The Problem of Transcendentalist “Adaptation” of the Principle of Ultimate Justification: Transcendental Pragmatics vs Transcendental Phenomenology

Abstract

The article investigates the conditions and limits of a transcendental reinterpretation of the principle of ultimate (final) justification, carried out within Apel’s philosophical project (where this principle acquires the status of a methodological center), in contrast to the phenomenological version of the transcendental “adaptation” of the idea of Letztbegründung. The author reveals a certain contradiction between the fundamental parameters of transcendental thought (clearly and rigorously represented in phenomenological discourse) and the principle of ultimate justification, which, despite the radicalism of Apel’s attempt at its rethinking in transcendental vein, still remains metaphysically founded. By comparing the transcendental-pragmatic and transcendental-phenomenological approaches to the problem of ultimate justification, she shows that the seemingly metaphysical implications of the phenomenological version of the discourse of ultimate (final) justification are compensated by a number of authentically transcendental moments, primarily such as the splitting of the “instance” of Letztbegründung into consciousness and the given, as well as the non-substantiality of consciousness, which, accordingly, cannot claim the status of ultimate (final) in a metaphysical sense. Alongside the metaphysical foundations of Apel’s thematization of ultimate justification, the author also identifies its pragmatic implications: first and foremost, the primacy of effectiveness and orientation towards results, thus the presumption of feasibility, and therefore completeness, finality – in contrast to the ultimate criticality, reflexivity, and possibilitness as dominant traits of the transcendental attitude. In the course of the comparative analysis, the paper reveals and proves that, while phenomenological discourse includes the ideas of ground and justification, but subordinates them to genuinely transcendental factors, Apel’s approach subordinates the methodological resources crucial for transcendentalism (reflexivity, inquiry into conditions of possibility, self-reference) to the principle of ultimate justification as a kind of “principle of principles” of transcendental pragmatics, which remains rooted in a metaphysical attitude.