The Transformation Of Philosophy - Appel Philosophical Study

Karl-Otto Apel is one of the most famous philosophers in postwar Germany; he has made great contribution to making the postwar German philosophy face to the philosophy traditions of foreign countries. Apel has three main study interests: first, to transform the theory of epistemology since Kant with cognitive anthropology; second, to explore the scheme of integration between language analytic philosophy and hermeneutics in western philosophy; third, to establish transcendental pragmatics and make it the third paradigm of the first philosophy, in order to design a blueprint for western philosophy to extricate itself from a difficult position. The theme of transformation of Kant's philosophy runs through his philosophical career.Apel considers it a positive response to the philosophy crisis that the "linguistic turn "occurred in western philosophy in 20-century. The internal origin of this crisis was the dualism mode of thinking in western tradition, especially the subject-object dualism presupposition since Kant. The presupposition of Kant's epistemology only fits for natural science, so the legal status of Geisteswissenschaften cannot be guaranteed. He thinks the syntax-semantics stage of "linguistic turn" has not transcended the methodology solipsism. So he puts forward cognitive anthropology in order to transform Kant's transcendental philosophy. The main substances of cognitive anthropology are the followings: the theory of cognitive interests; the theory of communicative community and the theory of the types of Geisteswissenschaften. The target of the cognitive anthropology is to provide a solid basis for human science especially for the Geisteswissenschaften. According to Apel, there are two necessary and complementary preconditions for human knowledge. One is cognitive interest that is the "transcendental" conditions emphasized by the epistemology since Dilthey. (It is also called a priori of consciousness). The other is a living engagement made by sense organs. (It is also called "the bodily a priori"). Based on these two preconditions, Apel classifies the Geisteswissenschaften into three types : "quasi-nomological behavioral science", hermeneutics and critical social science. He establishes a foundation for Geisteswissenschaften with cognitive anthropology.Apel considers that the two traditions of western philosophy are coming into integration and beginning to cooperation. The contradiction between these two kinds of traditions is actually the divergence between their methodologies, that is, the difference between "explanation" and "understanding". On cognitive interests as a priori of consciousness, according to Apel, the relationship between the cognitive interest of gaining technological knowledge and the hermeneutics interest of inter-subjective community of the meaning-intention in the life is a complementary and irreducible one; so is the relationship between "causal explanation" and "meaning-understanding". Rotty pull the philosophy to the horizon of the culture in order to integration language analytic philosophy and hermeneutics. Different from Rotty, Apel tries to make the integration between these two traditions comes into reality with "critique of ideology". He emphasizes that the understanding-exchange between persons is the precondition of the perceptual-exchange between human and nature; Moreover, understanding sometimes suspends partially in order to arrive at the goal of understanding with the help of a quasi-objective explanative science to analyze its object. So the relationship between the objective scientific knowledge and inter-subjective communicative knowledge is a complementary one.The result of Apel's transformation of Kant's transcendental philosophy is the theory of transcendental pragmatics. Transcendental pragmatics is an integration of transcendental philosophy and pragmatics. On one hand, transcendental philosophy such as Kant's comes into integration with the development of philosophy in 20-century; On the other hand, it broadens the vision of the linguistic...