Dussel, Enrique (1934–)

Enrique Dussel is widely recognized as one of the most important thinkers of Latin America and the father of a philosophy of liberation. A philosopher by academic training, he has also worked on the history of Latin America, the relation between history and theology of liberation, and the construction of the Americas by the European colonial empires. He has also constructed an elaborate model of social ethics and economics and has lectured widely on economics, philosophy, and social theory. He is one of the most prolific writers of 20th-century Latin America, and his works have been translated in most Western European languages.

The young Dussel started his studies of philosophy at the Universidad Nacional del Cuyo in Mendoza in 1957 and later completed a doctorate of philosophy in Madrid in 1959, a licentiate in religion in Paris in 1965, and a doctorate in history at La Sorbonne in 1967. On his return to his native Argentina, he taught ethics at the Universidad Nacional de la Resistencia (Chaco, 1966–1968), at the Instituto Pastoral del CELAM (Quito, Ecuador, 1967–1973), and at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Mendoza, 1968–1975). However, after Juan Domingo Perón's death in 1974, Argentine underwent a political polarization with escalating violence. Within that violence, right-wing [Page 488]paramilitary groups targeted Dussel, and after a bomb exploded in his home he left for Mexico in 1975 together with his family. In 1975 Dussel became a professor of church history and religious studies at ITES (Mexico, D.F.) and a professor of ethics and philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana/Iztapalapa. Mexico became his adopted country, and years later Dussel took Mexican nationality. Meanwhile, in his native Argentina, communities suffered political repression by the military and long years of democratic instability.

Dussel stresses the importance of oral delivery and the following interaction with an audience as a methodological tool of spoken discourse and recognizes that written texts can never convey the whole depth of spoken lectures. Dussel uses history in order to set the context for a liberating project that includes the liberation from economic structures ad intra, as well as the liberation from a Christian situation of empire symbolized in the development of Christianity as a persecuted religion to a colonizing system of Christendom. Within contemporary discussions on economics, philosophy, and ethics, Dussel has made the important distinction between social morality and ethics by suggesting that social moral orders as agreed systems of morality are not always necessarily ethical and can be challenged by Christians as social activists who strive for a just society here and now.