Abstract

This paper focuses on an analysis of the ethical concepts of two of the founders of Latin American philosophy, Carlos Vaz Ferreira and his moral philosophy and Alejandro Korn and his philosophy of freedom, and a contemporary thinker, Enrique Dussel. At the heart of this analysis is the Philosophy of Liberation developed by Leopoldo Zea, Arturo Roig and Dussel, among others. I explicate Dussel's ethics of liberation and its philosophical grounds from his recent writings on the problematic of the foundation of ethics, and go on to discuss the architectonic of the ethics of liberation and the foundation of ethical principles. The analysis involves issues of truth and validity, and the application of principles. Dussel's theory is assessed in comparison with the discourse ethics of Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas.