High cultures and the inter-regional system: beyond Hellenocentrism -- The material moment of the ethics, practical truth -- Formal morality, intersubjective validity -- Ethical feasibility and the "goodness claim" -- The ethical critique of the prevailing system : from the perspective of the negativity of the victims -- The anti-hegemonic validity of the community of victims -- The liberation principle -- Appendix I. some theses in the order of their appearance in the text -- Appendix II. Sais: capital of Egypt.

First published in Spanish in 2006, _Twenty Theses on Politics_ is a major statement on political philosophy from Enrique Dussel, one of Latin America’s—and the world’s—most important philosophers, and a founder of the philosophy of liberation. Synthesizing a half-century of his pioneering work in moral and political philosophy, Dussel presents a succinct rationale for the development of political alternatives to the exclusionary, exploitative institutions of neoliberal globalization. In twenty short, provocative theses he lays out the foundational elements for a politics (...) of just and sustainable coexistence. Dussel first constructs a theory of political power and its institutionalization, taking on topics such as the purpose of politics and the fetishization of power. He insists that political projects must criticize or reject as unsustainable all political systems, actions, and institutions whose negative effects are suffered by oppressed or excluded victims. Turning to the deconstruction or transformation of political power, he explains the political principles of liberation and addresses matters such as reform and revolution. _Twenty Theses on Politics_ is inspired by recent political transformations in Latin America. As Dussel writes in Thesis 15, regarding the liberation praxis of social and political movements, “The winds that arrive from the South—from Nestor Kirchner, Tabaré Vásquez, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, and so many others—show us that things can be changed. The _people _must reclaim sovereignty!” Throughout the twenty theses Dussel engages with Latin American thinkers and activists and with radical political projects such as the World Social Forum. He is also in dialogue with the ideas of Marx, Hegel, Habermas, Rawls, and Negri, offering insights into the applications and limits of their thinking in light of recent Latin American political thought and practice. (shrink)

En este libro se tratan cuestiones abiertas sobre la modernidad, los imperios coloniales europeos y el capitalismo como fenómenos simultáneos. También la relación del pensamiento de Marx con el de Schelling; el tema político en E. Levinas; la función de los argumentos tautológicos en política imperial ; un desarrollo del concepto de tolerancia que se trasciende en el de solidaridad, desde las hipótesis de trabajo de K.-O. Apel y J. Habemas; una crítica al pensamiento cuasi-anarquista de John Hollaway en torno (...) al problema de las instituciones políticas y el poder, para concluir con la propuesta de que el pensamiento crítico de las dos primeras generaciones de la Escuela de Frankfurt se continuaría en la periferia mundial postcolonial a través de la filosofía de la liberación; más en concreto, por medio de una política de la liberación, que es producto del «giro decolonizador» desde los años setenta del siglo XX. Política en la que desembocan todos estos trabajos que abarcan muchos años de estudios sobre el tema. (shrink)

Enrique Ambrosini Dussel is and has been one of the most prolific Latin American philosophers of the last 100 years. This is the definitive English language collection of Dussel's enormous body of work in ethics, economics, history, and liberation theology.

Analogy makes possible the dialogue between people. This dialogue, at the intercultural level and from distinct ontological comprehensions of life, cannot be achieved from a univocal pretension of meaning. Analogy permits, especially at the rhetoric level of Political Philosophy, an adequate interpretation of such complex concepts as people, state or rights. A semantics of these concepts by similarity allows us to advance in the process towards a better interpretation of the other interlocutor’s expression though never reaching identity.

