32. So although he preaches the necessity of an ultimate foundation for reason (the Kantian project), Apel can also write of Habermas and himself that “we are both heirs of the ‘hermeneutic-linguistic-pragmatic turn’ taken by contemporary philosophy, finding ourselves in agreement with thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Gadamer, Searle, and even with Richard Rorty” (“Normatively Grounding ‘Critical Theory,’” 126). I must note that the transformation of philosophy as Apel understands it always consists of an overcoming that preserves something of the authors (Heidegger, Husserl, etc.) and is rarely a condemnation of the entirety of a thinker’s work. This is why he can simultaneously be in agreement with Wittgenstein, Rorty, and Heidegger without incoherence. If the hub of his philosophy indeed consists in raising the Kantian hope for an a priori foundation for ethical norms, all its spokes are constituted by the acquired insights of the most contemporary philosophy.
33. Apel, “A Priori of the Communication Community,” 241.
34. On Hume’s thesis and its repercussions in G. E. Moore, see my Critique de la représentation, 281ff.
35. Apel, “A Priori of the Communication Community,” 241 (emphasis in original).
36. Ibid., 233–34.
37. Ibid., 235.
38. It is a question of hermeneutics’ famous “always already” that Apel means to incorporate while overcoming it.
39. Ibid., 267.
40. On Apel’s relation to Peirce, see Apel, “From Kant to Peirce.” Recall that Apel was Peirce’s German translator.
41. Apel, “Problem of Philosophical Foundations,” 280.
42. On this point, see my article “Plaidoyer pour le langage philosophique.”
43. Apel, “Normatively Grounding ‘Critical Theory,’” 128.
44. Ibid., 126–27.
45. As I have said, the term comes from Quine and Rorty, who mean thereby any investigation into foundations, however the term may be understood: either in an onto-theological sense (God) or in a simply epistemological sense (as the foundation of a discourse or discipline, for example, as Bertrand Russell was able to investigate the foundations of mathematics).
46. This criticism of Apel is made by a number of authors, including Jean-Marc Ferry (Habermas, 522), and Sylvie Mesure, in particular in “Choisir la raison.” She shows how Apel seems to shift from the müssen [must] of the transcendental necessity of argumentation to moral necessity which is a sollen [should]. In Apel’s eyes, the theoretical necessity of argumentation becomes the practical obligation to argue, thus to choose reason as “an authentic moral obligation, that is, as a duty” (Mesure, “Choisir la raison,” 233). These two important interpreters of Apel both criticize this shift from müssen to sollen.
47. Apel, “Limits of Discourse Ethics?”
48. Fichte, System of Ethics.
49. Fichte, Foundations of Natural Right.
50. Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie.”
51. Once again, Apel’s only criticism of Kant, a criticism that will be examined in several respects later, is that it is a metaphysics of subjectivity. Taking account of the “linguistic turn” [in English in original] allows Apel to shift to a postmetaphysical transcendental system, unburdened by any reference to a mythical subject.
52. Apel, Diskurs und Verantwortung.
53. “Let there be justice, though the world perish.”—trans.
54. Albert, Treatise on Critical Reason.
55. The response that I am reconstructing notwithstanding, Apel shows, pace fallibilism in general, that this thesis cannot consistently conceive itself. Indeed, to claim contra any attempt at an ultimate foundation that every thesis is fallible is to admit that this very claim (that everything is fallible) escapes fallibilism; it is thus self-contradictory. On the other hand, the claim that there is an ultimate foundation is unscathed by any contradiction of this sort. The contents of this foundation are perhaps not easy to determine, but at least the claim does not immediately contradict itself—as does unlimited fallibilism.
56. In English in the original.—trans.
57. Apel, “A Priori of the Communication Community,” 268 (emphasis in original). On this point, see also the decisive article “The Problem of Philosophical Foundations in Light of a Transcendental Pragmatics of Language.”
