Elements from Peirce in Habermas’ and Apel’s Debate

Abstract

Apel and Habermas diverge about the possibility of an ultimate grounding for the Ethics of Discourse, which comes from Peirce’s approach. For Apel, in Peirce there is a foundation project of the synthetic inferences (abduction and induction), which occur as a transcendental logic and are, simultaneously, a logic of the interpretation of signs. This logic allows a normative theory of procedures for criteria in the creation of a consensual theory of truth. According to Apel, language is the transcendent condition of all meaning and all validity, since it is implicitly pragmatic in the linkage of speech to its own success. The language, thus, requires consensus on the understanding of the signs for the interpretation about world objects, with their understanding or misunderstanding.Therefore, the argumentative thought is a pretension of validity, which strives to avoid a performative self-contradiction, becoming an a priori logic, which is applicable to the community of communication, enabling the grounding of an Ethical Normativity. Habermas sees Apel’ apriorism as a return to the philosophy of the subject, and refutes the possibility of arguments without empirical tests, including the methodological ones since, even with a universal pragmatics in which the right is characterized by the impartial criterion of establishing its normativity, there is no way of guaranteeing that a moral standard cannot be amended in the future, because that norm would require a guarantee of the same life-world conditions on its establishment. Habermas rejects an ideal justificability for the arguments, refutes an aprioristic transcendental logic, confers to truth a rational acceptability and assumes an anti-skeptical fallibilism which contemplates chance and evolutionism through a moral constructivism in a continuum of learning. By refuting Apel´s apriorism, Habermas draws closer to Peirce.