This contribution is a critical and constructive engage ment with discourse ethics. First, it clarifies why discourse ethics has difficulties with the grounding and application of moral norms. Second, it turns to a positive appropriation of the formal and proce dural aspects of discourse ethics. The goal is the elaboration of an ethics that is able to incorporate the material aspects of goods and the formal dimension of ethical validity and consensuability. Every morality is the formal application of some substantive (...) good. Every ethical perspective demands its evaluation in terms of its uni versability. In order to achieve this mediation, it is suggested that we must incorporate not only the historical dimension of moral systems, but also the role of critical consciousness and the negativity embod ied by those who are victims of the existing consensus. The essay con cludes with six points that need to be considered when formulating a material ethics that is universalizable and, most importantly, that can address the massive poverty and dehumanization of those excluded from the present community of communication. Key Words: application • consensual • corporeality • discourse ethics • formal • grounding • intersubjective • Kantian • liberation • ethics • material • phronesis • procedural • validity. (shrink)

This article argues the following points. (1) It is necessary to affirm that all of humanity has always sought to address certain `core universal problems' that are present in all cultures. (2) The rational responses to these `core problems' first acquire the shape of mythical narratives. (3) The formulation of categorical philosophical discourses is a subsequent development in human rationality, which does not, however, negate all mythical narratives. These discourses arose in all the great urban neolithic cultures (even if only (...) in initial form). (4) Modern European philosophy confused its economic, political and cultural domination, and the resulting crises in other philosophical traditions, with a Eurocentric universality claim, which must be questioned. (5) In any case there are formal universal aspects in which all regional philosophies can coincide, and which respond to the `core problems' at an abstract level. (6) All of this impels entry into a new age of inter-philosophical dialogue, respectful of differences and open to learning from the useful discoveries of other traditions. (7) A new philosophical project must be developed that is capable of going beyond Eurocentric philosophical modernity, by shaping a global trans - modern pluriverse, drawing upon the `discarded' (by modernity) own resources of peripheral, subaltern, postcolonial philosophies. Key Words: Al-Jabri • dialogue • Eurocentric • Fornet-Betancourt • Hountondji • inter-philosophical • myth • narrative • rationality • Ricoeur • transmodern. (shrink)

El artículo sostiene las siguientes tesis: 1) Es necesario afirmar que la humanidad ha expresado desde siempre ciertos núcleos problemáticos universales que se observan en todas las culturas. 2) La existencia de las respuestas racionales a esos núcleos se expresan en forma de narraciones míticas. 3)..

This translation of Enrique Dussel's “‘Ser-Hispano’: Un Mundo en el ‘Border’ de Muchos Mundos” offers an interpretation of hispanos (Latin Americans and U.S. latinos) as historically, culturally, and geographically located “in-between” many worlds that combine to constitute an identity on the intercultural “border.” To illustrate how hispanos have navigated and continue to navigate their complex history in order to create a polyphonic identity, the essay sketches five historical-cultural “worlds” that come together to form the hispanic “world.”.

Enrique Dussel's writings span the theology of liberation, critiques of discourse ethics, evaluations of Marx, Levinas, Habermas, and others, but most importantly, the development of a philosophy written from the underside of Eurocentric modernist teleologies, an ethics of the impoverished, and the articulation of a unique Latin American theoretical perspective. This anthology of original articles by U.S. philosophers elucidating Dussel's thought, offers critical analyses from a variety of perspectives, including feminist ones. Also included is an essay by Dussel that responds (...) to these essays. (shrink)

In this essay, Enrique Dussel provides a textual “rereading” of Karl Marx’s theory of fetishism according to his scattered but significantcomments on religion as they extend throughout the whole of his work. In Part I, “The Place of the Subject of Religion in the Whole Work of Marx,” Dussel demonstrates Marx’s differentiation between a critique of the essence of religion and its manifestations, arguing that there is a space in Marx for a anti-fetishized liberatory religion. In Part II, “Toward a (...) Theory of Fetishism in General,” he provides a methodological account of such a religion, as well as a panorama of the content of this essence of religion. These accounts provide the basis for more clearly identifying both religious fetishism and the fetishist character of capital. (shrink)