58. See, for example, her article “Choisir la raison.”
59. Apel, “Normative Ethics and Strategical Rationality,” 99.
60. Apel, “Normative Ethics and Strategical Rationality.”
61. According to the title of an essay in vol. 2 of Transformation der Philosophie, “Sprache als Thema und Medium der transcendental Reflexion.” [The article originally appeared in Man and World 3, no. 4 (November 1970): 323–37.]
62. The possibility of metacommunication in the functioning of language games has been studied by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Helmick Beavin, and Don D. Jackson in Pragmatics of Human Communication. This is the idea that Apel appears to defend—reflection as a metalanguage would be a part of the conditions of language.
63. Apel, “A Priori of the Communication Community,” 269 (emphasis before the brackets in the original, emphasis after added).
64. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 41.
65. Ibid. Here Ricoeur refers to François Récanati’s analyses in La transparence et l’énonciation.
66. Recall that for Benveniste the “I” is the fulcrum of the system of indicators and signifies “any person who represents himself in speaking”; this “I” presupposes and calls for a “you” but does not presuppose a “he,” which Benveniste, reacting against the semanticists, purely and simply excludes from his theory of indicators and discursive acts. [For Benveniste’s discussion of the “I” as an “indicator,” see his Problems of General Linguistics, especially chap. 20, “The Nature of Pronouns,” 217–22.]
67. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 47.
68. In English in the original.—trans.
69. Bubner, Modern German Philosophy, 88 (emphasis in original).
70. On this point, Ricoeur exclaims, “But how far can this depsychologization be taken, if an ego must still be taken into consideration?” (Oneself as Another, 47).
71. I mean an “external” criticism in contrast to an “internal” criticism of the system. External criticism pits other theses against a philosopher without having first deconstructed the philosopher’s own. Internal criticism attempts to show that the philosopher being analyzed is not entirely consistent, contradicts himself, does not accomplish the project that he claims to have done, or allows a critical ambiguity to persist in a foundational concept. In his criticism of a reflecting language, Manfred Frank sometimes tends to sink into external criticism when he claims for example that it is not language that reflects upon itself but rather a subject (Die Unhintergehbarkeit von Individualität, 11). In fact, both options—language and subject—are initially formally possible, and we cannot eliminate one by some sort of appeal to good sense (of the sort, “My neighbor has the impression that it is he himself who reflects, not God or nature in him”). Likewise, Ricoeur, in his desire to anchor self-reference in the concrete individual, sometimes seems to me to too often appeal to common consciousness—which some phenomenologists less scrupulous than himself identify a little too quickly as the “phenomenon.” In contrast to these external criticisms, I am attempting to understand the system’s limits starting from its own contradictions.
72. This term would obviously be meaningless in reference to Apel’s project. Nevertheless, it is clear that if we compare it to the Kantian “skepticism” proclaimed by Lyotard or even critical humanism, his position claims to be much more “scientific” in the sense of a universal and ultimately grounded truth.
73. In fact, Apel has the possibility of reconstructing a system in choosing between two theses: he could either adopt a clearly Hegelian system in which he would explain why the philosopher can be the simple voice of Spirit, or he can relativize his thesis of a language exhibiting its own rules of functioning by underst
anding the term “reflection” differently. If he manages to bring either of these approaches to fruition, the objection will fall. On the other hand, the skeptic who asserts that “there is no truth” or the fallibilist who claims that everything is falsifiable are immediately self-refuting, without any hope of rebuilding, adjusting, or “loosening” their hypotheses.
74. I borrow these distinctions between “sui-reference” and “reflexivity” from Ricoeur. “Sui-reference” is the expression favored by linguistic analysis.
75. Just like Ricoeur, G. G. Granger has noted the difficulty of understanding the self-reference of the utterance in terms of reference to a fact of the world. He writes, “Reference to the speaker is not of the same order as properly semantic references. The utterance is thus not located in the world of which one speaks; it is taken as the referential boundary of this world” (“Syntaxe, sémantique, pragmatique,” 404).
