Anti-Cartesian

Meditations and
Transmodernity
From the Perspectives of
Philosophy of Liberation
eae oe ne ne ee nn eee ete “: ee ee eG

By Enrique Dussel
Editors: Alejandro A. Vallega and Ramon Grosfoguel
Anti-Cartesian Meditations and
Transmodernity
Series editors: Sandew Hira, Stephen Small and Arzu Merali
Titles in the series Decolonizing The Mind
1. Stephen Small/Sandew Hira: 20 Questions and Answers on Dutch Slavery
and its Legacy
Sandew Hira: 20 Questions and Answers on Reparations for Colonialism
Stephen Small/Sandew Hira: 20 vragen en antwoorden over het Nederlandse
slavernijverleden en haar erfenis (Dutch)
Djehuti Ankh-Kheru: 20 vragen en antwoorden over Malcolm X (Dutch)
Asma Lamrabet: 20 Questions and Answers on Islam and Women from a
reformist vision
Hatem Bazian: Palestine... it is something colonial
Hatem Bazian: Annotations on Race, Colonialism, Islamophobia, Islam and
Palestine
Stephen Small: 20 Questions and Answers on Black Europe

© Enrique Dussel
Amrit Publishers 2018 The Hague
ISBN 978-90-74897-90-7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publisher.
Cover design: Studio Daniels
 Anti-Cartesian Meditations and
Transmodernity

From the Perspectives of Philosophy of

Liberation

Enrique Dussel

Editors: Alejandro A. Vallega and Ramon Grosfoguel

Amrit Publishers
 Contents

Acknowledgements
Editor’s introduction 6
Prologue 26
1. Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation
from the Perspective of Philosophy of Liberation 29
2 ANTI-CARTESIAN MEDITATIONS: On the Origin of
the Philosophical Anti-Discourse of Modernity 61
3. From Fraternity to Solidarity - (Towards a Politics of
Liberation) 110
4. The Liberatory Event in Paul of Tarsus 138
. Five Theses on “Populism” 192
6. The “Philosophy Of Liberation,” The Postmodern Debate,
and Latin American Studies 216
7. A New Age in the History of Philosophy: The
World Dialogue between Philosophical Traditions 232
Bibliography 252
Notes 268
Acknowledgements

This book is the result of many friends’ and colleagues’ work and
patience, of those who have crossed and transgressed many pressing
as well as invisible fronteras and in doing so have accompanied each
text from its versions in Spanish to the present book. We are grateful
for the fine work of the various translators on the various chapters.
Their names are acknowledged in footnotes at the beginning of each
chapter. We are also grateful for the support and suggestions of those
who read the manuscript and introduction. Amie Zimmer provided
fine reading and close editing at a crucial point; Kenny Knowlton
Jr. compiled the present bibliography and edited the notes and text.
Finally, we must express our deep gratitude to Enrique Dussel for his
generous availability, for his prologue, and for making this volume
available for publication.

Alejandro A. Vallega and Ramon Grosfoguel

 Editor's introduction

Anti-cartesian transmodernity

From Philosophy of Liberation Towards

Plurivalent World Philosophies

Alejandro A. Vallega and Ramén Grosfoguel

 Author of more than 50 works, Argentine-Mexican philosopher of
liberation Enrique Dussel (1934 - ) is one of the major figures in the
development of world philosophies. He is one of the founders and
the most recognized member of the group that begun philosophy of
liberation in the early seventies in Argentina. He is also one of the
major figures in the development of the theology of liberation in Latin
America. His development of an ethics that arises from the poor and
oppressed, his rereading of Marx, and his contribution to decoloniality
in contemporary philosophy are but a few of his major philosophical
achievements. Therefore, it is surprising that up to this point few of
his works have become available to the English speaking public, and
even the translation of his major work Ethics of Liberation (1998)
only came some fifteen years later.' Dussel’s work is generally seen in
the English speaking world as related particularly to Latin American
concerns such as: the social and political revolutions in Latin America
in the Seventies, the birth of the theology of liberation, and the role
in Latin America of pragmatism and neo-Marxist theory. However, as
the present volume reveals, the scope of Dussel’s work is much larger
as it points to a reconfiguration of the very way one understand the
task and history of philosophy, ultimately offering a work necessary
and pressing for today.
In these essays, chosen and gathered by the Dussel himself
under the title Anti-Cartesian Meditations, the Mexican-Argentine
philosopher shows that today philosophy is not only possible and
necessary but that when one begins to think beyond Western
European and North American modernity and post-modernity,
philosophy is alive and in touch with the concrete lives of distinct
peoples throughout the world. This sense of philosophy as plurivalent
is a turn towards liberation, the liberation of philosophical thought
from its Western demarcations. This turn requires a radical change,
a shift in our consciousness’s orientation, a shift in the very way we
situate ourselves and our thinking in the world today. This volume
engages this transformative thinking by taking concrete steps towards
a thought distinct from the Western tradition; and in doing so it
inaugurates spaces for new philosophical world dialogues. In order
7
to introduce these Anti-Cartesian Meditations, first we will have
to situate this volume with respect to Dussel’s general project of a
philosophy of liberation, some of his earlier works, and in light of
his critical encounters with some of the major figures in Western
philosophy. Therefore the introduction is divided in two sections, the
first deals with some of the main philosophical encounters with the
tradition and contemporary Latin American and Latino philosophers
behind the development of Dussel’s thought. The second, presents
these Anti-Cartesian Meditations in their introduction of a plurivalent
and decolonial thinking.

