Dussel Philosophy of

Liberation
Preface and Chapter 1

Enrique Dussel

BACKGROUND

About Enrique Dussel

Enrique Domingo Dussel Ambrosini, born December 24, 1934, in La
Paz (near Mendoza) Argentina.
Involved in Catholic Action.
President of the student federation at University of Mendoza.
Philosophy degree with thesis on the idea of the common good from
the Presocratics to Aristotle (1957)
Doctorate in philosophy, Complutense University, Madrid (1959).
1200 page thesis (!) The Concept of the Common Good in Charles
De Konick and Jacques Maritain.
Became a member of the Madrid School centered around Ortega y
Gasset (included Zubiri).
Acc. to E. Mendieta, Dussel discovered Latin America from Europe
(the center? the periphery of the periphery?)
1959-1961 lived in a kibbutz in Israel. Studied Semitic roots of
Christianity, learned Hebrew, explored spiritual roots of poverty.

About Enrique Dussel

Licenciate in theology, Catholic Institute, Paris (1965).
Doctorate in history, the Sorbonne, Paris. Thesis: Les Eveques
Hispano-Amricains. Dfenseurs et evangilisateurs de l'Indien
(The Spanish-American Bishops: Defenders and Evangelizers
of the Indians). (1967).
Returned to Argentina in 1967. Taught philosophical
anthropology & ethics at National University of Cuyo.
Discovered the thought of Emmanuel Levinas (woke him up
from ontological sleep).
Military group bombed his house in 1973. Caught in the
Peronist upheaval. 1975, expelled from Cuyo. He & his family
went into exile.
Professor of political philosophy, Universidad Nacional
Autnoma de Mxico (UNAM) since 1976.

About Philosophy and

Liberation
Published in 1975.
Attempts an overview of his thought, a
summation of 5 volumes of work on ethics,
Hegel, Levinas, and historical studies.
Influences of his mature thought: Marx,
medieval mystics, Schelling, Marx,
Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas (last three
are Jewish thinkers).
Written in exile (in Mexico) without his
personal library.

About Philosophy and

Liberation
On Otherness (Alterity):
In contrast to the dialectic of a cosmos, being, or
consciousness that ascends to unity, autonomy, divine
passivity, or self-determination so as to return to itself
--where the other of itself is left out as a residue of the true
process (the dialectic) as the non-being, the particular, the
unknown and worthless -- the "warm current" of dialogic,
apophantic, creative, analogical thinking moves from the
otherness of the other, which always remains beyond the
totalized totality. The moment of transformation, of creative
irruption into the frozen and stabilized totality, arrives from
beyond the horizon of this totality. This is the metaphysical
"exteriority" of the Other.
Eduardo Mendieta, Introduction to Dussels The Underside of Modernity, xvii.

WTF?
Contrast between DIALECTIC and
DIALOGIC/ANALOGIC/APOPHANTIC/CREATIVE
thought.
DIALECTIC (Hegel, Marx) everything is working
itself out towards a final UNITY (except that it
necessarily excludes whatever doesnt fit and
calls that nonbeing
THE [RED TERMS] (Dussel) starts from the
metaphysical exteriority of the other, i.e., from
that which is excluded by the DIALECTIC, i.e., that
which doesnt fit neatly in the current system and
can question and disrupt that system.

About Philosophy and

Liberation
Which is first philosophy?
Aristotle: metaphysics as first
philosophy
Modern turn: epistemology as first
philosophy
Liberation Philosophy: ethics as first
philosophy
Inspiration in Marx and Levinas

Emergence of Liberation Philosophy

1. The Cuban Revolution (1959) and its significance for Latin
America.
2. The second general assembly of CELAM in Medelln (Colombia) in
August 1968.
3. The development of Latin American Liberation Theology (196872); the appearance of its "manifesto", Gustavo Gutirrez's A
Theology of Liberation.
4. The polemic between Augusto Salazar Bondy and Leopoldo Zea
(1969-70) concerning the possibility of an authentic Latin
American philosophy.
5. The renaissance of Latin American "populisms," and Argentina's
case in particular (1970-75).
6. The development of dependence theory.
7. The global events that go by the name 1968.
8. Globalization of finance capital, a new phase in "Late Capitalism".
Mendieta, ibid., xix.

PHILOSOPHY AND
LIBERATION (1975)

Epigraph
There is no peace; they even tear
up the flowers. Dussels 9 year old
daughter

Structure of the Book

Preface
Chapter 1: History
Chapter 2: From Phenomenology to
Liberation
Chapter 3: From Politics to Antifetishism
Chapter 4: From Nature to Economics
Chapter 5: From Science to Philosophy of
Liberation
Appendix: Philosophy and Praxis

PREFACE

Preface
Audience: neophytes in philosophy of liberation (i.e.,
newbies, e.g., us).
Not exhaustive.
gives a provisional theoretical philosophical framework.
cf. Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics

Written in the sorrow of exile.

