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An Ontological Critique of the Trans-Ontology of Enrique Dussel

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Abstract

Enrique Dussel has developed a sweeping philosophical critique of the eurocentricity of Western habits of thought and action, with the aim of articulating an ‘ethics of liberation’ that takes the part distinctively of ‘the victims’ of the world system. The heart of Dussel’s effort is an ostensibly new method, ‘analectic’ or ‘anadialectic,’ which comes about through the ‘revelation’ of the other, and goes beyond the self-enclosure that, Dussel asserts, typifies dialectic in Western ontology. Thus, he takes his position to have gone beyond ontology: it is a trans-ontology, a genuine meta-physics. I question whether analectic does go beyond Western thinking of being, and propose an ontological critique that is classically Western or, as I would prefer to say, historically Western yet (along with its analogues in other philosophical traditions) classically relevant even in our ‘age of globalization and exclusion.’

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Notes

  1. In this regard, Dussel redraws a line of inquiry that sought to define a specifically Latin American project. The claim that a Latin American philosophy must be a ‘philosophy of liberation’ has its recent roots in a debate carried on during the 1960s and 1970s between the Peruvian, Augusto Salazar Bondy, and Leopoldo Zea of Mexico as to what constitutes ‘authentic’ Latin American culture, and what cultural roles philosophy and philosophers have to play in it. The details of the debate need not detain the reader here, but for reviews see Ofelia Schutte, Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American Thought, SUNY Series in Latin American Thought and Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 74-107; Mario Sáenz, The Identity of Liberation in Latin American Thought: Latin American Historicism and the Phenomenology of Leopoldo Zea (Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999), 260-296; See also Mariano Moreno Villa, ‘¿Qué quiere ser la Filosofía de la Liberación?’, Stromata 51 (1995), 301-318.

    Some inkling of Dussel’s mounting influence may be gained from the responses gathered in Enrique Dussel, The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor, and the Philosophy of Liberation, trans. and ed. Eduardo Mendieta (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 1998), and Linda Martín Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta (eds.), Thinking from the Underside of History: Enrique Dussel’s Philosophy of Liberation (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000).

    The phrase, ‘invention of the Americas,’ is Dussel’s. See Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of ‘the Other’ and the Myth of Modernity, trans. Michael D. Barber (New York: Continuum, 1995). Dussel presumably means to pun on Edmundo O’Gorman’s The Invention Of America: An Inquiry Into The Historical Nature Of The New World And The Meaning Of Its History (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1961), as does José Rabasa in the remarkable Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).

  2. An allusion to Dussel’s Etica de la Liberacion en la Edad de la Globalización y de la Exclusión (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 1998).

  3. At this juncture, Dussel claims also to surpass Levinas, who ‘has never thought that the other could be an Indian, an African, an Asian.’ Enrique Dussel, Para una ética de la liberación latinoamericana, vol. 2 (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 1973), 161; Idem., Método para una filosofía de la liberación. Superación analéctica de la dialéctica hegeliana (Salamanca: Ediciones Sígueme, 1974), 181. On the relation between Dussel and Levinas, see Michael Barber, Ethical Hermeneutics: Rationality in Enrique Dussel’s Philosophy of Liberation (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998), 18-57; Idem., ‘Emmanuel Levinas and the Philosophy of Liberation,’ Laval Théologique et Philosophique 54, 3 (October 1998), 473-481.

  4. I thank one of Sophia’s anonymous reviewers for calling my attention to the need to make this clarification.

  5. Enrique Dussel, Para una ética de la liberación latinoamericana, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 1973); Idem., Caminos de liberación latinoamericana I: Interpretación histórico-teológica de nuestro continente latino-americano (Buenos Aires: Latinoamérica Libros, 1972), English edition: History and the Theology of Liberation: A Latin American Perspective, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1976); Idem., Caminos de liberación latinoamericana II: Teología de la liberación y ética (Buenos Aires: Latinoamérica Libros, 1974), English edition: Ethics and the Theology of Liberation, trans. Bernard F. McWilliams (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1978); Idem., Método para una filosofía de la liberación. Superación analéctica de la dialéctica hegeliana (Salamanca: Ediciones Sígueme, 1976); Idem., Filosofía de la liberación, segunda edición (Bogotá: Universidad Santo Tomás, 1980), English edition: Philosophy of Liberation, trans. Aquilina Martinez and Christine Morkovsky (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1985).