I. The Philosophy of Liberation: Some Introductory

Remarks
Inchapter one of the present volume Dussel offersa kind of genealogy
of his ethics of liberation in the form of a conceptual autobiography.
We will take some of his remarks as a point of departure. As Dussel
indicates, his early philosophical education is already marked by Latin
America’s economic, political, military, and cultural dependency. As
the Argentine-Mexican philosopher explains, for most Latin American
thinkers the origins of philosophy were (and for many still are) Greek
and Modern (with the Enlightenment and the ideals of the French
revolution), and therefore the beginning of philosophy was in both
counts Western. Moreover, the horizon of philosophy followed the
same path in its being grounded on the Western canonical tradition.
This is also the case in terms of philosophy’s new developments, which,
no matter how critical, for the most part answer to the tradition,
operate within its formal requirements, and follow the lineages given
by it. In other words, “there existed no possibility whatsoever of a
Latin American philosophy.” But already in 1957 through his journey
to Europe, Dussel discovers that indeed, he is not European. This
only prompts the guiding question of what it means to culturally be
Latin American. Dussel begins to find an answer by seeking a place
outside of the philosophical tradition within which he had learned to
think. He travels to Israel and begins to develop a sense of history and
8
culture from the Hebrew perspective, or in other words, in contrast
to the Hellenistic tradition as understood by the Western European
and North American tradition. While in Israel (1959-1961) he works
and lives together with Palestinians giving him an important critical
experience to deepen his “critical semitic thinking” (understood
for Dussel in a broad sense beyond the Jewish tradition). This shift
of perspective, always from the Latin American periphery, results
in Dussel’s radicalization of semitic thought's critical categories (as
found in the prophets of the Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions,
such as Egypt/Dessert, Pharaoh/Slaves, Totality/Infinity, etc.
His inquiries into the cultural sense of being Latin America go
further in the early Sixties when he comes to know the work of Paul
Ricoeur in Paris, since 1961. Through his reading of Ricouer’s works
and his studies with the French philosopher at the Sorbonne, Dussel
is struck by Ricoeur’s sense of a cultural hermeneutics. For Ricouer
culture is understood as the valorative-mythical content ofaculture and
this occurs through the configuration and development of identities
through mythical narratives.’ This insight leads Dussel to develop a
hypothesis for the study of Latin American history that situates Latin
America by looking at a kind of proto-history.* This proto-history
situates Latin America within the process of human development
beginning from the homo species, through the Neolithic and Paleolithic
periods, and the migrations of peoples “from Mesopotamia and
Egypt to India and China, and of the early homo sapiens through the
Pacific.”* This reconstruction of Latin America recognizes encounters
with the Indo-European, the Euro-Asiatic (among them Greeks and
Romans), and the encounter with the Semites (mostly from around
Arabic desert).* Ultimately, Dussel’s cultural-historical thesis traces
the “ethical-mythic-nucleus” that will pass through the Byzantine and
Muslim worlds to its arrival to the Iberian Peninsula, this path he calls
“the other source of Latin American proto-history:” As is evident,
already at this early point in Dussel’s work one finds that the horizon
of the philosophy of liberation is not Latin America, but the histories,
peoples, and myths that have been excluded or only recognized in
terms of secondary roles in the development of the Western historical
9
tradition. Already in the mid-Sixties Dussel calls for a plurivalence
that may reorient our sense of history and ultimately humanity. In
recognizing Latin America’s proto-history Dussel points to the
Amerindian non-Western origins of distinct identities that arise in
ethico-mythical configurations of human life.
Dussel’s view beyond Western history is accompanied bya profound
awareness of the problem of political, economic, military, and cultural
and colonial dependency on Western hegemonic power suffered by
non-western countries around the world. This basic insight behind
philosophy of liberation answers to the work on economics and world
sociology by the Argentine economist Raul Prebisch and by American
sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein.’ The latter’s world-system-theory
recognizes worldwide structures of domination and exploitation that
underlie Western capitalism at home. As Wallerstein’s theory shows,
capitalism does not support itself by virtue of the exploitation of
workers and the production of capital in their own national contexts.
Rather in the modern world the imperial and capitalist powers sustain
a living standard for people within their countries by exploiting the
labor of those beyond their national, social, political, and cultural
frontiers. Taken in the form of a world-system this means that the
world is split between, on the one hand, a centralized system that
accumulates capital and, on the other hand, those who work for it
but are systematically oppressed, exploited, and excluded, outside the
center. This economy of accumulation of wealth in the metropolitan
centers and exploitation of labor in the periphery is repeated at the
local level in all systems, as is clearly the case for example in those
countries founded by colonialism. This awareness of the system of
exclusion and exploitation, together with the dependency of those
peoples and countries exploited become a founding point for the
philosophy of liberation. As Dussel puts it, ultimately against the
possibility of developing ways of thinking beyond Western history and
its hegemonic power, we encounter the problem of the reduction and
erasure of people's lives, cultures, and any possibility of developing
philosophical thought under an economy of “domination and
exploitation.”® Under this economy appear three explicit and necessary
10
moments for the philosopher of liberation: (1) The realization of one’s
situation as peripheral, in the sense we have discussed here; (2) the
critical destruction of the structures that situate one in such position;
and, (3) the opening of a new thinking that articulates the existence
of the excluded by new means (an articulation that is always from the
periphery). In 1977 Dussel writes in his Philosophy of Liberation:
It appears possible to philosophize in the periphery... only if
the discourse of the philosophy of the center is not imitated,
only if another discourse is discovered. To be different, this
discourse must have another point of departure, must think
other themes, must come to distinctive conclusions by a dif-
ferent method.”

