Ethics of Liberation

Enrique Dussel, a leading figure in liberation theology, studied philosophy and church history in Madrid, Paris, and Mainz. He holds doctorates in both philosophy and history. A political refugee from his native Argentina, Dussel now lives and teaches in Mexico. He is a committee member for the theological review Concilium, and president of the Comision de Estudios de Historia de la Iglesia en Latinamerica (CEHILA). His other books include Philosophy of Liberation.

Available in English for the first time, this much-anticipated translation of Enrique Dussel's Ethics of Liberation marks a milestone in ethical discourse. Dussel is one of the world's foremost philosophers. This treatise, originally published in 1998, is his masterwork and a cornerstone of the philosophy of liberation, which he helped to found and develop.Throughout his career, Dussel has sought to open a space for articulating new possibilities for humanity out of, and in light of, the suffering, dignity, and creative drive of those who have been excluded from Western Modernity and neoliberal rationalism. Grounded in engagement with the oppressed, his thinking has figured prominently in philosophy, political theory, and liberation movements around the world.In Ethics of Liberation, Dussel provides a comprehensive world history of ethics, demonstrating that our most fundamental moral and ethical traditions did not emerge in ancient Greece and develop through modern European and North American thought. The obscured and ignored origins of Modernity lie outside the Western tradition. Ethics of Liberation is a monumental rethinking of the history, origins, and aims of ethics. It is a critical reorientation of ethical theory.

About the Series xiEditor's Foreword to the English Edition xiiiPreface xvIntroduction: World History of Ethical Systems 1I.1. Origin of the Interregional System: Afro-Bantu Egypt and the Semites of the Middle East 6I.2. Cultures without Direct Links to the System: The Mesoamerican and Inca Worlds 9I.3. The "Indoeuropean" World: From the Chinese to the Roman Empire 13I.4. The Byzantine World, Muslim Hegemony, and the East: The European Medieval Periphery 17I.5. Unfolding of the World System: From "Modern" Spain of the Sixteenth Century 26I.6. Modernity as "Management" of Planetary Centrality and Its Contemporary Crisis 32I.7. The Liberation of Philosophy? 40Part I: Foundation of Ethics 53I. The Material Moment of Ethics: Practical Truth 551.1. The Human Cerebral Cognitive and Affective-Appetitive System 571.2. Utilitarianism 691.3. Communitarianism 771.4. Some Ethics of Content or Material Ethics 851.5. The Criterion and Universal Material Principle of Ethics 922. Formal Morality: Intersubjective Validity 1082.1. The Transcendental Morality of Immanuel Kent 1102.2. The Neocontractualist Formalism of John Rawls 1152.3. The "Discourse Ethics" of Karl-Otto Apel 1212.4. The Moral Majority of Jürgen Habermas 1282.5. The Criterion of Validity and the Universal, Formal Principle of Morality 1413. Ethical Feasibility and the "Goodness Claim" 1583.1 The Pragmatism of Charles S. Pierce 1603.2. The Pragmatic Realism of Hilary Putnam 1673.3. The Functional or Formal "System" of Niklas Luhmann 1753.4. The "Feasibility" of Franz Hinkelammert 1813.5. The Criterion and the Ethical Principle of Feasibility 186Part II. Critical Ethics, Antihegemonic Validity, and the Praxis of Liberation 2054. The Ethical Criticism of the Prevailing System: From the Perspective of the Negativity of the Victims 2154.1 Marx's Critique of Political Economics 2184.2. The "Negative" and the "Material" in Critical Theory: Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Benjamin 2344.3. The Dialectics of Drive 2504.4. The Critical Criterion and the Material or Ethical-Critical Principle 2785. The Antihegemonic Validity of the Community of Victims 2915.1. Rigoberta Menchü 2935.2. The Ethical-Critical Process of Paulo Freire 3035.3. Functionalist and Critical Paradigms 3205.4. The "Principle of Hope" of Ernst Bloch 3345.5. The Critical-Discursive Criterion and the Principle of Validity 3426. The Liberation Principle 3556.1. The "Organization Question": From Vanguard toward Symmetric Participation—Theory and Praxis? 3596.2. The "Issue of the Subject": Emergence of New Sociohistorical Actors 3736.3. The "Reform-Transformation" Question 3886.4. The "Question of Violence": Legitimate Coercion, Violence, and the Praxis of Liberation 3996.5. The Critical Criterion of Feasibility and the Liberation Principle 413Appendix 1. Some Theses on Order of Appearance in the Text 433Appendix 2. Sais: Capital of Egypt 447Notes 453Bibliography 655Index 689