  6. See, for example, Enrique Dussel, Ethics and Community, trans. Robert R. Barr, Theology and Liberation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988); Idem., The Underside of Modernity. Carlos Beorlegui sketches Dussel’s intellectual development in ‘La nueva ética de la liberación de E. Dussel,’ Realidad 72 (1999), 693-698. Beorlegui draws on Dussel’s ‘Autopercepción intellectual de un proceso historico’ (‘Intellectual self-perception of an historical process’), Anthropos 80 (1999), 13-37. In July 2009, this autobiographical reflection was accessible on-line at http://www.scribd.com/doc/5624114/AUTOPERCEPCION-INTELECTUAL-DE-UN-PROCESO-HISTORICO.

  7. The Dussel home was bombed in 1973. In 1975, the family went into exile.

  8. Beorlegui, art. cit., 721; Eduardo Mendieta, ‘Ethics for an age of globalization and exclusion,’ Philosophy and Social Criticism 25, 2 (1999), 115.see n. 2 above for the Ética de la Liberación.

  9. Beorlegui, art. cit., 724, italics mine.

  10. Eduardo Mendieta, ‘Editor’s Introduction,’ in Dussel, The Underside of Modernity, xvii.

  11. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 1. Dussel’s text has numerical divisions for the purpose of cross-reference. I omit that apparatus.

  12. Ibid., 2.

  13. Ibid., 2-3.

  14. Ibid., 3. Dussel returns to this contention often, for example in The Invention of the Americas.

  15. Ibid., 4.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid., 5.

  19. Ibid., 6.

  20. Ibid., 7.

  21. Ibid., 8-9.

  22. Ibid., 9-10.

  23. Ibid., 15.

  24. Ibid., 16.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Two discussions of the categories (with slightly differing lists) are Mary Christine Morkovsky, ‘Ethics as First Philosophy in Philosophy of Liberation,’ Listening 16 (1982), 58-60, and James G. Ward, ‘The Context for Liberation Thought,’ Listening 21 (1986), 50-51. Oddly, neither discussion attends to the foundational distinction Dussel makes between reality and being – the central concern of this essay. The categories exposited in chapter two of Philosophy of Liberation comprise: Proximity, Totality, Mediation, Exteriority, Alienation and Liberation.

  27. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 39.

  28. Ibid., 40.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid., 17.

  31. Ibid., 18.

  32. Cf. Ibid., 18: ‘A person is not born in nature. A person is not born from hostile elements, nor from stars or plants. A person is born from the maternal uterus and welcomed by maternal arms. One person is born from another and is given security by her…. A person is born from someone, not from something.’

  33. Ibid., 19-20.

  34. Ibid., 20.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Ibid., 21. This point is developed into the fundamental ‘material principle’ of ethics in Ética de la Liberación, 91-143.

  37. The possible exception to this is the physical world of nature which, for Dussel, is ‘inert’ matter available indiscriminately to human beings in service of their projects. See, for example, ibid., 102. There seems to be little substantive change in Dussel’s evaluation of nature since Philosophy of Liberation. For example, though he has become much more aware of ecological world views and concerns, Ética de la Liberación contains no independent index entries for, say, physis, naturaleza, ambiente, or ecología.

  38. Ibid., 22.

  39. Ibid., 28-29.

  40. Erwin Schrödinger, ‘The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics,’ trans. John D. Trimmer, accessed online at http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.html#sect5, on April 27, 2010. The original article in German was published in 1935.

  41. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 29.