As Dussel indicates in chapter one of Anti-Cartesian Meditations,

he finds a path for the critical destruction or appropriation of the
western tradition in Heidegger's hermeneutical and transformative
reading of it." In his lectures from Mendoza, 1968, Dussel finds the
possibility of a recovery of a sense of culture beyond dependency in
Heidegger’s fundamental analysis of Dasein’s being in the world.”
He also sees in the German philosopher’s thought a path towards
reengaging the mythical cultural narrative in the sense of a historical
sense prior to historiography. Finally, he finds in Heidegger’s project
of an appropriative de-struction of the history of Western philosophy
elements that will be useful for the destruction of the Western
colonialist systems of oppression." At the same time, Dussel is critical
of Heidegger’s philosophy since it still remains Eurocentric. This is
particularly the case because in ignoring the concrete experience
of need that accompanies Dasein’s distinct being in the world
Heidegger’s thought remains indifferent to singularity in its distinct
configurations, and in doing so affirms the kind of senseless violence
perpetuated by the West in its indifferent use of the oppressed and in
the colonial development of a dependent periphery. In other words, in
not moving from the analysis of Dasein to the concrete lives of Dasein,
Heidegger repeats the Western abstracting gesture towards the human,
and ultimately remains deaf to the other, and therefore deaf to the
11
periphery, the damned. Dussel’s criticism follows the development of
the idea of “autrui, alterity, in Emmanuel Levinas. This leads us to
Levinas’s pivotal role in Dussel’s development."
Dussel’s move beyond phenomenology (Heidegger) is documented
in a collection of essays published in 1973 that covers his work from
1962 up to that point.'® The collection is titled: América Latina:
dependencia y liberacién, (Latin America Dependency and Liberation).
Dussel|‘s critical shift is clear particularly in the section titled: “Nuevo
Momento (1971)” (The New Moment (1971).'* According to Dussel
himself, the change comes at the end of the Sixties. Three principal
elements involved in this shift are: First, in 1968 the “Cordobazo”
occurs, In this occasion in the capital of the province of Cordoba in
the central interior of Argentina a group of students and professors
stopped the military take over of the university. Dussel takes this event
as a paradigm of the possibilities opened by the student movements of
sixty-eight. The second element we have already noted above, Dussel’s
encounter with “Dependency Theory.’ And last, and certainly not
least, he reads Levinas’ Totality and Infinity,” also participates in a
seminar with Levinas in Louvain in 1972."
Levinas thought has a strong impact on Dussel in that what before
was a people in search of their cultural identity comes to be recognized
in its distinct situation and cultural undergoing as “the other” Dussel
follows Levinas in his critique of the history of Western philosophy
as the history of a totalizing ontology, a totalization that now appears
in its limitations when confronted with the face of the other. Latin
American culture is not only an exploited and oppressed culture but
it is a culture of the oppressed, it is the culture of the other that in
spite of its subjugation has a life of its own, a life and history outside
the ruling system. Against the totalizing thought of Western ontology
appears the other, with its real life, a life that will call into question the
center's claim to ethical ends and its sense of justice. As noted above,
Dussel’s reading of Levinas leads him beyond Heidegger. And yet,
Levina’s thought will also prove limited for Dussel. As Dussel sees it,
Levinas articulates otherness as an abrupt break with the ontological
totality that orients Western thought and that situates all senses of
12
being within its system of meanings. As Dussel puts it in Método para
una filosofia de la liberacién (Method for a Philosophy of Liberation):
“Levinas always speaks of the other as the absolute other.
He tends towards equivocity. Besides, he has never thought
that the other could be Indio, African, or Asian.... not even
Levinas has been able to transcend Europe. We are the ones
born outside, we have suffered it. Suddenly poverty becomes
wealth!...”"

