THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERATION OF ENRIQUE D. DUSSEL: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MARXISM IN LATIN AMERICA? (ALTERITY, ANALECTIC)

The purpose of this dissertation is to make an exposition and interpretation of Enrique D. Dussel's Philosophy of Liberation, and to assess Dussel's philosophy vis-a-vis Marxism in Latin America.;Alterity's method is conceived as a positive dialectic or analectic. This is contrasted with the Hegelian or negative dialectic, which Dussel sees as limited to negations of negations within ontological totality. The analectic, on the contrary, has to do with the affirmation of what is exterior to totality.;From alterity Dussel moves on to the analysis of four concrete ethical encounters: the political, the erotic, the pedagogical, and the anti-fetishist. These take place through the mediation of productivity and economic relations. Liberation occurs in these encounters when the Other is allowed to affirm his/her alterity, and when the Same allows him/herself to be open to the Other.;In this dissertation Dussel's philosophical categories and concrete analyses of domination and liberation in Latin America are set in contrast with the Marxian categories and the concrete analysis made by Latin American Marxism.;Dussel's philosophy constitutes a serious de-construction of Western philosophy. The fundamental category of the philosophy of liberation is that of alterity or exteriority, which is set over against totality, the fundamental category of Western philosophy. Dussel holds that the revelation of the Other, as exterior to the totality of Being, constitutes the primordial ethical event. As such, the ethical precedes and grounds all ontology.;This study has found that Dussel's philosophy goes beyond Marxism. Dussel's alternative, however, must not be understood as an effort to supplant or substitute Marxism. Yet, Dussel's alternative does provide broader categories, which widen the scope of the analysis of the concrete human situation and the solution required for its ills.