to thank Professor Apel for his helpful comments on the translation and Pru Larsen for typing the manuscript. Chapter 3 appears in Karl-Otto Apel’s own version as published in L. W. Beck (ed.), Transactions of the Third International Kant Conference, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1972, pp. 90-104, by permission of the original publisher. Glyn Adey (Frankfurt) David Frisby (Glasgow)PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION The essays presented in this volume have been selected from my two-volume German collection that was published in 1973 under the title Transformation der Philosophie. The German title was intended to be ambiguous in that it referred both to a hermeneutic reconstruction of the process of transformation in recent philosophy and to an outline of the author’s programme of a transformation of (transcendental) philosophy along the lines of a transcendental hermeneutics or transcendental pragmatics of language. The present selection which focuses mainly on the second volume of my German collection is more representative for the second meaning of the original title. Consequently , it does not testify so much to my historical-hermeneutic starting-point within a Heideggerian per- spective as to my later attempts to develop a systematic approach through a confrontation with the philosophy of language that is predominant in the English-speaking world. My German edition of selected writings by C. S. Peirce (Schriften I und II, Frankfurt, 1967 and 1970) and my book Der Denkweg von Charles S. Peirce (Frankfurt, 1975) may be regarded as a parallel attempt in this context. Of course, there was also a permanent exchange with recent currents of thought in Germany e.g. with the Erlangen school, and especially with my friend Jirgen Habermas. Since 1973, I have elaborated upon the programme of a trans- cendental pragmatics, which was outlined in the later essays of the present volume, from several perspectives. One of these is characterized by a controversy — still in progress — with Hans Albert, about the ‘Problem of Philosophical Fundamental Grounding in the ixPreface to the English Edition Light of a Transcendental Pragmatics of Language’ (Man and World, 18, 1975, pp. 239-75; cf. Hans Albert, Transzendentale Tradumereien, Hamburg, 1975). Another perspective is marked by my attempt at a transcendental-pragmatic re-interpretation or transformation of John Searle’s speech act theory in my essay ‘Sprechakttheorie und transzendentale Sprachpragmatik zur Frage ethischer Normen’ (in K.-O. Apel (ed.), Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie, Frankfurt, 1976, pp. 10-173, where Habermas’s slightly different programme of ‘universal pragmatics’ (Universal- pragmatik) is also presented, ibid., pp. 174-272). A third per- spective focuses on a further elaboration of the conception of a differentiated (trichotomous) philosophy of science that is outlined in this volume in the essay ‘Scientistics, hermeneutics and the critique of ideology’. This is documented by my papers ‘The a priori of Communication and the Foundation of the Humanities’ (Man and World, 5, 1972, pp. 3-37), and ‘Types of Social Science in the Light of Human Interests of Knowledge’ (Social Research, 44, 1977, pp. 425-70; reprinted in S. Brown (ed.), Philosophical Disputes in the Social Sciences, Hassocks, Sussex, 1979), and finally by my critical discussion of Georg Hendrik von Wright and the critics of post-Wittgensteinian ‘New Dualism’ in my book Die Erklaren- Verstehen-Kontroverse in transzendentalphilosophischer Sicht (Frankfurt, forthcoming). Finally, I would like to mention my attempt to integrate the conception of a transcendental pragmatics of language into that of a transcendental semiotics which is con- sidered as a new (third) paradigm of First Philosophy (after pre- Kantian ontology and the post-Kantian transcendental philosophy of consciousness). I first outlined this project in my papers ‘Zur Idee einer transzendentalen Sprachpragmatik’, in J. Simon (ed.), Aspekte und Probleme der Sprachphilosophie, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1974, pp. 283-326 and ‘The Transcendental Conception of Language-Communication and the Idea of First Philosophy’, in H. Parret (ed.), History of Linguistic Thought and Contemporary Linguistics, Berlin and New York, 1975, pp. 32-61. The first part of an envisaged elaboration will appear in Philosophic Exchange under the title ‘Transcendental Semiotics and the Paradigm of First Philosophy’. At this point, I wish to express my thanks to the publishers and to the translators for their efforts in presenting these essays in English. In going over the English text, I have occasionally allowed myself to xPreface to the English Edition add new footnotes and to reformulate or supplement the original wording for the sake of clarity. Frankfurt am Main Karl-Otto Apel July 1978 xiForeword The A Priori of Language in Apel’s Transcendental Philosophy Pol Vandevelde Marquette University Karl-Otto Apel has often been associated with Jiirgen Habermas and, together, they have been considered to be the main representa- tives of critical theory. Although not entirely inaccurate, this charac- terization does not do justice to Apel’s specific project and it seems to have somewhat hampered the reception of his thought in the United States. The publication of two volumes of selected essays by the Hu- manities Press, edited by Eduardo Mendieta (Apel 1994, Apel 1996) as well as the present reprint of Towards a Transformation of Philoso- phy (Apel 1998) should contribute to the dissemination of his origi- nal theses and commentaries. In 1973 Apel published a collection of articles and papers under the general title Transformation der Philosophie (Apel 1973). The texts are organized in two parts, each constituting a distinct volume. The first volume, subtitled Sprachanalytik, Semiotik, Hermeneutik, is dedi- cated to a discussion of how contemporary philosophy has been trans- formed by the emphasis put on language. The second volume, with the subtitle Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft more spe- cifically presents Apel’s own transformation of philosophy by claim- ing for language analysis the status of a first philosophy as a founda- tion for any rational human enterprise. All of the texts reprinted in this volume are taken from the second volume, except the first one, “Wittgenstein and the Problem of Understanding,” which is taken from the first volume. As Apel himself notes in his preface, the expression “Transforma- tion of Philosophy” bears an ambiguity, naming both a change that took place in the development of