The emphasis here is not on local identity but on the actual

experience of existing in sheer exteriority, and the creativity that this
may mean from beyond and yet toward the radical transformation
of the system. Here Dussel radicalizes the concept of “exteriority”
to produce a philosophy, ethics, and politics of liberation from the
“relative exteriority” of the system; something Levinas never imagined
and was unable to produce.”
The unfolding of a sense of alterity that situates the periphery
is accompanied by Dussel’s development of a thinking he calls
“anadialectic” or “analectic.”' As he explains in his Philosophy of
Liberation, the term literally sets out a plan before us: “ana” means from
exteriority, “dia” unfolding, and “Jogos” figures the comprehension of
a new horizon.” Thus, the aim of liberation philosophy is to unfold
the comprehension of a new horizon from a distinct exteriority.
As Dussel sees it, all philosophical thought that has been genuine
arises in relation to the center but with a view to an exteriority that
places thought always beyond the center: “The philosophy that has
emerged from the periphery has always done so in response to a need
to situate itself with regard to a center and a total exteriority [ante el
centro y ante la exterioridad total]?* For Dussel the implications of
thinking in light and from total exteriority go to the core of what is
understood as philosophy. Thinking in light of total exteriority is the
way original or authentic thought has always occurred, even in its
“Western” beginnings: as a thinking over-against the violence of the
center but from a periphery opened in its total exteriority.* Dussel
writes: “Only those who can interpret the phenomena of the system in
13
the light of exteriority can discover reality with great lucidity, acuity,
and profundity.» Thus, a situated thought for Latin America and for
philosophy of liberation in general would have to set out from its
concrete situation and in recognition of its total exteriority or alterity.”
In the conscious undergoing of sense in light of specific exteriority such
thought would open to other ways of being beyond those imposed by
the tradition. The point here is that the consciousness of exteriority
figures the possibility for radical concrete transformation, i.e., not
transformation in the sense of a preservation of the already existing
forms of power and representation, but in the concrete response to
the need for the development of political institutions and ethical
principles that will respond to the need of the lives of the excluded and
oppressed. A fundamental corollary is that, when considered in terms
of this transformative tension in which thought arises, the ethical is
clearly seen as the event of the other’s interruption (the periphery)
of the system at the center. In other words, it is the other’s concrete
demand on the operative system of power that gives occasion for an
ethical humanity.
This transformative force, no longer merely excluded, occurs in the
recognition of the force of the concrete life of the excluded. Here one
finds a freedom that brings with it a world that is not only a presence
of the other to the system but a liberated moment out of exteriority,
in exteriority, and for exteriority. This is not just the moment when
the other appears to challenge the totality, but with this appearing
an ontological displacement has occurred: The appearing of the
other goes beyond appearing to mark a movement- a moment when
exterior peripheral life rises forth in its creativity.” This emphasis on
the creative force of life in total exteriority serves as the opening for
another series of encounters that frame the development and project
of philosophy of liberation as understood and unfolded by Dussel. The
force of life drives Dussel’s rereading of Marx, as well as his debates
with K-O. Apel, Jurgen Habermas, and Gianni Vattimo.
To speak of analectic thought, of exteriority and periphery, is not
to abandon reason. On the contrary: There is a logic to domination as
well as to liberation, and Dussel finds the logic of liberation beyond
14
Hegel's dialectic, and Western onto-theology, and phenomenology,
and beyond both contemporary propositions towards understanding
exteriority through either discourse and interpretation, or by going
beyond rationality through various forms of deconstruction of the
discursive consciousness. We find this sense of the logic of exteriority
in Dussel’s rereading of Marx beyond eurocentrism.* A brief synthesis
of Dussel’s reading of Marx in the first volume of his Politica de la
liberacion. Historia mundial y critica (Politics of Liberation. World
History and Critique) (2007) may give an idea of the central point.”
As Dussel sees it, for Hegel, or for the Eurocentric or Hegelian
reading of Marx, capital has its value out of a dialectic totality and
towards the establishing of a totality, ultimately controlled by the
product or surplus value. The moving principle of capital is the work
of the worker taken into the thin air of surplus value, through the
alienation of labor. But in his reading of Marx Dussel shows that the
value of capital arises from a sheer negativity that does not get produced
by the dialectic movement. We are speaking of a positive occurrence
that is not the work of the worker but the being of the worker before
being interpreted as negativity or a matter of production-labor in and
for the system. In other words the origin of value is not work or capital
but the ungrasped nothing before and after life has become value-
work. Dussel writes: “Only out of the positive sense of living work (which
includes the corporeality and dignity of the living person) may we now
understand the sense of the first negation, as condition for the possibility
of capital.”® In other words, before the capitalist system and totality of
being there is the concrete living corporality, life. And it is from such
distinct life that a critique of all systems may set out, i.e., if this life is
heard and articulated. To say it in terms of the metaphors of Marx,
capital requires a sacrifice, and the living corporality is sacrificed to
the fetish, the false godthat is the exchange value of capital.
This attentiveness to life is the turn to the other in his/her distinct
Situation, the situation in exteriority of the oppressed, excluded, and
exploited, the poor that concretely do not have to eat, the bereft of
all means who can only await their imminent death. This emphasis
on the living circumstance of the other as the guiding principle for
15
philosophy grounds Dussel’s major work, Ethics of Liberation: In the
Age of Globalization and Exclusion, as well as his three volumes of
the Politics of Liberation.” The issue of the human life is significantly
apparent through Dussel’s long dialogue with Jiirgen Habermas and
Karl-Otto Apel, an engagement that will lead to the writing of the
Ethics of Liberation.® The dialogue begins with the fall of the Berlin
wall in 1989, at the moment when Europe finds itself exposed to its
otherness and at the same time to a change that will put into question
the possible grounds for a universal ethics. In Habermas and Apel,
Dussel finds the attempt to find a philosophical discourse that may
groundan ethics that recognizes the other and that does so in awareness
of the exclusions suffered throughout history to date. However, both
German philosophers offer an ethics grounded on a communicating
community that grounds all ethical claims. For Dussel the history of
the other, the periphery’s history is one that has never been part of
the communicating community, but rather has been always excluded
from it. Thus, to ground ethics on communication prior to any ethical
claim would mean shutting down ethics from its very source, namely
from the claim made on the communicating community by the
excluded. As Dussel sees it, prior to the communicating community
appears the living community. This differentiation also leads Dussel
to his critical engagement with the hermeneutical claims to an ethical
openness out of a linguistic-only context of interpretation, as made in
different ways by Paul Ricouer and Gianni Vattimo.*
An important corollary to this emphasis on the human life is
the question of life as the very ground of any ethics with a claim to
goodness.” Still in debate with Habermas and Apel, Dussel questions
their attempt to recognize the particular or distinct situation of
ethical claims from a universal speech act. For Habermas and Apel
two different kinds of claims may be recognized. One is the discourse
of justification, which refers to the theoretical conceptual principles
that ground an ethical claim. The other level is that of the discourse
of application, which refers to specific historical situation. For Dussel,
this differentiation remains insufficient, in as much as the particular
situation only appears in light of an already operative ethical view. In
16
short, the differentiation does not overcome the hegemonic position
that decides before engaging the reality of the life of the excluded.
But however critical of the work of Habermas and Apel Dussel might
be, he finds in them a positive and crucial move away from the
abandonment of the idea of a universal ethics, a negative move Dussel
sees to occur with deconstruction and post-modern movements in
philosophy. Dussel’s Ethics of Liberation, his major work, is guided
precisely by this task of finding a universal foundation for any claim to
goodness. A claim may be universal if it begins from the suffering of
the other, and when that living fact puts the already operative ethical
claims to goodness in the standing system into question. Again, it is
in our exposure to and with the life of the poor, the oppressed, the
exploited, that we become ethical. This is why in his introduction to his
Ethics of Liberation Dussel mentions along with Apel and Habermas
his dialogue with Hinkelammert’s ethics of life.*
Before moving to the present volume, a last set of encounters must
be underlined, one of the series of encounters that looks ahead towards
the pluriversal philosophy for which the present volume argues. This
occurs with Dussel’s critical engagements with philosophers from
Latin America, Latin American philosophers working in the United
States, and Latino philosophers in the United States. Although most
of the texts from Latin America Dussel engages (many by major Latin
American philosophers) have not been translated into English, at least
we must mention their names and pertinence to the development of
Dussel’s thought. First of all, Dussel continues to work along with
those who founded the philosophy of liberation at the beginning of
the seventies.” Second, Dussel’s work does not only develop along
the lines of dependency theory and world-system-theory, but he
finds an intensification of these problems in the development of the
theory of “coloniality” by the Peruvian philosopher Anibal Quijano.*
Quijano has shown that in Latin America colonialism does not
end with the revolutions of the 19" century. Rather, the structures
of power developed during the Latin American colonial period and
the epistemic spaces sustained by them remain operative to date.
Thus, rather than speaking of colonialism and post-colonialism
17
in the Americas, we now may give a direct and specific critique to
the systems of coloniality in their operative forms today. Dussel has
also received significant and direct criticism from the Colombian
philosopher Santiago Castro-Gémez, who, using Foucault's thought
as “a tool box,’ puts into question the philosophy of liberation by
taking seriously the implications of deconstruction for any universal
claim.” A third figure is Walter Mignolo, whose work on the “colonial
difference” develops further the problem of the coloniality of power,
while at the same time bridging Dussel’s philosophy of liberation
and the work of the subaltern studies group. This is a group that also
works out of issues raised by poststructuralist thought, particularly
in literature, and that, coming out of such an outlook, also questions
the limits and possibilities that the social sciences have in terms of
attempting to think and give articulation to Latin American life.” With
the term “colonial difference; Mignolo insists on redrawing the space
of difference as difference in order to make explicit the exclusions and
oppression of the ongoing coloniality that remains to our times, while
also setting free the very space of difference to be rearticulated as that,
a plurivocal pluricultural space of encounters and configurations of
lives that are no longer silently or explicitly excluded, exploited, and
left to die."
In the United States one finds a number of crucial exchanges
that influence Dussel’s work and take it in various directions. In his
engagement with Dussel’s work, the Puerto Rican sociologist Ramén
Grosfoguel has emphasized the problem of coloniality, the limits that
such structures of power put on philosophy of liberation, and the
need for decoloniality in order to make possible Dussel’s project. As
Grosfoguel states:
Transmodernity is the Latin American philosopher of libera-
tion Enrique Dussel's utopian project to transcend the Eu-
rocentric version of modernity. As opposed to Habermas's
project, where what needs to be done is to fulfill the incom-
plete and unfinished project of modernity, Dussel's transmo-
dernity is the project to fulfill the 20th century's unfinished

