Enrique Dussel, a leading figure in liberation theology, studied philosophy and church history in Madrid, Paris, and Mainz. He holds doctorates in both philosophy and history. A political refugee from his native Argentina, Dussel now lives and teaches in Mexico. He is a committee member for the theological review Concilium, and president of the Comision de Estudios de Historia de la Iglesia en Latinamerica (CEHILA). His other books include Philosophy of Liberation.

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