philosophy as well as Apel’s own systematic project. As a historical approach the title characterizes the transformation that philosophy has undergone in 20" century phi- losophy through an emphasis on the mediation and the configuring power of language. Apel focuses on three main currents, represented by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Peirce. The first Wittgenstein in thexiv * Vandevelde Foreword Tractatus, who is at the origin of analytic philosophy, ascribes to lan- guage the function of mirroring the logical structure of the world. The theory of language games of the second Wittgenstein, especially in the Philosophical Investigations, considers the use of language as intermingled with a form of life. Heidegger represents the second current: a reformulation of philosophy in the form of a radicalized hermeneutics which is the culmination of phenomenology allied with traditional hermeneutics. Being and Time shows that every human project is made possible by a pre-understanding which is anchored in discourse. After Being and Time Heidegger engages in an investiga- tion of the Western tradition and a meditation on the resources of language, especially through poetry. The third current can be put under the name of Peirce who is the founder of American pragma- tism. By stressing the uncircumventable mediation of signs, Peirce’s pragmatism opens the way for a semiotic philosophy. American prag- matism somehow leads to a convergence between the analytic tradi- tion opened by Wittgenstein and the continental approach marked by Heidegger. Apel sees in Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science an illustration of such a convergence. The title Transformation of Philosophy also characterizes Apel’s own genuine contribution to philosophy: a systematic reformulation of philosophical investigation in terms of a transcendental semiotics. This twofold approach, historical and systematic, which has become Apel’s philosophical style, is called a “reconstruction.” Apel presents his views through many lengthy and minute discussions with a host of philosophers or social scientists. This method of reconstructing the thoughts of other thinkers has two main advantages for Apel’s particular project. Firstly, his reconstruction is not a paraphrase or a mere commentary. He reads those philosophical projects from the vantage point of his own questions dealing with the semiotic dimen- sion of any human endeavor, so that his criticisms shed light on some problematic elements in those philosophical projects. Secondly, the critique uses the authors discussed as a background or a springboard. Apel can then articulates his own thesis in contradistinction to the alternative models he criticizes as well as through the reconstruction of his project that he indirectly offers. Let us mention here that the critical comparisons Apel offers rep- resent one of his major contributions to contemporary philosophy, at least in two ways. Firstly, he was one of the first to show clearly and meaningfully a convergence between some representatives of the two main trends of the 20" century, analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. Secondly, he was also one of the first pioneers openingVandevelde Foreword *® xv the space of philosophical discussion to fruitful encounters between trends that comfortably tended to ignore each other. New bridges were made that opened new avenues for many younger philosophers cognizant of Apel’s enterprise. It is not our goal to offer a general introduction to Apel’s thought. We modestly would like to offer a very general reconstruction of his attempt to transform philosophy into a transcendental semiotic phi- losophy. We cannot here do justice to all of the essays reprinted in the present volume nor address the evolution of Apel’s thinking to- ward an ethics of discourse which represents the complement of the epistemological transcendental project described in the present vol- ume. As a reconstruction and in the hope of bringing to the fore Apel’s genuine contribution, we will borrow his philosophical style— expanding some points on which he did not elaborate and using some sources to which he did not himself have recourse. I. A semiotic transformation of philosophy: Language as a priori Apel believes that he can reconstruct the history of philosophy in the light of language philosophy (see, especially, Apel 1994, 83-111, 112-131) and show that language analysis has taken the role of a first philosophy in the 20" century. In the history of philosophy we can find at least three paradigms of how first philosophy has been under- stood. For Aristotle first philosophy is seen as an analysis of the es- sence of things and rests on an ontology. In the trichotomy that Aristotle makes in his treatise On Interpretation between things (pragmata), mental representations (pathemata), and voices (phone), the first element is both the starting point of any investigation as well as the #elos of rational representation. Despite numerous debates on the status of words, such as in Plato’s Cratylus, or figures of speech, in several Aristotelian treatises, Greek Philosophy in general does not seem to have manifested a keen interest in elaborating a specific con- ception of language that would include more than sounds or signs or would perform a task greater than communication. Only with the Romans, and through the reflection and the practice of translation, Apel claims, does the /ingua Latina come to represent the specificity ofa natural language. Such a bracketing of the specificity of a natural language might explain the fact that Aristotle's trichotomy was rather understood as a dichotomy between things and thoughts and fo- cused philosophical debate on how things can be known. What lies at the core of Greek philosophical reflection is a concern for con- cepts—whether they are extralinguistic like Plato’s ideas or whetherxvi * Vandevelde Foreword they are the affection of the soul in the sense of Aristotle’s pathemata. Apel sees the tendency of Greek philosophy to abstract from linguis- tic mediation as an attempt to safeguard conceptual representations and to guarantee communication: thoughts are preserved by con- cepts and are thus not altered when conveyed in words, since words are mere vectors. Apel sees such a step as a crucial one for philosophy, representing the threshold of rationality. The second paradigm of first philosophy appears with Descartes. Philosophy defines itself as an analysis of consciousness, seemingly inverting the Greek emphasis on things. The fundamental presuppo- sition of this second paradigm is that a private internal