Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Karl-Otto Apel

5 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Karl-Otto Apel

Karl-Otto Apel (born March 15, 1922, in Düsseldorf; died May 15, 2017, in Niedernhausen) is the thinker who, with his transcendental pragmatics, introduced the argumentative figure of the performative contradiction into contemporary German-language philosophy and developed it into a program of ultimate justification. Its original application lay in discourse ethics; for the present book he is the methodological godfather of a systematically extended argumentation that transfers the procedure to the ontology of the person.

Biographical Arc

Apel received his doctorate in 1950 at the University of Bonn under Erich Rothacker with a study on Martin Heidegger; his habilitation thesis Die Idee der Sprache in der Tradition des Humanismus von Dante bis Vico (The Idea of Language in the Tradition of Humanism from Dante to Vico, 1963) already marks the language-philosophical point of departure of his later main work. After chairs in Kiel (1962–1969) and Saarbrücken (1969–1972), he taught from 1972 until his retirement in 1990 in Frankfurt am Main, where he brought together what had previously been regarded as incommensurable: critique of Heidegger, linguistic analysis, and discourse theory.

Key Contribution

Apel shows: whoever argues at all has already fulfilled certain presuppositions — he can no longer simply circumvent them without falling into a performative self-contradiction. This contradiction lies not between two propositions, but between the content of an assertion and the performance of asserting it. Whoever says, “There is no truth,” raises a truth claim for this very sentence. Whoever says, “Arguments convince no one,” is attempting to convince with this very statement.

This argumentative figure has a distinctive epistemological quality: it is non-circumventable (Apel’s own term: nicht-hintergehbar). It cannot be contested without the contesting confirming it. From this Apel draws the strong conclusion of an ultimate justification (Letztbegründung): the basic norms of rational discourse — reference to truth, mutual recognition as a counterpart capable of argumentation, readiness to give reasons — can be demonstrated in the strict sense, because contesting them presupposes them.

Relation to Habermas

Apel developed discourse ethics together with Jürgen Habermas — both share the central place of argumentative discourse and the regulative idea of an ideal communication community. The decisive dissent: Habermas renounces the program of ultimate justification and presents the norms of discourse as factual presuppositions of action oriented toward mutual understanding; Apel insists that these presuppositions can be strictly ultimately justified, precisely because contesting them leads into a performative self-contradiction. For the present ontology of the person, it is Apel’s variant that is pertinent — it alone supplies the non-circumventable evidential quality that sustains the argument against Singer.

Central Idea in the Book

The Transfer to the Ontology of the Person

In the form presented here (Bexten 2026), Apel’s transcendental-pragmatic figure is transferred from discourse ethics to the ontology of the person: whoever argues at all enacts, in the act of arguing, rational and responsible personhood — and thereby presupposes it in himself and in his addressee. Whoever wishes to restrict this personhood theoretically to a narrow subset of human beings (as the empirical-functionalist concept of person of Singer and Locke does) contradicts himself in the very performance.

The achievement of this transfer: it connects two hitherto largely separate strands — Apel’s continental transcendental pragmatics and the classical-realist ontology of the person in the tradition of Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, and Spaemann.

Demarcation

Apel’s own project was not substance-ontological but communication-theoretical and ethical in design: he sought to secure the conditions of rational discourse and the foundations of morality. The step undertaken here supplements his figure with an ontological dimension that he himself did not draw: whoever speaks is not merely embedded in a communicative web — as a speaker he always already is a person in the substantial sense.

Place in the Book

Apel does not stand at the center of a chapter of his own, but methodologically shapes the decisive objection to the empirical-functionalist concept of person, which is developed in Chapter 3 (German) and systematically unfolded in The Performative Contradiction.

Further sources:

  • Die Idee der Sprache in der Tradition des Humanismus von Dante bis Vico (The Idea of Language in the Tradition of Humanism from Dante to Vico, 1963). Bonn: Bouvier (habilitation thesis, language-philosophical foundation)
  • Transformation der Philosophie, 2 vols. (1973). Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp; English selection: Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980 (foundation of transcendental pragmatics)
  • Diskurs und Verantwortung. Das Problem des Übergangs zur postkonventionellen Moral (Discourse and Responsibility: The Problem of the Transition to Post-Conventional Morality, 1988). Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp (application to ethics and responsibility)
  • Paradigmen der Ersten Philosophie (Paradigms of First Philosophy, 2011). Berlin: Suhrkamp (systematic self-positioning)
  • Transzendentale Reflexion und Geschichte (Transcendental Reflection and History, 2017). Berlin: Suhrkamp, ed. Smail Rapic (essays 1996–2014, published shortly before his death)

See also

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