Karl Otto Apel

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Revision as of 08:04, 20 October 2010

Karl-Otto Apel

Kral-Otto Apel(Düsseldorf, 15 march 1922) is a German philosopher and professor[1]. He is most wellknown for his language Philosophy and ethics[2].

An example of his influence on social geography is given by W. Zierhofer(2002)[3]:

As geographers, we deal with a sphere that is composed of both meaning and matter, as Martin Gren(1994) has put it, and so action theory has to incorporate both ordinary acts and speech acts. Note, however, that, although every communication depends on physical mediators, communication provides the potential to organize or structure physical conditions, but not vice versa.

Precisely because language is an instrument that allows us to represent everything )which is not saying that meaning is based on representation!), argumentation has the potential to explain, criticize, plan or regulate all related and relevant activities. It is for this reason that Karl-Otto Apel (1990, page36) calls argumentation the "meta-institution" of all social institutions. Accordingly, we may regard language as a meta-level (or a reflexive sphere) of social reality, and we may take speech acts as the key to the structuration of society.

References

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