76. In English in the original.—trans.
77. On this point, see Stéphane Chauvier’s book Dire “je.” This is also why my project does not come under what Vincent Descombes envisions in Le complément de sujet.
78. I am obviously not accusing Apel of not having grounded the notion of duty, even less of not being sufficiently Kantian. I am simply wondering about the relevance of his references to Kant. Why insist on referring to this philosopher if one doesn’t take up any of his cardinal concepts?
79. To claim otherwise, it would be necessary to demonstrate that these discourses are indeed encompassed in argumentation, which Apel does not at all do. In my studies of art—presented at the Colloque du CICADA [Centre Inter Critique des Arts Anglophones] (1995–2005) and brought together in my book Le concept et le lieu—I have tried to bring out the constraints proper to various artistic forms of expression, while neither identifying them with the constraints of philosophy nor trying to make their practices suffice for philosophy.
80. Benoist, “Faut-il défendre la phénoménologie?” 64.
81. To continue my analogy with painting, we could say that the philosophical landscape—here constituted by those who advocate the end of philosophy—offers an extensive palette of colors, but that its composition is unchanged. Skepticism can be painted in blue or in green; the structure nevertheless remains the same. This is how the landscape appears: a single face with a multiplicity of colors.
82. “The topic of referring has had a central position in philosophical discussion from the very beginning of this century” (Linsky, Referring, ix.)
5. A Definition of the Model: Scientific Learning and Philosophical Knowledge
1. Thomas-Fogiel takes advantage here of a distinction in French between connaissance and savoir, a distinction not easily made in English. (Both terms are usually translated as “knowledge.”) When Thomas-Fogiel explicitly contrasts these terms—a distinction at play here in the chapter’s title as well as at a certain point in its argument—I have translated connaissance as “learning” and savoir as “knowledge”; when the distinction is not being made, I use “knowledge” for either term.—trans.
2. My examples are clearly Fichte, who wanted to replace the term “philosophy” with “doctrine of science,” and Hegel, whose Encyclopedia’s complete title (as I mentioned earlier) was “The System of Science.”
3. On the historical significance of skepticism in Kant’s era, see my Fichte, especially chaps. 1–3 of part 1.
4. I allow myself these cavalier characterizations insofar as I have already discussed in detail Hilary Putnam’s characterization of what he calls the “catastrophe of the semantic triangle” in chapter 2.
5. These three terms always accompany criticism of these systems. The first is often used by deconstructivists—for example, Derrida and Lyotard thus characterize Hegel’s ambition, summarizing with this term Heidegger’s long analysis of the “will to power,” to “seizure,” to a total “exhaustion” of the real, of which this totalizing concern takes part. We have seen the second term in Rorty, who uses it to encompass any investigation into explanatory conditions, whether they be ontological, epistemological, or moral. And the term “metaphysical” is even more insulting and tarnished today than it was in Alfred Tarski’s time, even though he noted in 1944 that, “When listening to discussions in this subject, sometimes one gets the impression that the term ‘metaphysical’ has lost any objective meaning, and is merely used as a kind of professional philosophical invective” (“Semantic Conception of Truth,” 363). Its status as “invective” has only increased since Tarski’s cynical observation.
6. It’s well-known that the thought experiment has become a particular form of argumentation in Anglo-Saxon philosophy. Putnam has proposed many, including the still famous “dual earth.” This type of argumentation and its status in analytic philosophy would have to be studied. However that may be, I am not asking anything else here except to try a thought experiment. But as I have less imagination than the analytic philosophers, I propose to transpose us into a past and untimely philosophy, instead of into a work of fiction.
7. See Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” in Mortal Questions, 165–80.—trans.
8. This chapter thus resembles the setting up of a “corrective apparatus”; the subsequent chapters will test its viability. It is clearly a possibility—as with any thought experiment—that my “corrective apparatus” will be neither reliable nor feasible. So first I must describe it and then test it.