Relies on memory.

Written from the periphery, for persons and peoples

of the periphery.
i.e., the excluded, the misfits, non-being
But also addresses those (of us) at the center of the
present world system.

Preface
Book is an ensemble of theses calculated to
foster a certain type of thinking.
Hopes to provoke a worldwide philosophical dialogue.

Uses the language of the center (even in the

service of the periphery).
The slave, in revolt, uses the masters language.

Postmodern, popular, profeminine philosophy.

Expressed by the youth of the world, the
oppressed of the earth, the condemned of world
history.
i.e., non-being!

Chapter 1

HISTORY

Purpose of Ch. 1
To present and analyze the historicoideological genesis prioritizing the
spatial, worldly setting of the
matter to be explored.
Starting from the reality of the situation,
both of the subject matter and of its own
status as critical philosophy.

Space
Not abstract, empty, idealized Newtonian
space.
Philosophy tends to present itself u-topic like that.

Space is about fixed territories; a battlefield.

Key spatial arrangement: Center and Periphery
when you fix a territory, you get both.

Political space includes all existentially real

spaces within the parameters of an economic
system in which power is exercised in tandem
with military control. [2]

Political Space

(as of
1975)

Philosophys Space
Philosophy was born in this political
space.
When born in the periphery, it is
creative.
When it gravitates towards center, it
degenerates.

On Philosophy
Philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not
sophistry or ideology, does not ponder philosophy. It
does not ponder philosophical texts, except as a
pedagogical propaedeutic to provide itself with
interpretive categories. Philosophy ponders the
nonphilosophical; the reality. But because it involves
reflection on its own reality, it sets out from what
already is, from its own world, its own system, its own
space. The philosophy that has emerged from a
periphery has always done so in response to a need to
situate itself with regard to a center in total
exteriority.
1.1.3.1

Philosophy on the Periphery

Presocratic philosophy from Turkey &
S. Italy (not Athens)
Descartes had his insights while
alone in the German alps (not Paris)
Kant worked in Knigsberg, not
Berlin.

Philosophy on the Periphery

Taking this further
Distant thinkers, those who had a perspective of the center
from the periphery, those who had to define themselves in the
presence of an already established image of the human
person and in the presence of uncivilized fellow humans, the
newcomers, the ones who hope because they are always
outside, these are the ones who have a clear mind for
pondering reality. They have nothing to hide. How could they
hide domination if they undergo it? How would their
philosophy be an ideological ontology if their praxis is one of
liberation from the center they are opposing? Philosophical
intelligence is never so truthful, clean, and precise as when it
starts from oppression and does not have to defend any
privileges, because it has none.
1.1.3.2

Ontology
Ontology = determine which things have being
and what kinds of being they have.
negative term for Dussel (from Levinas: metaphysics vs.
ontology)
1.1.4.3: Ontology, the thinking that expresses Being
the Being of the reigning and central system is the
ideology of ideologies, the foundation of the ideologies
of empires, of the center. Classic philosophy of all ages
is the theoretical consummation of the practical
oppression of peripheries.
1.1.5.2: The center is, the periphery is not.
example: Are the Indians human? 1.1.2.1
example: The slave is a slave by nature. (Aristotle) 1.1.5.3

Metaphysics, not Ontology

Metaphysics (not ontology) of creation
Bedouins, Nomads. (Semitic)
subversive and political
understood things, profits, systems, and kingdoms as
contingent and possible not necessary
note: creation is a notion of radical contingency (things could have
been otherwise). (Anarchist motto: Another world is possible!)

RESPECTS ALTERITY

Ontology (not metaphysics)

became ascendant, centered, and therefore corrupted
ideological
Kingdom of God is now this kingdom: God wanted things this
way
DISRESPECTS ALTERITY

Metaphysics, not Ontology

Philosophy of Liberation is about
metaphysics, not ontology.
On many traditional philosophical
views, metaphysics and ontology are
synonyms.
metaphysics = study of being qua being
ontology = lit., the study of being.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995)

distinguished the two terms

Metaphysics, not Ontology

Levinas (Totality and Infinity)
metaphysics arises from a desire for the
wholly or absolutely other; an
unsatisfiable desire
cf. Zubiris idea of otherness as in-its-ownrightness, with which I make my own I.
Levinas means something more than that
which is other-than-me but potentially mine
(my bread, my country).
The metaphysical desiredesires beyond
everything that can simply complete it. It is like
goodness the Desired does not fulfill it, but
deepens it. TI 34

Metaphysics, Not Ontology

Ontology = theory as comprehension
of beings; reduces the other to the
same (promotes freedom in that it
does not allow itself to be alienated
by the other)
renounces metaphysical desire (love of
the Other)
so renounces obligation!