experience can be the criterion for what is certain or what is evident. “What is certain {...] is not the existence of things or people in the external world, but only the fact that I, here and now, believe I perceive some- thing” (Apel 1991, 29. Our translation). External things are thus the inferences I draw from my representations immanent in conscious- ness. With significant reformulations, Kant brought this second para- digm to its completion, a completion with a critical epistemology understood as a transcendental philosophy. This second paradigm gives philosophical discourse its status as a critique of any other dis- course as well as its foundation in an ego that is not itself interpre- tive. This epistemological approach nicely complements the onto- logical Greek approach. A third paradigm of first philosophy appears with the arising of analytic philosophy, on the one hand, and with the development of continental hermeneutic philosophy, on the other. First philosophy becomes an analysis of language as a semiotics in the sense that “lan- guage is the crucial condition for the possibility and validity of our knowledge of the structure of the world” (Apel 1994, 83). In this respect Apel sees a convergence between the early Wittgenstein’s claim that philosophy is a critique of language or that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” and Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms or Heidegger’s view of language as the “house of be- ing.” Pragmatism served as a mediation in this convergence. Situating himself in the third paradigm, Apel attempts both to radicalize it as well as to integrate the other two paradigms. Against the Greek approach, Apel takes sides with Kant who reformulates Aristotle by putting the focus on the conditions of the possibility for thoughts. Against Kant, however, Apel shows some sympathy for Hamann and Herder, Kant’s contemporary critics, as well as for Wilhelm von Humboldt. To a certain extent he agrees with Hamann who wrote that “Without language we would have no reason”Vandevelde Foreword * xvii (“Metakritik iiber den Purismus der Vernunft,” in Samtliche Werke, ed. J. Nadler, vol. 3, [Vienna, 1949-57], 231, cited in Apel 1994, 93) or that “reason is language, namely /ogos” (Letter to Herder of 10 August 1784, in Schriften, ed. F. Roth, vol. 7 [Berlin, 1821-25], cited in Apel 94, 93). Similarly, Apel resonates with Humboldt’s view of language as “an intellectual instinct of reason” (“Uber das vergleichende Sprachstudium,” in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften [Berlin, 1903-36], vol. 4, 14 sq., cited in Apel 1994, 94). Along with these authors Apel wants to show that we cannot abstract from the linguistic nature of concepts. However, against these critics and against some tendencies in hermeneutics, Apel claims that such a recognition of the a priori of language does not mean a reduction of concepts to a specific linguistic system. By endorsing this third paradigm of first philosophy, Apel transforms philosophy into a semiotic philosophy and, by radicalizing it, he at- tempts to maintain a transcendental aspect. As mentioned above, American pragmatism has served as a media- tion in the convergence between analytic philosophy and continen- tal hermeneutic philosophy. In his semiotic transformation of phi- losophy, Apel draws heavily from a theory of semiosis that Morris and Peirce made central in their works. According to Morris’ notion of semiosis, a sign has the following triadic structure: a syntactic struc- ture linking signs together, a semantic structure linking a sign to a real denotatum and a pragmatic structure linking a sign to its user. Things, or the world in general, are only meaningful to humans once they can be organized through this triadic schema: any understand- ing of things has to be mediated by signs. In this sense, thoughts are semiotic in nature. Following Peirce, who is to be credited for dis- covering the pragmatic dimension of the sign function, cognition is “an interpretation of something as something which must be medi- ated through signs” (Apel 1998, 101). Apel joins Peirce in drawing three consequences from the triple sign relationship: 1) Every knowledge of something as something involves the mediation of material sign vehicles; 2) For signs to have a representational function for a consciousness, the existence of a real world must be presupposed; such a real world, in principle, must be thought of as being representable, and that means knowable, in vari- Ous respects—this is analogous to Searle’s claim that the existence of the world is a commitment, not the object of a theory (Searle 1983, 158 sq.); 3) Every representation of something as something by a Sign involves an interpretation by a real interpreter.xviii * Vandevelde Foreword Although relying on the theory of semiosis presented above for the Most crucial aspects of his thought, Apel significantly reformulates it by making the third structure—the pragmatic level—the axis of the whole triadic structure. He purports to show that the system of a specific language in its syntactic and semantic structure is embedded in the pragmatics of the communication that obtains in the commu- nity speaking the language. The fact that thoughts or the understanding of things cannot be identified or articulated without linguistic vectors does not, accord- ing to Apel, entail that thoughts or the understanding of things are confined to such vectors. What might lead one to believe that natu- ral languages represent as many world views or, on the other side of the intellectual spectrum, that scientists deal directly with the real world, is the ambiguity of the semantic dimension: ‘semantics’ can name both a constitutive part of a linguistic system and the mean- ingful articulation of the real world. In the first sense, ‘semantics’ means the abstract dimension of a language-system that allows one to designate objects within the framework opened by this system. To the extent that it is an internal component of a system, this kind of semantics can be reduced to syntax. In the second sense, ‘semantics’ means the pragmatically integrated dimension where the designated objects—designated within the system—are linked to real objects in the world. Semantics in this second sense is linked to a pragmatics. If we use the term ‘reference’ to indicate the link between language and the world that was indicated by the term denotatum above, ‘ref- erence’ has a two-pronged aspect: the first referential component deals with the specific way a particular linguistic system can ‘designate’ and the second referential component concerns the way objects in the world (or actions) can be ‘denoted.’ The designatum, which is an internal component of a particular linguistic system, should not be confused with the denotatum, the object that has been identified in the real world. Naturally, Apel does not claim that the denotatum can be identified outside language. What he means is that we can only speak ofa ‘real’ denotatum within a pragmatic dimension where users of signs have agreed upon what counts as real and how to identify these real objects in space and time. In this sense, the first sense of semantics—an internal component of a linguistic system—is depen- dent on the second sense—a pragmatic involvement of sign users in the world: it is through the pragmatic dimension of sign interpreters that designata can be linked to ‘real’ denotata. The confusion between designatum and denotatum in some quar- ters of hermeneutics and postmodernism comes from a fascinationVandevelde Foreword * xix with the specificity of some linguistic systems. The tendency has been to overlook completely the fact that a system has to be used by real people whose actions are not linguistic in nature, even if these ac- tions become meaningful through language. The same confusion between designatum and denotatum can be found also in some quar- ters of sciences. The use of abstract semantic systems, like a scientific theory, makes it easy as well as tempting for scientists to overlook the preliminary pragmatic agreement that took place in the scientific community about how to use the signs they use. By overlooking their own pragmatic involvement in the theory they built, they can na- ively claim to be in immediacy with the real world. If we give our assent to the fact that the semiotic function of signs is the condition of the possibility for describing and interpreting some- thing as an object, we have de facto acknowledged a semiotic trans- formation of philosophy. Let us repeat again that the pragmatic di- mension, which is manifested by communication, makes of inter- subjectivity, not the ground for any knowledge, but the criterion for validity of any knowledge. It is not signs themselves that guarantee a transcendental point of view, but the fact that signs have to be recog- nized as signs in their validity in a given community. To the extent that the semiotic function is the medium of validity of any knowledge, it cannot itself be reduced to an object of descrip- tion. For, any attempt to reduce signs to objects of knowledge would require, for this knowledge of signs, another set of signs. As condi- tions of possibility of any intended meaning and thus of any knowl- edge, signs constitute an a priori dimension. They are at the same level as sense organs or technical instruments used by scientists for investigating natural objects. Language is therefore uncircumventable or, as Apel says, unhintergehbar, literally: it is impossible to retrocede beneath language which thus represents “the bodily a priori [Leib- apriori] of knowledge” (Apel 1998, 48). If, indeed, any knowledge is semiotically mediated, the problems of meaning and understanding become crucial for any semiotic phi- losophy. It is at this point that Apel is able to integrate hermeneutics as well as the language-game theory of the lare Wittgenstein. II Hermeneutics and language game theory Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein have devoted extraordinary ef- forts toward making clear that what is to be understood in human interactions is neither “experiences” nor “mental intentions” sepa- tated from their context. Regarding Wittgenstein, Apel is largely in-xx * Vandevelde Foreword debted to two tenets of his philosophy: the argument against a pri- vate language and the very notion of a language game. The impossi- bility of a private language is understood by Apel as the fact that one cannot follow a rule alone and just once. In Wittgenstein’s terms, “Is what we call ‘obeying a rule’ something that it would be possible for only one man to do, and to do only once in his life?” (Wittgenstein 1953, 80, proposition 199. Wittgenstein’s italics). Such an impossi- bility for a private language makes irrelevant the basic claim of post-Cartesian philosophy that the evidence of a private internal ex- perience can serve as the criterion that, for example, I think or that I have a determinate representation. Let us notice with Apel that Wittgenstein does not deny the existence of a subjective certainty regarding private experiences. “What is denied, actually, is only the fact that this certainty could be immediately qualified, from an epis- temological point of view, as being purely subjective and ... be granted an epistemological primacy over the intersubjectively valid knowledge of the external world’ (Apel 1991, 30. Apel’s italics). Any claim we can make to know something is linked to a language shared with others and thus to “the observance of rules which is under public supervision” (Apel 1991, 31). Wittgenstein’s notion of language game, according to which the use of signs is part of a form of life, is highly compatible with Apel’s semiotic and pragmatic approach. Since any use of signs presupposes a rule and since a rule, in being a rule, cannot be followed just once and by one single person, the use of signs presupposes a community of sign users involved in a language-game understood as the min- gling of language and praxis. At first glance it could be argued that the language game approach seems to consider the object of under- standing as having to be replaced by a mere description of a language game. There are, however, two ways of describing a language game: either as a form of behavioristic description or by emphasizing the participation of the describer in what is described. Apel is more sym- pathetic to the second option: Basically, all the attempts to distance oneself from and to objectify behavioural criteria cannot gloss over the fact that the starting-point of the description (the question raised, the cognitive interest) is depen- dent upon a self-understanding, no matter how prereflective this might be, and also that the cognitive gain from the quasi-objective descrip- tion lies in the deepening of this self-understanding (Apel 1998, 29).Vandevelde Foreword * xxi If we forgo the behaviorist understanding of Wittgenstein and ac- quiesce in a participation of the observer in what is described, there remain two fundamental questions that Wittgenstein neither raised nor solved. The first question bears on the weight that history or tradition exercises on language games. Wittgenstein might well rec- ognize that language games appear and are modified according