Karl Otto Apel and Jurgen Habermas have developed a theory based on moral and political philosophy to understand the mood of society's political, legal and moral structures. Both have bet on ethical discourse and public communication as mechanisms of social regulation and legitimating elements in normative decision-making. However, regarding these theories as salvific attractions of the precarious reality of Latin America suggests the need to analyze a set of phenomena that cannot be passed over as formal philosophical abstractions, such as social inequality, repression, political silencing, the poor quality of education and, above all, extreme poverty.