Thinker

Enrique Dussel quotes

4 passages in English · 1934–2023 · Political Phenomenology.

Overview

Enrique Dussel (1934–2023) was an Argentine-Mexican philosopher of liberation who wrote from geopolitical periphery—famously in Mexican exile—toward a worldwide philosophy. Philosophy of Liberation (1977) and later ethics of liberation fuse Levinasian exteriority with a critique of Eurocentric modernity since 1492.

Main ideas

Before the ego cogito stands the ego conquiro: conquest and enslavement practically found modern ‘I think.’ Genuine philosophy ponders reality, not only texts, and peripheral intelligence can be clearest because it need not hide domination. Liberation philosophy addresses the wretched of the earth without treating the center as the only site of Being.

Major works

  • Philosophy of Liberation
  • Ethics of Liberation
  • 1492: The Concealment of the Other

Legacy

Dussel became a global reference for decolonial ethics, political theology, and critiques of modernity’s colonial underside.

Themes in this archive

Time (1) · Power (1) · Otherness (1)

  1. Before the ego cogito there is an ego conquiro; “I conquer” is the practical foundation of “I think.”
  2. From the “I conquer” applied to the Aztec and Inca world and all America, from the “I enslave” applied to Africans … from this “I” appears the Cartesian ego cogito.
  3. Philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not sophistry or ideology, does not ponder philosophy. … Philosophy ponders the nonphilosophical; the reality.
  4. Written from the periphery, for persons and peoples of the periphery, this book nonetheless also addresses readers in the center of the present world system.