Discourse ethics as a response to the novel challenges of today's reality to coresponsibility

Abstract

The writer explores the specifically novel and simultaneously important aspects of today’s reality that seem to challenge ethical responsibility. First, he defines two classes of novel problems: those that are completely novel as a result of sociocultural evolution and those that are not. He demonstrates that the second class of problems takes on a novel quality as a consequence of the rise of the first class of problems. He asserts that both classes imply a challenge to ethics to which most of our current philosophical versions cannot provide a response. He introduces the transcendental pragmatic foundation of discourse ethics and concludes that it may eventually provide a response to precisely those challenges that are posed by the novel problems of global justice and coresponsibility that are raised by today’s reality.