to “the history of nature” (See Apel 1991, 35); nevertheless he does not investigate the extent to which language games concretely depend on the history of a tradition or are a crytallization of a tradition, an investigation that Heidegger forcefully and eminently conducted. Apel would like to complement Wittgenstein with Heidegger and show that a hermeneutic moment takes place in any description, introduc- ing thereby a historical depth in language games. The second question that Wittgenstein does not examine deals with the status of a descriptive language game. The question is twofold: firstly, how can a language-game, for example philosophy, relate to other language games in order to describe them? And, secondly, can such a philosophical descriptive language game be critical? Regard- ing the first part of the question, hermeneutics again can comple- ment Wittgenstein’s views. Regarding the second part, Apel sees in Wittgenstein as well as in hermeneutics an intrinsic weakness that jeopardizes the very function of philosophy. Apel is adamant in re- taining the gains of Greek philosophy, stating that what matters is knowing what is as it is—the first paradigm of first philosophy—as well as the achievements of modern and Kantian philosophy claim- ing for a particular language game the status of a “critique” of knowl- edge—the second paradigm. Against Wittgenstein, Apel believes that philosophy deserves special treatment: {the descriptive] language-games ought to be constructed and, in par- ticular, the question should be raised as to whether, and if necessary, how such hermeneutic language-games differ from the normal descrip- tive language-games that are concerned with the description of non-human nature (Apel 1998, 30). In other words, philosophy must enjoy some form of privilege among other language games and the question is what kind of privilege and to what extent. Before examining the criticism that Apel addresses to both Wittgenstein and Heidegger, let us turn to the complement hermeneutics can offer to the descriptive function of specific lan- Guage games.xxli * Vandevelde Foreword The interpretive moment that takes place in any descriptive lan- guage game and eminently in philosophy represents the object of hermeneutics. Specifically, hermeneutics has the task of investigating “the interpretation of the meaning of linguistically handed-down word meanings or concepts” (Apel 1998, 111) in the sense of “the achieve- ment of intersubjective agreement which is operative in every interpre- tive application of language” (Apel 1998, 111. Apel’s italics). Apel sees Heidegger as the philosopher who magnificently reflected upon the weight and power of language which serves as a mediation in a tradition as well as the one who conceptually articulated the notion ofa pre-understanding. In this respect Apel also uses Heidegger to unveil the implicit hermeneutic assumptions of analytic philoso- phy (See especially Apel 1973, vol. 1, 276-334). In Apel’s view Being and Time (Heidegger 1985) offers a radicalization of hermeneutics to the extent that the question of the sense of Being is reformulated as the problem of the understanding of the being that humans have to be. In this reformulation, the understanding of the world does not start by ascribing predicates to objects that are already there, but by finding oneself (Befindlichkeit) in a world that concerns human be- ings—Heidegger’s concept of Bewandtnis. Prior to a predicative syn- thesis there is, according to this view, a hermeneutic synthesis that takes place and this synthesis is achieved by a consciousness which is caught up in a world susceptible to being meaningful. Heidegger thereby reformulates Husserl’s notion of consciousness in order to indicate how world and consciousness are intermingled. Such a reformulation of what understanding is goes hand in hand with a reformulation of the concept of consciousness from Husserlian provenance: Heidegger’s Dasein is “being-in-the-world.” As a conse- quence, the world is understood as a dimension of existence, as an “existential.” Heidegger characterizes the world as a referring net- work where things only make sense by being referred to other things. A hammer is “for” hammering, and it is only from within this refer- ring network that the hammer makes sense. This dimension of a world which is already articulated prior to any actual human en- deavor represents a dimension of pre-understanding. Apel sees in this dimension what he himself calls a semiosis—the significability of the world, Heidegger says, is articulated by discourse (Rede). Further- more, Heidegger's notion of the “public sphere of interpretation” (6ffentliche Ausgelegtheit) in which, Heidegger says, any human project, any intention, and any action must find its articulation could repre- sent, in Apel’s reconstruction, a background of beliefs, intentions, desires that have been handed down through a process of socialization.Vandevelde Foreword * xxiii Thus a transcendental dimension remains possible in such a frame- work through the interaction of language and community. When Heidegger considers that the world as a referring network is ulti- mately geared toward Dasein itself as the one for the sake of whom things are referred, he seems to acknowledge both the semiosis of the world as well as the pragmatic aspect of such a semiosis. This twofold recognition would lead to the thesis that language functions as an a priori in the sense that a natural language has a hermeneutic func- tion. A “hermeneutic synthesis,” as a synthesis of the rules and the conventions which are constitutive of sense, is achieved through lan- guage. In this respect, a natural language would make possible a world of sense which could have both objective and intersubjective validity. This role of language would explain, on the one hand, how a com- munity is a necessary background for any intention and, on the other, that this community, which is articulated through language, con- tains a pre-reflective relationship of humans to themselves and to others, thereby guaranteeing a form of communication. This shared world could in turn represent the ground of any evidence used by any theoretical enterprise, be it scientific or logical. In this radicalized hermeneutics, Heidegger has overcome the prob- lems of interpretation as presented by the traditional hermeneutics of Schleiermacher and Dilthey. He has also resisted the temptation to which some of his followers from Postmodern quarters have ea- gerly succumbed. Schleiermacher and Dilthey claim, respectively, to reconstruct mentally or to “re-live” empathetically human experiences and