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The Library of Living Philosophers

Karl-Otto Apel

by Anja Steinbauer

Whoever undertakes to defend practical reason – the principles of moral action – in terms of a universal cognitivist ethics, must prepare himself for criticism from most of the philosophical camps of our time: Cognitivist ethics claims to use reason to show the validity of moral norms. However, it is a widely held view that objective facts and the laws of logic and mathematics are intersubjectively valid, but that the situation is different when it comes to values.. No chance for a universal ethics? This would be a great dilemma since the rehabilitation and transformation of practical reason seems particularly urgent today. Ethics can no longer be a matter of face-to-face encounters only but must be rethought on a larger scale: it must take into account ‘globalisation’, the new situation we face in today’s world, whether we like it or not.

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