Capitalism, Colonialism, and the War on Human Life A Review of Ethics of Liberation in the Age of Globalization and Exclusion by Enrique Dussel

• Published in: Historical materialism : research in critical Marxist theory Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 253 - 268
• Main Author: Noonan, Jeff
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 29.03.2019
• ISSN: 1465-4466; 1465-4466
• DOI: 10.1163/1569206X-00001518

Dussel’s complex work calls into question the standard history of philosophy, reveals a counter-history at work beneath the official history that gives voice to the victims of capitalism and colonialism, and systematically develops a novel ‘material ethics’ grounded in an unqualified, universal affirmation of life as the foundation of liberatory values. The Ethics of Liberation brings together the major problems explored in Dussel’s prolific body of earlier work: the relationship between Western philosophy and the expansion of European society; the relationship between centre and periphery in global political economy, considered as both a philosophical and an ethical problem; the ethical interpretation of Marxism; the politics of liberation in the colonial context; the defence of universal foundations of ethical norms; and the (all-important) distinction between formal and critical ethics.