  42. Ibid., 30.

  43. Ibid., 31.

  44. Ibid., 31-32.

  45. Ibid., 36.

  46. Ibid., 41. Translation modified.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Ibid., 42.

  49. An anonymous reviewer pointed out that the image of jostling atoms is not entirely apt, for persons have a ‘pulsion towards alterity,’ alterity to the totality and/or alterity in the person of another, and this underlies achievements of proximity. Indeed this is an important aspect of Dussel's insight that may be under-estimated in my critique. On the other hand, I believe what I am showing here is that the way Dussel conceives this pulsion (that is, not merely as projective, but as nothing but self-projective) necessitates that proximity, if it ever actually occurs, is a kind of fleeting historical coincidence, an existential epiphenomenon, with no enduring import for being. In this respect, the atomic image is not so misleading. That is not to say proximity lacks value—far from it. However, I think a more accommodating ontological environment for proximity can and should be defended.

  50. See n. 40 above.

  51. Ibid., 41-42.

  52. Ibid., 42. Dussel notes in connection with this passage that ‘alterity,’ ‘exteriority’ and ‘totality’ are terms established by Levinas.

  53. Morkovsky, art. cit., 59. Morkovsky cites Dussel, Para una ética, vol. 2, 161: ‘The Other, a person, is the epiphany of the divine Other, God the creator. The Other, anthropological and theological … speaks from itself, and its word is a self-speaking. The Other is beyond thinking, comprehension, light, logos; beyond foundation, identity: it is an an-arche.’

  54. Ibid., 44-45.

  55. It might also be suggested that it is necessary to come to terms with ‘oneself as another,’ as Paul Ricoeur has put it. That is, it might be proposed that the self has its own ‘interior transcendentality,’ unknown to itself, that disrupts the self’s self-possession.

  56. Ibid., 44,

  57. E.g., Ibid., 43, and passim.

  58. Feminist thinkers have severely criticized Dussel in the past for legitimating patriarchal mores in the name of ethical respect for ‘the other.’ See Schutte, op. cit., 175-205; Elina Vuola, Limits of Liberation: Praxis as Method in Latin American Liberation Theology and Feminist Theology, Humaniora 289 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1997), 153-157 and passim.

  59. Dussel, Para una ética, vol. 2, 161.

  60. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 96.

  61. Ibid., 97.

  62. Ibid., 98. Roberto S. Goizueta has pursued this suggestion in a recent essay. He writes:

    If God is transcendent, that is, if God is not comprehensible within our ‘world,’ then God will be found first (not exclusively, but preferentially) in those loci that are themselves incomprehensible within our world, those loci that are anomalous or nonsensical within the world-system. Above all, the transcendent God will be encountered among those persons who, as victims of the world-system, have been excluded from the world-system and thus remain invisible to the ‘center.’

    Cf. Roberto S. Goizueta, ‘Locating the Absolutely Absolute Other: Toward a Transmodern Christianity,’ in Linda Martín Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta (eds.), Thinking from the Underside of History, 184. However, Goizueta, too, does not make plain the basis for the analogical connection, let alone why a ‘world-system’ maps onto the life-world(s) of a minority of its inhabitants.

  63. Ibid., 99.

  64. Ibid., 100.

  65. ‘Neoclassical,’ Whiteheadian metaphysics (which may be interpreted as a creatively modified Manichaeism) has had a turbulent reception among liberation theologians. Schubert Ogden’s insufficiently nuanced characterization of liberation theology as ‘typically … not so much theology as witness’ aroused misunderstanding and resentment. See Schubert M. Ogden, Faith and Freedom: Toward a Theology of Liberation, rev. and enlarged ed. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1989). Recently, Luis Pedraja, a U.S. Hispanic/Latino Protestant theologian concerned with liberation themes, has been exploring Whitehead. See Luis G. Pedraja, ‘The Infinity of God: A New Possibility in the Thoughts of Whitehead and Jüngel,’ Encounter 58 (1997), 151-170; Idem., ‘Whitehead, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism,’ Process Studies 28 (1999), 68-84.

  66. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 101-102.

  67. Ibid., 113.

  68. This is Dussel’s version of the ‘epistemological rupture,’ familiar to students of liberation theology.

  69. Ibid., 159.

  70. Ibid., 47. For an insightful discussion of faith and reason in Dussel’s philosophy, and a defense against the charge of irrationalism, see Barber, op. cit.

