In The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy, critical theory scholar Eduardo Mendieta examines the philosophical origins of discourse ethics through the prism of Apel's thought. Mendieta finds that Apel fundamentally transformed German philosophy, which had become stagnant in the years before World War II, and deeply influenced later thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas.

Chapter 1 Heidegger's Existential Analytic as Epistemology: Kant and Heidegger Chapter 2 Die Linguistische Wende: Its Sources and Figures Chapter 3 From Transcendental Hermeneutics to Transcendental Semiotics Chapter 4 Transcendental or Universal Pragmatics? An Auseinandersetzung between Apel and Habermas Chapter 5 Discourse Ethics as an Ethics of Responsibility: Toward a Macro-Ethics of Planetary Co-responsibility