The foundations of discourse ethics in Habermas and Apel

Abstract

Throughout this paper are faced various issues in the field of moral philosophy related to modes of foundation of discourse ethics. Along with this, they are also elucidated its defining contours: a primarily Kantian ethics that at the same time tries to move away and to subsume the limitations and achievements of Hegelian and Aristotelian ethics. Although it prevails some common points around preliminary research interests between the approaches of Habermas and Apel, the differences between them are also apparent. Furthermore, the effort to sculpt a custom-made Kant, freed from all limiting bias, it can not avoid that discourse ethics has significant shortcomings.