This study provides, in the notion of transcendence, a framework for interpreting Heidegger’s thinking in regard to language, one of his major preoccupations. It both locates his thinking in its historical context, and, while still remaining faithful to it, frees it for discussion and evaluation in a horizon beyond Heidegger’s own, by showing how heideggerian insights are crucial to the development of Karl-Otto Apel’s linguistically-based transcendental philosophy. The full import of Heidegger’s thinking for the central concerns and problems of philosophy is thus revealed by tracing how, in Apel’s work, it is made both ethically relevant and capable of fruitful dialogue with Anglo-American philosophical discourse, represented by such thinkers as Wittgenstein and Peirce.