recover intentions or an understanding of authors better than these authors themselves had. The semiotic mediation recognized by Heidegger makes such attempts idle. Although these two types of hermeneutics acknowledge the opacity of signs, they still posit, as a telos as well as a criterion for validity, an object of interpretation that would escape the semiotic mediation. The post-Heideggerean herme- neutics of postmodern tone has the opposite defect by claiming that everything is interpretive or that there is nothing outside the text— to use, unfairly, Derrida’s often misquoted cliché. In Heidegger’s hermeneutics signs do not have in themselves the light of their semiotic function, since they have to be used within a certain framework by Sign users for the sake of whom things make sense. There are, nevertheless, two correctives that Apel wants to bring to bear on Heidegger's radicalized hermeneutics. The first corrective Apel wants to introduce relates to the fact that, although Heidegger ac- knowledges the possibility of having an actual understanding of be- ing in language, he reduces it to an existenziell understanding. Suchxxiv %* Vandevelde Foreword an existenziell understanding is governed by what he calls the “They” and he considers it an inauthentic understanding. His notion of an existenzial understanding, which is supposed to bring the pre-ontological understanding to the conceptual level, downplays the real possibilities of the existenziell understanding and tends to founder in a form of a solipsistic and heroic attempt by consciousness to ex- tirpate itself from a world shared with others. With this gesture Heidegger fails to bring to the fore and to conceptualize the tremen- dous possibilities of self-reflection that already lie in a factual com- munication community—Heidegger’s existenziell understanding. Instead, he focuses only on a hermeneutics of facticity of the being-in-the-world in the sense of a hermeneutics of temporality and history (Apel 1991, 67). As a consequence, Heidegger finds himself unable or unwilling to reflect on the constitution of objectivity or on the claim to intersubjective validity. The second corrective Apel adds to Heidegger's radicalized herme- neutics concerns the fate of Heidegger's recognition of language as an a priori. After Being and Time Heidegger subverts such a recogni- tion into a meditation of the history of Being and the history of language in which Being has spoken. Heidegger thereby completely abandons the path of a transcendental philosophy which he had im- plicitly inaugurated in Being and Time. This abandonment is also common to Wittgenstein and represents Apel’s general criticism that neither a language game theory nor a hermeneutics can account for the critical character of philosophy. Apel characterizes such an internal weakness as an oblivion of the logos (Logosvergessenheit). Somehow both Heidegger and Wittgenstein fall victim to their own genial insights regarding the articulating power of language and give up the hard won crucial point of Greek philoso- phy: that it is possible to transcend one’s own being-in-the-world or one’s own language-game. Somehow Wittgenstein and Heidegger put the Jogos up for grabs as just one way of relating to the world or making sense of the world. The late Wittgenstein, who powerfully showed the interaction and inseparability of language and forms of life, resists any attempt to grant to a specific language game the power to evaluate and criticize other language games. Although he wants philosophy to be a therapy, he reduces it to one factual habit or form of life among many others. “Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it... It leaves everything as it is” (Wittgenstein 1953, 49, proposition 124). Heidegger who, in Being and Time, nicely reconciles Husserl’s notion of consciousness with a world in which one lives and claims for phi-Vandevelde Foreword ** xxv losophy the task of a destruction of metaphysics, sees later on phi- losophy itself caught in the destiny of the Western tradition. Instead of establishing the critical function of philosophy, he lets his philoso- phy be guided by a fascination for poetry and etymology, as if lan- guage on its own had any enlightening power. These two approaches, Apel believes, lead to the self-destruction ora “paralysis” (Apel 1991, 68) of philosophical reason, especially in the trends that follow Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The cause for the shortcomings of their enterprises—however magnificent and power- ful they may be—lies in their view that we cannot retrocede beneath a factual and contingent ground that we can call a “life world.” In the case of Wittgenstein such a lifeworld is made of customs, habits, in short “forms of life,” and for Heidegger this life world is a world or a historically constituted tradition. The life world is thus de facto granted a quasi transcendental function and the a priori can only be contingent. This leads Wittgenstein to a “synchronic relativism” where no language game can claim to have any absolutely grounded privi- lege among a polemos of discourses. Heidegger is confined to a “diachronic relativism’ where the truth is the unveiling power be- longing to different epochs of the history of Being. For each of them argumentative rationality can only be understood as the reflex of a contingent habit or of a metaphysical epoch. Against such views, Apel wants to show that it is possible to rein- terpret, with Wittgenstein and Heidegger and against them, philoso- phy as a discursive language game which allows a critique of other language games or a critical hermeneutics by maintaining a transcen- dental aspect of the use of signs. III A transcendental transformation of philosophy We have seen so far how Apel transforms philosophy into a semiotic philosophy by making of signs an a priori dimension. The next trans- ormation consists in showing that the semiotic a priori also allows for a transcendental turn. This transcendental transformation can be reconstructed in three steps, each building upon the previous one: language as communication, (communicative) language as argumen- tation, (argumentative) language as an ethical commitment. Language as communication As mentioned above, semantic reference has two components: an internal component linked to a linguistic system (designatum) andxxvi * Vandevelde Foreword an external component linked to the pragmatic involvement of hu- man beings in the world (denotatum). Such a distinction leads to another distinction in the concept of language: language can be a specific syntactic and semantic system constituting what we call