The Argumentation Strategy And Theoretical Limit Of Apel’s Ultimate Foundation

Apel’s "ultimate foundation" argument for unified rationality has been questioned and considered to be outdated.However,behind the untimely,"ultimate foundation" has a rigorous argumentation process and undoubted theoretical effectiveness.Apel’s ultimate foundation is in the transformation of philosophy in various schools.He first criticizes the solipsism of scientism and the philosophy of consciousness with the insight of language game and hermeneutics on the transcendental value of language in understanding the world.Secondly,it expounds that the existence of some meta-rules and meta-understanding are the basic conditions that make these language games and debates possible,thus overcoming the relativism and arbitrary conventions caused by language contextualization in later Wittgenstein and hermeneutics.Finally,the ideal communication community composed of these argumentative possibility conditions is obtained dialectically with the reality communication community,which makes the possibility base of meaning acquire a critical and liberating dimension.In this process,the necessity of laying the ultimate foundation is also "revealed",that is,overcoming the tendency of arbitrary conventionalism and relativism and providing an answer for the possibility of transcendental pragmatics.There are two important methodological weapons in apel’s ultimate foundational argumentation: "self-reflection of transcendental subject" and "self-contradiction of acting".He refutes the critical rationalists with the self-contradiction of falling into acting,and responds to the accusation of trilineary reasoning with his fallacy of abstraction of pragmatic subjects.Furthermore,it proposes a "transcendental pragmatics insight",which is also the ultimate foundational mission: to reflect on the inevitable conditions in human debate and further lay the foundation for such inevitable conditions as the basic ethical norms.Apel replaced the transcendental subject from Kant’s individual consciousness into "argumentative community",and the self-reflection of argumentative community is carried out by thinking about the unavoidable situation in argumentative,and this reflection has the function of dialectic core and critical significance."Self-contradiction of shi Wei" is not only an insight of transcendental pragmatics,but also a verification mechanism of argumentation rules.The establishment of the ultimate foundational argument depends on two specific logical premises: the basic position of argument in human communication and the presupposition of ideal communication community,both of which fall into a circular argument.Although ultimate foundation can contain relativism,clarify the possible conditions of knowledge,and reveal the existential situation that human beings are always in the debate,it can not make a strong enough argument for the norm of ought to be.