Philosophy of responsibility of К.-О. Apel: Ukrainian and European contexts

Abstract

The relevance of the chosen topic of the article is determined by practical and theoretical circumstances. Firstly, it goes about the importance of the philosophical understanding of K.-O. Apel of responsibility as a civic virtue and an essential characteristic of human being under the conditions of Ukraine's struggle for its existence. Secondly, proposed by Apel attempt to single out the most essential components of the philosophical conceptualization of the idea of responsibility appears as a realisation of the impossibility of a fair, humane resolution of social and intercultural conflicts without due mutual respect and recognition of the dignity of their participants. So what are the components and characteristic features, as well as the limits of the appellate ethics of responsibility based on the thesis of an ideal communicative community? The answer to this question is especially relevant today and became the subject of the article, the novelty of which consists in an effort to analyse the fundamental aspects of Apel's philosophy as the philosophy of responsibility, actualized by domestic and Western European researchers and real practical problems. Turning to the main components of the philosophy of responsibility shows that in the “Transformation of Philosophy” Apel seeks to go beyond the monologic categorical imperative of I. Kant's ethics. It goes about the refusal of K.-O. Apel against the methodological solipsism of modern philosophy and its replacement by the concepts of “understanding”, “agreement”, “communication” and the construction of a priori intersubjective understanding on the basis of these principles of transcendental philosophy, within which even a lonely person can know and understand the world. It is K.-O. Apel who emphasizes that collective irresponsibility must be replaced by collective responsibility, co-responsibility based on a new philosophical anthropology, the centre of which will be Apel's responsible person. However, the outstanding German intellectual just remained at the threshold of his peaceful European home and was unable to look at the controversial modern world through the prism of not only his discursive ethics, but also through the eyes of the living, sociocultural rooted being of the Other. And the “crisis of mind”, which he was so eager to overcome, tragically appeared without him, in front of us, acquired new terrible dimensions: when intolerance to another, special being became not just illegal or immoral, but frankly irresponsible and criminal.