a natural language as well as a tool or device allowing humans to ar- ticulate the world around them and communicating with others. Language in the first sense is dependent upon language in the second sense. Such a distinction between natural language and communica- tion allows Apel to draw with Habermas a distinction between a lin- guistic competence as our ability to speak a natural language and what he calls a ‘communicative’ competence, which allows us to prag- matically relate to things and other human beings. The claim is that this communicative competence is what allows us to learn a first or second language. Apel appeals to a set of universal pragmatic features as well as to a set of universal semantic features that would guarantee from the start that our world is pragmatically shared. For example, if we compare different languages it might be the case that a language has a specific syntactic and semantic system incompatible with any other language. Given the fact however that this system is used by speakers, the community of these speakers can integrate new mem- bers, like foreigners, and the pragmatics of the form of life will open the door to an understanding by foreigners of the specific and unique structure of this particular language. Languages, in other words, do not isolate; on the contrary they open, in principle, any community to other members. Apel sees such a strong hierarchy between linguistic competence and communicative competence that he even goes so far as to claim that the semantic component of languages can be influenced by the historical progress of communication. He can thus say that it is, on the one hand, undeniable that the “internal form,” to use Humboldr’s expression, of any natural language acts as a set of constraints on the formation of concepts; at the same time, he can claim, on the other hand, that the constraining force of the internal form is itself sub- jected to the way the language is used, so that interactions between native speakers and foreigners can modify the very formation process of concepts. The communicative competence allows a reflection on one’s own language, and therefore makes possible changes in how words are used—an example of which might be a politically correct revision of some texts—as well as an opening to different language structures. These two competencies explain how the first two paradigms of first philosophy have been preserved while transformed: the prag-Vandevelde Foreword * xxvii matic competence anchors human beings in a real world, guarantee- ing basic levels of communication, agreement, and interactions; the linguistic competence allows human beings to specifically articulate in words or signs in general these agreements and interactions. The distinction between language as a natural language and !an- guage as speaking a language in the sense of communication finds some support in Chomsky’s revolution in linguistics: namely his con- tention and demonstration of a universal grammar. In Apel’s terms this means that, when learning one specific language, “one also learns something like the deep structure of a universal language game or human form of life.” (Apel 1994, 103. Apel’s italics). Thus, although we acquire our linguistic competence through a process of socializa- tion, we also acquire at the same time a communicative competence that enables native speakers to transcend their own language game or form of life by reflecting on it and by communicating with other language games. As a consequence—and against the view that we might be confined to our specific and contingent form of life—our communicative competence makes it possible to introduce within a given language game new rules which cannot be controlled as rules by the community into which we have been socialized. Such a twofold competence forces a new look upon the a priori of language that has been accepted by Wittgenstein and Heidegger, as well as by pragmatism. Language is no longer only “the institution of institutions” (Apel 1998, 119) as an a priori or as the dimension of semiosis that nothing can escape in order to be meaningful. Lan- guage is also—and this is a significant step—the “‘meta-institution’ of all dogmatically established institutions” (Apel 1998, 119) in the sense that language allows a critique of any form of life or any human project. As a meta-institution, [language] represents the instance of criticism for all unreflected social norms and, at the same time, as the meta-institution of all institutions, it always represents a normatively binding instance which does not abandon the individual persons to their merely subjective reasoning, but rather it compels them to par- ticipate in intersubjective communication on social norms as long as they maintain communication (Apel 1998, 119. Apel’s italics). Language as a meta-institution would then grant semiotics the sta- tus of an instance determining the condition of possibility for any knowledge and permit semiotics to replace the transcendental sub- Ject of Cartesian and Husserlian provenance.xxviii * Vandevelde Foreword (Communicative) language as argumentation The qualification of language as a meta-institution introduces a second transformation in the concept of language. The first transfor- mation was to consider language as a indispensable tool for articulat- ing anything meaningful to human beings. Language usage was thus synonymous with communication. The second transformation con- sists now in considering language to be a communicative tool for the sake of argumentation. When I say something and mean it, I assume that I can be understood. I even posit the possible understanding of what I say in order to say it, if I mean it. Any speech act that presents itself as intelligible makes a claim and this claim involves a commit- ment of the speaker. Apel illustrates this notion of “claim” or “vir- tual” criticism of one’s own assumptions with his concept of an “ideal community.” When arguing, one acknowledges oneself as part of a real commu- nity of sign users and sign interpreters whose member she has be- come through a socialization process. In this respect, “the validity of solitary thought is basically dependent upon the justification of ver- bal arguments in the actual community of argumentation” (Apel 1998, 258. Apel’s italics). However, any person who argues is not only com- mitted to a real community —this is how Apel claims to overcome Wictgenstein and Heidegger and transform their views in a transcen- dental way— but also to “an ideal community” “that would basically be capable of adequately understanding the meaning of his argu- ments and judging their