Ethics of Liberation: in the Age of Globalization and Exclusion by Enrique Dussel [Book Review]

Abstract

For over four decades, Enrique Dussel has been developing and defending a philosophy of liberation for an inclusive, egalitarian, and democratic global community. Ethics of Liberation (1998) in many respects culminates a project begun in the 1970s with the still untranslated five volume For an Ethics of Latin American Liberation (1970-80). Dussel attempts to provide theoretical tools to replace Hellenocentrism ontological Eurocentrism with a global philosophy that prioritizes the victims of neoliberal capitalism and European hegemony. Ethics of Liberation emerges from the shadow of the Argentinian junta and the Dirty Wars. It seeks to capture the perspective of the majority of the world’s population trapped in the periphery in the developing world or forced to the margins in developed states. It is an ethics of the hungry and the unemployed, addressed to families of the disappeared and to refugees fleeing state-sponsored terrorism and environmental degradation. In the philosophy of liberation, the plight of these oppressed and excluded is not a result of the imperfect institutions and unfortunate leadership; rather, it is the consequence of an international system of imperialism, neoliberalism, and American hegemony.