Karl-Otto Apel earned his Doctor of Philosophy in 1950, from the University of Bonn. In 1961 Karl-Otto was made a lecturer at the University of Mainz; from 1962–1969, he was a full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel; from 1969 until 1972, he was a full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Saarbrücken; from 1972 until 1990, he was a full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt am Main; in 1990 he was made a Professor Emeritus at Frankfurt am Main. Professor Emeritus Apel has received many awards and honours, most notably: Membre titulaire de l'Institut International de Philosophie, Paris, France (1972); Member of the Nordland-Academy for Arts and Sciences, Melbu/Vesteralen, Norway (1988); Member of the Academia Europea, London, U.K. (1989); Full Member of the Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea, Salzburg (1993); Doctor honoris causa, The University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (1993); Professor Principal honoris causa, Universidad Nacional de San Agustín, Arequipa, Peru (1994); Doctor honoris causa, The Free University, Berlin, Germany (2000); Verdienstkreuz am Bande des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (2001). Professor Emeritus Apel has held many Visiting and Guest Professorships, as well as a Visiting Fellowship, at numerous universities around the world; and he delivered the Ernst Cassirer Lectures at Yale University in March 1977.
Work
Apel's work brings together the Analytical and Continental philosophical traditions, especially pragmatism and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School.In Understanding and Explanation: A Transcendental-Pragmatic Perspective[1], Apel reformulated the difference between understanding (Verstehen) and explanation (Erklärung), which originated in the hermeneutics of Wilhelm Dilthey and interpretive sociology of Max Weber, on the basis of a Peircean-inspired transcendental-pragmatic account of language. This account of the "lifeworld" would become an element of the theory of communicative action and discourse ethics, which Apel co-developed with his friend, colleague, and collaborator Jürgen Habermas. While sympathetic to Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action, Apel has been critical of aspects of Habermas's approach. Apel has proposed that a theory of communication should be grounded in the transcendental-pragmatic conditions of communication. After taking his point of departure from Apel, Habermas has moved towards a "weak transcendentalism" that is more closely tied to empirical social inquiry.
Apel has also written works on Peirce and is a past-president of the C.S. Peirce society.
An early German-speaking adversary of so-called critical rationalism, Karl-Otto Apel elaborated a comprehensive refutation of the philosophy of Karl Raimund Popper: In Transformation der Philosophie (1973), Apel charged Popper with being guilty of, amongst other things, a pragmatic contradiction.[2]
Other works:
Analytic Philosophy of Language and the Geisteswissenschaften (1967),
Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik (1971),
Sprache, Brucke und Hindernis (1972),
Dialog als Methode (1972),
Transformation der philosophie: Sprachanalytik, Semiotik, Hermeneutik (1973),
Transformation der philosophie: Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft (1976),
Sprachpragmatik und philosophie (1976),
Neue Versuche uber Erklaren und Verstehen (1978),
Die Erklaren: Verstehen-Kontroverse in Transzendentalpragmatischer Sicht (1979),
Towards a Transformation of Philosophy (1980 & 1998),
Charles S. Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism (1981),
Understanding and Explanation: A Transcendental-Pragmatic Perspective (1984),
La communicazione umana (1985),
Diskurs und Verantwortung: Das Problem des Ubergangs zur Postkonventionellen Moral (1988),
Towards a Transcendental Semiotics: Selected Essays (1994),
Ethics and the Theory of Rationality: Selected Essays (1996),
Filosofia analitica e filosofia continentale (1997),
From a Transcendental-Semiotic Point of View (1998)
Mercier Lectures: The Response of Discourse Ethics to the Moral Challenge of the Human Situation As Such, Especially Today (2001),
Funf Vorlesungen uber Transzendental Semiotik als Erste Philosophie und Diskursethik (2002),
Diskursethik und Diskursanthropologie (2002)
References
- ^ Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1984.
- ^ See: "La position de Karl-Otto Apel s'appuie sur un essai de réfutation des thèses de Karl Popper." [Karl-Otto Apel bases his argument upon an attempt to refute the theses of Karl Popper.] and "Dire que tout doit pouvoir être critiqué, révisé, c'est pour Karl-Otto Apel invalider la raison en lui refusant une fondation, et se trouver en contradiction pragmatique ..." [For Karl-Otto Apel, to say that everything must be criticized and revised is to make reason impotent, without a foundation, and to be in a position of pragmatic contradiction ...] and "On ne peut pas donc fonder philosophiquement le principe critique, si on l'étend à tout, contrairement à ce qu'affirment Karl Popper ou Jurgen Habermas." [Contrary to the affirmations of Karl Popper or Jurgen Habermas, we cannot therefore philosophically validate the critical principle, if we apply it to everything.] "Apel, Karl-Otto", La philosophie de A à Z, by Elizabeth Clement, Chantal Demonque, Laurence Hansen-Love, and Pierre Kahn, Paris, 1994, Hatier, 19-20. See Also: Towards a Transformation of Philosophy (Marquette Studies in Philosophy, No 20), by Karl-Otto Apel, trans., Glyn Adey and David Fisby, Milwaukee, 1998, Marquette University Press.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Otto_Apel