truth in a definitive manner” (Apel 1998, 280). Again, this does not entail that I must be factually understood in order for my claim to be intelligible and make sense. For example, many prophets, visionaries, revolutionaries, or discoverers had to wait to find their audience, but this lack of factual audience did not stop them from speaking intelligibly. Rather, their speech acts posited an audience in the form of an ideal communication community func- tioning “as instance of judging or controlling the meaning of the rules followed by the revolutionaries of human form of life” (Apel 1994, 103). This ideal community, as a “community of sign-interpre- tation” (Apel 1994, 156), “could arrive at the ‘final opinion’ about the real, as we must postulate by a ‘regulative idea’ whatever the facts about the future might be” (Apel 1994, 156). Apel’s contention is that such an ideal language game, which has not yet been realized in the factual language game is presupposed counterfactually as the con- dition of possibility and validity for understanding human forms of life.Vandevelde Foreword * xxix To deny the argumentative presuppositions would lead to what Apel calls a performative contradiction in the sense that the proposi- tional content of one’s claim would be contradicted by the very speech-act conveying such a proposition. Although Apel does not provide many explanations or examples, by expanding his views and accepting the risks involved, we can see that such a performative con- tradiction can work at least at two levels. At a basic level, since I can only mean anything or entertain a thought by using intersubjective signs, and thus by following rules and norms, I would performatively contradict myself were I to deny such intersubjective rules and norms. How so? Because they made possible the very speech-act through which I convey a proposition denying them. Not only would I not be recognized by others as coherent, consistent, or holding meaning- ful views, I would even not be able to perform such a speech-act. Acanother level, one could ask, can I not acknowledge a particular commitment to the norms and rules of a definite group of persons while denying any universal commitment to an unlimited commu- nity? For example, if 1 make claims regarding some policies in the name of the group to which I belong, where would the performative contradiction lie? In order to answer this, a distinction must be made. If the claim in question is to push forward a particular agenda with- out claiming to convince those who are not yet convinced, then in- deed there is no performative contradiction. Such a claim can be made without counterfactually anticipating an ideal community able to fully understand what one claims. All that the making of such a claim would entail is a radical limitation of the claim by confining its recognition to a given group of people. If, however, I want to con- vince people outside the particular group in question to recognize my claim, I would fall into a performative contradiction for the fol- lowing reason. Since I intentionally use arguments as instruments to advance a particular agenda, I would have to recognize that I do not try to convince other people through a meaningful rational conver- sation, but that I try to silence them, to persuade them, to manipu- late them or to coerce them. By doing so I would consider the object of argumentation to be a stake up for grabs, and under the name of argumentation I would engage in a game where the goal is to win. But I can only win if other people do not suspect such an intention and trust that I argue honestly. In this case the performative contra- diction would be a form of cheating. As a counterpart, such an in- strumental use of arguments at the service of special interests is sus- ceptible to being unmasked and therefore to losing its binding power.xxx * Vandevelde Foreword It certainly does not follow that the particular interests of a group cannot be defended by making a claim on their behalf. What does follow from this is that such a defense must be made by a claim presenting these people as members of the unlimited communica- tion community, that is to say, by anticipating a community that would include myself and in which these people would be consid- ered equal. The claim would thereby lose its performative contradic- tion—and gain its convincing binding force instead of a merely per- suasive power—through the recognition that these particular people are peers in the unlimited community. The interplay between real and ideal communities explains how it is that we cannot factually step outside our real community while in principle we can transcend it, since, as a community it can become an object of investigation and its assumptions can be brought to the fore, criticized and sometimes eliminated. At the same time such an interplay explains how these investigations and criticisms appeal to an ideal that exceeds the real community, even though it is only un- derstandable within this community. Thus, the only element beneath which one cannot, strictly speaking, retrocede is that of the argu- mentative presuppositions which are enacted in the reflective lan- guage game of philosophy as what is necessary for any investigation and any relativization of forms of life to take place. In this respect, the transcendental ego is no longer merely an “I think,” as in Descartes and Husserl, but an “I argue” (Apel 1996, 317). The advantage of replacing the use of language by the exchange of arguments is to allow a dialectic between the real community and the ideal community. Although arguments find their validity in a real community—I need to be understood and I need to know what I can intend—they are not just a contingent language game embed- ded in a particular historical space. The claim conveyed by anyone who argues transcends the factual real community. If we accept Apel’s second transformation, according to which to speak means to argue, we can revisit the a priori of language invoked by Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The main point of contention was the starting point of any human project which for them can only be a concrete and factual situation, form of life or other epoch of a tra- dition. They draw from there the conclusion that one cannot retro- cede beneath such a starting point which functions de facto as an a priori. Apel agrees with the first point, but sees an ambiguity in the second. This is an ambiguity that neither Wittgenstein nor Heidegger saw. When we say that it is impossible to go behind the contingent starting point of our particular language game, either we mean that