Totality and Infinity

(ONTOLOGY)
non-being
(doesnt
count)

Totality:
I, my world,
my
understanding
(everything in here
has being
(determined acc. to
my meaning, my
projects)

Totality and Infinity

(METAPHYSICS)
In-finity:
The
Other,
the Face

Interruption
Disturbance
OBLIGATION!

Totality:
I, my world,
my
understanding

Philosophys Space
Liberation Philosophy (LP) originates from
the periphery.
Will not be ideological.
Will be global.
LP is postmodern
Modernity begins (?) with Descartes ego cogito (I
think).
root of individualism, liberalism, capitalism

But ego cogito begins with ego conquiro (I

conquer!)
Descartes philosophy was an effort to control and subdue
what is Other.

Modern European
Philosophy
Europe begins to consider itself the
archetypal foundational I. (Cartesian
Ego) 1.1.7.1
I conquer (the Aztecs & Incas)
I enslave (the Africans)
I vanquish (the Chinese sovereignty) [1.1.7.2]

Homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to man)

[1.1.7.4].
Philosophy is implicated as the center of the
ideological hegemony of the dominating class)

Brief History of Colonial

Philosophy
XVI - XVIII Centuries
Spain started universities in the new
world (Mexico, Lima); made important
advances in philosophy, physics,
mathematics, and politicsbut only by
imitation of European thought.
English and Portuguese brought colonial
elites to Europe to be trained.

Colonial Mercantile
Emancipation
Rebellion against the empires.
George Washington (1732-1799)
led revolution against British.

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753-1811)

priest who led Mexican War of Independence

Simn Bolvar (1783-1830)

military leader; led Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador,
Peru, Bolivia to independence

Jos de San Martn (1778-1850)

Argentine general; led fight for independence of
Peru.

Recolonization
These liberation movements did not produce a
philosophy of liberation.
These liberation movements quickly reformed
the center and mimicked/repeated the
ideology of the colonizers.
Other colonized regions lost their own past
Indian philosophy, Islamic/Arabic philosophy,
Chinese philosophy could not withstand the
attack of modern imperialist metropolitan thinking,
at least in its most progressive, modernizing, and
developmentalist forms. [1.2.4.3]

Recolonization
Modern European philosophers ponder the reality that
confronts them; they interpret the periphery from the
center. But the colonial philosophers of the periphery gaze
at a vision foreign to them, one that is not their own. From
the center, they see themselves as nonbeing, nothingness,
and they teach their pupils, who are something (although
illiterate in the alphabets imposed on them), that really they
are nothing, that they are like nothings walking through
history. When they have finished their studies they, like
their colonial teachers, disappear from the map
geopolitically and philosophically, they do not exist. This
pathetic ideology given the name of philosophy is the one
still taught in the majority of philosophy schools of the
periphery by the majority of its professors. 1.2.4.4

Neocolonial Imperialist
Emancipation
New Heroes (in new struggles):
Mohandas Gandhi (India from England)
Abdel Nasser (Egypt from France)
Patrice Lumumba (Congo from Belgium)

Again, no explicit philosophy

developed
just pamphlets, manifestos, tracts.
Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth
(about the Algerian war) was a
beginning. 1.2.5.1

Three Industrial Revolutions

Mechanistic
Monopolistic
Transnationalistic
Do not occupy territories with armies or
create bureaucracies; are owners of key
enterprises in the periphery; wield political
control over neocolonies & their armies.
Utterly new feature: cultivate desires/needs
through mass media; ideological imperialism.
1.2.5.2

Liberation Philosophy Now

a geopolitical factor that peripheral
nations can never forget or they will
be lost. The cat can make a mistake;
it is only toying with its prey. But the
mouse cannot make a mistake; it will
be its death. If the mouse lives, it is
because it is smarter than the cat.
1.2.6.1

Liberation Philosophy Now

a philosophy of liberation is rising
from the periphery, from the
oppressed, from the shadow that the
light of Being has not been able to
illumine. Our thought sets out from
non-Being, nothingness, otherness,
exteriority, the mystery of no-sense.
It is, then, a "barbarian" philosophy.
1.2.6.2
[see 1.2.6.3 for the program of LP]