Ethics of Liberation, by Enrique Dussel

Enrique Dussel’s Ethics of Liberation might well seem too theoretical and too filled with jargon to merit attention in these pages. But it is the most compelling articulation we have of the map of power and powerlessness in which we live our lives. It is sweepingly comprehensive, a tsunami of thought. Dussel, a philosophy professor in Mexico City, ducks none of the major issues and none of the intellectual figures of the West as he develops his thought about liberation.

The book pivots on the question of the nature of modernity, for which he offers two paradigms. On the one hand is the generally accepted Eurocentric perception. This model assumes that European (including U.S.) culture is superior and that people who are excluded from European culture are of no importance and can be readily discounted. The practical effect of this exclusion, Dussel shows, is to reduce all others to victims of the cultural, military, economic juggernaut of the establishment West.

On the other hand, the paradigm of modernity championed by Dussel is one that values people outside the Eurocentric horizon and sees that they are significant players in modernity, not to be negated as victims. Dussel’s analysis is a contestation between these two paradigms.