18
 and incomplete project of decolonization. Instead of a single
modernity centered in Europe and imposed as a global de-
sign to the rest of the world, Dussel argues for a multiplicity
of decolonial critical responses to Eurocentered modernity
from the subaltern cultures and epistemic location of colo-
nized people around the world. #
In his book Against War, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, the Puerto
Rican philosopher and cultural theorist, offers a clear analysis of
the western world’s foundation on war as the form that guides any
sense of existence." His analysis begins from Dussel’s insights into the
primacy of war in Western consciousness and goes on to take the issue
of an ethics of liberation directly into the question of the globalizing
operation of the coloniality of power and the urgent need for a
decolonial thought. Maldonado-Torres recognizes the philosophical
implications of such struggle and coins the extremely helpful term the
“coloniality of being,” in order to indicate the dismissal of colonized
subjects from the realm of human life that occurs under Western
hegemonies and the ongoing structures of coloniality."* Besides having
translated and edited a volume in English of the debates between
Dussel, Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, and Taylor, the Colombian-American
philosopher Eduardo Mendieta has made clear Dussel’s importance
in relation to pragmatism and also on the question of the theology
of liberation.* Furthermore, in developing his philosophical work
Mendieta has also begun to articulate the relationship between Latin
American philosophy and Latino-Latina philosophy in the United
States. Ofelia Schutte has questioned the philosophy of liberation with
respect to issues of feminism, while Linda Alcoff has contributed to a
wider debate that includes gender and race. The Chilean philosopher
Alejandro Vallega focuses on an aspect of Dussel’s work that remains
to be written, namely on the crucial question of aesthetics in the
philosophy of liberation. As Vallega sees it, in order to begin to
think in exteriority and in light of life, in order to develop political
institutions and ethical principles that respond to life, one will have
to undergo a transformation in one’s sensibilities and dispositions, a

