Abstract

The problem of the possibility of true knowledge is the most crucial of all philosophical problems. It is the task of transcendental philosophy, initiated by Kant, to solve this problem. Hegel, however, has made clear that Kantian transcendental philosophy is paradoxical because it tries to explicate the conditions of the possibility of true knowledge, while presupposing those very same conditions. Karl-Otto Apel claims to have saved transcendental philosophy from this Hegelian criticism by means of a special argument, the reflexive transcendental-pragmatic argument. This argument says that one cannot dispute or ignore the transcendental conditions of argumentation without being confronted by performative contradictions. I argue that Apel's argument is not able to refute Hegel's criticism of transcendental philosophy because this argument also suffers from a paradox. However, I do not conclude that transcendental philosophy is useless: though transcendental philosophy cannot actually prove anything about the transcendental conditions of argumentation, it can function very well as an explicative and maieutical discipline for elucidating these conditions. Finally, I argue that transcendental philosophy can have this explicative and maieutical function only when some ethical norms arepresupposed