  71. Note well that Dussel makes it quite clear in Ética de la Liberación (for example, pp. 279-280) that no ethics, including his own, can make an unqualified claim to secure the good. Ethics is always constrained by the problem of factibilidad – ‘workability,’ ‘feasibility,’ ‘do-ability.’

  72. Barber, op. cit., 44.

  73. Ray L. Hart, Unfinished Man and the Imagination: Toward an Ontology and a Rhetoric of Revelation (New York: Herder, 1968), 39. Relevant to this theme, cf. Gustavo Gutiérrez’ profound meditation on ‘the mysterious meeting of two freedoms’ in On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987), 67-81 and passim.

  74. A consideration of the history of the Virgin of Guadalupe supports this contention. For instance, within six years of the Virgin’s appearance to Juan Diego at Tepeyac in 1531, some ecclesiastical leaders claimed that the number of new Christians in New Spain reached nine million. Within the space of a few years, there was confusion among the Spanish evangelizers as to what these conversions actually meant for the Nahua converts, a confusion which persisted as the colonial norm in the Americas. Plainly, the revelation meant different things according to interpreters’ historical, cultural and other perspectives. Though not referring specifically to the Virgin of Guadalupe, J. Jorge Klor de Alva has produced fascinating studies on religious aspects of Spanish-Aztec contact, especially based on the writings of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún,, who arrived in New Spain in 1529. See, for example, ‘Sahagún’s Misguided Introduction to Ethnography and the Failure of the “Colloquios” Project,’ in J. Jorge Klor de Alva, H. B. Nicholson, and Eloise Quiñones Keber (eds.), The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún, Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-century Aztec Mexico (Albany: Institute of Mesoamerican Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York; Austin: distributed by University of Texas Press, 1988), 83-92; ‘European Spirit and Mesoamerican Matter: Sahagún and the “Crisis of Representation” in Sixteenth-Century Ethnography,’ in Davíd Carrasco (ed.), The Imagination of Matter: Religion and Ecology in Mesoamerican Traditions, BAR International Series 515 (Oxford: BAR, 1989), 17-29; ‘Nahua Colonial Discourse and the Appropriation of the (European) Other,’ Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 77 (1992), 15-35.

    The question, whether a distinction can be made between apparition and revelation, is something of an obfuscation of the point about the cultural categorization of revelation—or maybe an illustration of it. It may be noted that a number of theologians entertain the proposal that Guadalupe is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit rather than of Mary, at least as she is understood in traditional Catholic Mariology. Cf. Orlando O. Espín, ‘Popular Catholicism Among Latinos,’ in The Faith of the People (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1997), 130.

  75. In this regard, a comparable figure might be the Jesuit, Ignacio Ellacuría. Ellacuría’s career was violently cut short when he and five fellow Jesuits, together with their housekeeper and her daughter, were murdered on the campus of the Universidad Centroamericana in El Salvador on November 8, 1989. The implications of his thought, which he was prevented from presenting in a systematic form, are gradually being worked out in Latin America and elsewhere. Ellacuría’s collected writings are being edited and published in Spanish, but little of his work has been translated into English. His Teología política (San Salvador: Ediciones del Secretariado Social Interdiocesano, 1973) appeared as Freedom Made Flesh: The Mission of Christ and His Church, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1976). A number of important theological essays were published in Ignacio Ellacuría and Jon Sobrino (eds.), Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books; North Blackburn, Victoria: Collins Dove, 1993). A good introduction to Ellacuría is Kevin Burke, The Ground Beneath the Cross: The Theology of Ignacio Ellacuría (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000). See also Michael E. Lee, ‘Liberation Theology’s Transcendent Moment: The Work of Xavier Zubiri and Ignacio Ellacuría as Noncontrastive Discourse,’ Journal of Religion 83 (2003), 226-243.

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Irvine, A.B. An Ontological Critique of the Trans-Ontology of Enrique Dussel. SOPHIA 50, 603–624 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0210-8

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