In this essay, Enrique Dussel provides a textual “rereading” of Karl Marx’s theory of fetishism according to his scattered but significant comments on religion as they extend throughout the whole of his work. In Part I, “The Place of the Subject of Religion in the Whole Work of Marx,” Dussel demonstrates Marx’s differentiation between a critique of the essence of religion and its manifestations, arguing that there is a space in Marx for a anti-fetishized liberatory religion. In Part II, “Toward (...) a Theory of Fetishism in General,” he provides a methodological account of such a religion, as well as a panorama of the content of this essence of religion. These accounts provide the basis for more clearly identifying both religious fetishism and the fetishist character of capital. (shrink)

En este artículo el autor responde a cuatro objeciones que Karí-Otto Apel desarrolla en el trabajo: «La ética del Discurso ante el desafío de la Filosofía de la Liberación» . 1) La miseria, que es una evidencia de exigencia ética, necesita para alcanzar validez intersubjetiva de la mediación hermenéutica de las ciencias sociales criticas. 2) En el nivel ideológico la Filosofía de la Liberación no acepta ser criticada de historicisrno y de un cierto econornicismo marxista Standard, ya que reconstruye el (...) pensamiento de Marx de manera original. 3) La trascendentalidad trans-ontológica que propone la Filosofía de la Liberación es propia de la alteridad de tipo levínasíano, 4) Aunque se acepta la necesidad de efectuar una fundamentación formal antiescéptica, lo que importa ética y materialmente es la demostración ante el cínico que pretende justificar la muerte de la verdad ética de la praxis de liberación. (shrink)

This paper argues the following points: (1) It is necessary to affirm that humanity has always sought to address certain “core universal problems” that are present in all cultures. (2) The rational responses to these “core problems” first appear as mythical narratives. (3) The formulation of categorical philosophical discourses is a subsequent development in human rationality, which does not however negate all mythical narratives. (4) Modern European philosophy confused its economic, political, and cultural domination, and the resulting crises in other (...) philosophical traditions, with a Eurocentric universality claim, which must be questioned. (5) There are universal aspects in which all regional philosophies coincide, and which respond to the “core problems” at an abstract level. (6) All of this impels entry into a new age of inter-philosophical dialogue, respectful of differences and open to learning from other traditions. (7) A new philosophical project must be developed that is capable of going beyond Eurocentric philosophical modernity, by shaping a global transmodern pluriverse. (shrink)

Colonialism and Its Legacy brings together essays by leading scholars in both the fields of political theory and the history of political thought about European colonialism and its legacies, and postcolonial social and political theory. The essays explore the ways in which European colonial projects structured and shaped much of modern political theory, how concepts from political philosophy affected and were realized in colonial and imperial practice, and how we can understand the intellectual and social world left behind by a (...) half-millennium of European empires. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel thematisiert den Skandal weltweiter Armut im Ausgang von einer prinzipiellen Überlegung zum Verhältnis von »Ökonomie und Ethik«, deren innerer Zusammenhang in der westlichen Moralphilosophie zumeist vernachlässigt wird. Insofern jedoch, wie Dussel bereits in seiner “Etica de la liberación” aufzeigte, die Erhaltung und Entwicklung menschlichen Lebens der materiale Selbstzweck aller Moral ist, kann Ökonomie von Ethik nicht getrennt, allenfalls unterschieden werden; denn wirtschaftliches Handeln im Sinn einer effizienten Verwendung knapper Ressourcen zielt stets auf die Sicherung der materiellen Grundlagen menschlichen (...) Lebens, die zugleich eine unverzichtbare Dimension des Selbstzwecks moralischen Handelns ausmacht. Für einen Polylog philosophischer Traditionen besonders interessant ist, dass der Lateinamerikaner Enrique Dussel seine Konzeption eines internen Zusammenhangs zwischen Ökonomie und Ethik in Auseinandersetzung mit Amartya Sen entwickelt, dem aus Indien stammenden Nobelpreisträger für Ökonomie des Jahres 1998. (shrink)