Controversies over the Basis of Morality: Considerations from Kant, Apel and Dussel

Abstract

Apel devoted much of his work to arguing the meaning and tasks of discourse ethics as the ultimate foundation of ethics, which would overcome Kantian solipsism, since the speech community implies a necessary intersubjective rationality for laying the foundations of morality. Much of the criticism he has received comes from philosopher Enrique Dussel, who confronts him about the lack of the necessary conditions for implementing his theory; as with Kant, he argues the lack of ethics with content, and, above all, he questions him for having thought of an ideal community of communication from and for the enlightened society of the north, overlooking the Latin American contingency of precariousness.