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A monumental rethinking of the history, origins, and aims of ethics, and the critical orientation of ethical theory

Table of Contents

About the Series xi
Editor's Foreword to the English Edition xiii
Preface xv
Introduction: World History of Ethical Systems 1
I.1. Origin of the Interregional System: Afro-Bantu Egypt and the Semites of the Middle East 6
I.2. Cultures without Direct Links to the System: The Mesoamerican and Inca Worlds 9
I.3. The "Indoeuropean" World: From the Chinese to the Roman Empire 13
I.4. The Byzantine World, Muslim Hegemony, and the East: The European Medieval Periphery 17
I.5. Unfolding of the World System: From "Modern" Spain of the Sixteenth Century 26
I.6. Modernity as "Management" of Planetary Centrality and Its Contemporary Crisis 32
I.7. The Liberation of Philosophy? 40
Part I: Foundation of Ethics 53
I. The Material Moment of Ethics: Practical Truth 55
1.1. The Human Cerebral Cognitive and Affective-Appetitive System 57
1.2. Utilitarianism 69
1.3. Communitarianism 77
1.4. Some Ethics of Content or Material Ethics 85
1.5. The Criterion and Universal Material Principle of Ethics 92
2. Formal Morality: Intersubjective Validity 108
2.1. The Transcendental Morality of Immanuel Kent 110
2.2. The Neocontractualist Formalism of John Rawls 115
2.3. The "Discourse Ethics" of Karl-Otto Apel 121
2.4. The Moral Majority of Jürgen Habermas 128
2.5. The Criterion of Validity and the Universal, Formal Principle of Morality 141
3. Ethical Feasibility and the "Goodness Claim" 158
3.1 The Pragmatism of Charles S. Pierce 160
3.2. The Pragmatic Realism of Hilary Putnam 167
3.3. The Functional or Formal "System" of Niklas Luhmann 175
3.4. The "Feasibility" of Franz Hinkelammert 181
3.5. The Criterion and the Ethical Principle of Feasibility 186
Part II. Critical Ethics, Antihegemonic Validity, and the Praxis of Liberation 205
4. The Ethical Criticism of the Prevailing System: From the Perspective of the Negativity of the Victims 215
4.1 Marx's Critique of Political Economics 218
4.2. The "Negative" and the "Material" in Critical Theory: Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Benjamin 234
4.3. The Dialectics of Drive 250
4.4. The Critical Criterion and the Material or Ethical-Critical Principle 278
5. The Antihegemonic Validity of the Community of Victims 291
5.1. Rigoberta Menchü 293
5.2. The Ethical-Critical Process of Paulo Freire 303
5.3. Functionalist and Critical Paradigms 320
5.4. The "Principle of Hope" of Ernst Bloch 334
5.5. The Critical-Discursive Criterion and the Principle of Validity 342
6. The Liberation Principle 355
6.1. The "Organization Question": From Vanguard toward Symmetric Participation—Theory and Praxis? 359
6.2. The "Issue of the Subject": Emergence of New Sociohistorical Actors 373
6.3. The "Reform-Transformation" Question 388
6.4. The "Question of Violence": Legitimate Coercion, Violence, and the Praxis of Liberation 399
6.5. The Critical Criterion of Feasibility and the Liberation Principle 413
Appendix 1. Some Theses on Order of Appearance in the Text 433
Appendix 2. Sais: Capital of Egypt 447
Notes 453
Bibliography 655
Index 689

About the Author

Enrique Dussel (1934–2023) taught philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa, and at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. He was the author of many books, including Beyond Philosophy: Ethics, History, Marxism, and Liberation Theology and The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of the “Other” and the Myth of Modernity. His books Twenty Theses on Politics and Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate (edited with Mabel Moraña and Carlos A. Jáuregui) are both also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"Enrique Dussel is the towering figure in liberation philosophy. This long-awaited translation confirms his unique position in contemporary philosophy." Cornel West "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." - Alex Sager, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books