9. These phrases are given as proofs of the assertion’s self-evidence and not to explicate the author’s thinking, which legitimates the propositions in this case. On this point, we must imagine what would happen if we were to read in an article, without any justification, “Since Fichte, we have known that knowledge is absolute,” or, “Descartes has taught us that the soul is immortal,” or, “That the body is all there is, is a mistake, as Descartes has taught us,” and were to take these propositions as given and obvious! This is what some current Wittgensteinians do. We should try an experiment and make a comprehensive list, in all the works of philosophy to be published this year, of all the phrases that begin with something like, “Since x, we know that . . .” or, “x has taught us that . . .” without giving any other justification of the claim than the reference to x, to see which author is the most cited. Intuitively, I would say that Wittgenstein would be at the top of the list, followed by Husserl, then Heidegger and Kant—but this is just a guess. In saying that, I am obviously not criticizing these philosophers themselves—far from it—but only some of the ways they are used.
10. I am summarizing here what I have historically and philologically established in my various books and articles on Kant and the immediate post-Kantian period. I obviously cannot again present all the details of the argument, but I am drawing upon these claims demonstrated elsewhere. I will make reference to these more specific analyses in the notes.
11. For a detailed analysis of the claims in the Aenesidemus and a study of its historical impact, see part 1, chap. 3 of my Fichte.
12. Strawson, Bounds of Sense.—trans.
13. On Maimon and his version of skepticism, see my Critique de la représentation, part 1, chap. 2.
14. On Kant’s concept of reflection, see my Fichte, part 2, chap. 1.
15. We saw, in Levinas, the conditions in which a thinker (who, in his particular case, no longer wants to be a philosopher) could claim it. But it will be easily agreed that nothing in Kant’s philosophy would allow us to think that at some moment he would agree to say that everything he wrote in the three Critiques was mistaken or invalid! This is even more the case when we remember the role that performative noncontradiction plays for Kant in the process of universalizing moral maxims. On this particular point, see my Fichte.
16. In my various studies of Fichte I have shown the extent to which self-contradiction (what Fichte calls “internal” contradiction) is the nerve of the argument against a system. A system is thus challenged not by raising an external objection but by showing that it destroys
itself.
17. Fichte, Science of Knowledge, 190. He also very often expresses this as an identity between a proposition’s form and its content, and, as I’ve said, as the identity between the “Tun and the Sagen,” or “what is done and its doing.” Finally, he expresses it in his less-technical works, like “Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation,” as “the pure I can never contradict itself” (“Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation,” in Early Philosophical Writings, 149).
18. A certain reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, book IV (Gamma), chap. 4, could show that Aristotle made recourse to this kind of argument to refute the Sophist who would deny the principle of noncontradiction (the formal principle). Indeed, to deny it, the sophist would be obligated to employ it: his “doing” would not be “in agreement with what he says,” and, as Aristotle notes, he could no longer speak. Aristotle concludes, “One who is in this condition will not be able either to speak or to say anything intelligible” (Metaphysics IV.4:1008b9, in Basic Writings of Aristotle, 742). This argument was thus clearly known for a long time and was one of the tools for refuting skepticism. Fichte’s specific contribution is to make it the principle of principles, the foundation of any philosophical discourse, the starting point for all propositions to come, and thus a positive principle and no longer (as it was for Aristotle) a negative argument (i.e., the argument from absurdity).
19. I will explain more precisely in what follows why this first proposition, as knowledge of knowledge, taking shape in the congruence between the utterance (what is done) and the saying (the doing), is a goal to achieve, a task to accomplish, and not a first proposition in the Wolffian sense of the term, a proposition whose contents will allow the deduction of other propositions on the hypothetical-deductive model.
20. On this point, see also Karl-Otto Apel’s responses to Popper, which I discussed and defended in chap. 4.
21. As for the logical principle of noncontradiction, which Kant called a negative principle of truth, we should understand that it does not suffice that a proposition is free of any performative contradiction in order to be acceptable. On the other hand, a proposition is certainly false if it contravenes pragmatic identity.
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