Karl-Otto Apel

Plurality of the Good? The Problem of Affirmative Tolerance in a Multicultural Society from an Ethical Point of View

Starting from the problem of tolerance in a multicultural society, the author undermines the limits of a classical-liberal foundation (negative tolerance) and suggests the need for a new meaning: a positive concern of tolerance implying appreciation of a variety of social cultures and value traditions. On an ethical level, positive tolerance can be grounded in the Discourse Theory, developing the classical Kantian deontological ethics in a transcendental-pragmatic and in a transcendental-hermeneutic sense. In this way, discourse ethics can answer two questions posed by tolerance in a multicultural society: the duty to support all in the pursuit of their ideals and realize positive tolerance as well as its restrictions.

On the Relationship between Ethics, International Law and Politico-Military Strategy in Our Time A Philosophical Retrospective on the Kosovo Conflict

In reconstructing and commenting upon the Kosovo conflict, the cognitive interest of practical philosophy does not evade a political judgment but is primarily led by the interest in answering the question of what normative yardsticks are available (to politicians and to the public) for coping with a situation where the international order of law fails to provide a legal solution to the problem of preserving peace and, at the same time, protecting human rights that are severely violated by a sovereign state. The paper proposes an answer from the point of view of an ethics of history-related responsibility, which takes into account three normative levels based on ethical, legal and political considerations. In this light the action of NATO must be judged.

The Erklären-Verstehen controversy in the philosophy of the natural and human sciences

The terminological distinction between ‘Erklaren’ and ‘Verstehen’ was introduced in J.G. Droysen’s Grundriss der Historik (1858) and in W. Dilthey’s Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (1883) in order to suggest an epistemological foundation for the methodological autonomy-claim of the historical sciences or, more generally, of the ‘Geisteswissenschaften’. These were considered to be based on Hermeneutics qua ‘Kunstlehre des Verstehens’ (F.E.D. Schleiermacher, A. Boeckh) in contradiction to the natural sciences which were considered to be based on causal or nomological explanations. The dichotomy, which was especially directed against the methodological reductionism of the older scientistic positivism (i.e. A. Comte, H.T. Buckle, and J.S. Mill), was adopted with certain provisos and modifications (especially directed against the psychologism of the early Dilthey) by W. Windelband and H. Rickert for their neo-Kantian foundation of the ‘idiographic’ (or ‘individualizing’) ‘Kulturwissenschaften’; and, through this neo-Kantian mediation, it was also adopted with further modifications by M. Weber for his foundation of ‘verstehende Soziologie’. This whole period may be considered, I suggest, as the first stage of the E/V controversy.

Wissenschaftsgeschichte als Hermeneutisches Problem

The paper takes its departure from the following question: How is it possible that, by a reconstructive history of science as is practised for example by Thomas Kuhn, we can learn something from history, i.e. not only about the facts that may be described and causally-externally-explained by value-free science but also about the reasons,or norms,of practicing good science? Must not this enterprise lead to a dilemma: i.e. either to deriving norms from empirical facts and thus committing a naturalistic fallacy,or to presupposing already norms of scientific rationality in the evaluation of the reasons and norms of the scientists to be understood, and thus to committing a logical circle in the attempt of learning something new about norms of good science.