1001Philosophers

Enrique Dussel 1934 – 2023

Enrique Dussel was an Argentine-Mexican philosopher and theologian and the principal architect of the philosophy of liberation. After studies in Mendoza, Madrid, and Paris, he turned in the late 1960s to a philosophy that takes the perspective of the oppressed peoples of the periphery as its starting point, articulated in Philosophy of Liberation and Ethics of Liberation. After a bombing of his house in 1973 he settled in Mexico, where he taught at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana for the rest of his life. His sixteen-volume historical and philosophical work has shaped Latin American philosophy and the global decolonial movement.

Key facts

Nationality
Argentine-Mexican
Era
Contemporary
Movements
Postcolonial Philosophy, Political

Selected quotes

  • Attributed to Enrique Dussel:

    “Philosophy of liberation begins from the underside of history.”

  • Attributed to Enrique Dussel:

    “The Other is the absolute that breaks open the totality of the same.”

  • Attributed to Enrique Dussel:

    “Modernity began in 1492 with the conquest of America.”

  • Attributed to Enrique Dussel:

    “Ethics is the affirmation of the life of the Other.”

  • Attributed to Enrique Dussel:

    “To philosophize from the periphery is to philosophize from the suffering of the oppressed.”