19
transformation aesthetic rather than only at the level of experience
(the fact of life), institutions, principles, or concepts.”
If one returns to chapter one of Anti-Cartesian Meditations it is
clear that Dussel has also developed his thought in light of many
other discourses, histories, cultural narratives, and lives throughout
the world previously excluded by traditional philosophy. Besides
the central influence of Frantz Fanon, one must at least begin by
mentioning Arab philosopher, Mahomed Abed Yabri A., the African
philosopher Fabien Eboussi’Boulaga, and his participation in so many
dialogues through the borders of East-West and North-South divides.
But this leads us to consider briefly the work the reader holds on his/
her hand.

II. Anti-Cartesian Meditations: Philosophy as Pluriversal

Trans-modern Thought and as the Task of Decoloniality

A. Anti-Cartesian Meditations and Transmodernity

In Anti-Cartesian Meditations and Transmodernity Dussel shows
how Western modernity, including its critiques (through post-
modernity), sustains itself through the exclusion of its very origins
and of those peoples, cultures, and lived ideals that from beyond
the Western tradition have contributed historically and existentially
to its formation.” At the same time this mechanism of exclusion is
repeated over the lives and peoples that today offer alternative ways
of taking philosophy further beyond its present configurations of
existence and its limits. This recovery and turn towards liberation
occur as Dussel takes us back to the thought from below and exterior
to the Western tradition: it is the excluded, the oppressed, and the
silenced- their thought, that offer fertile grounds for the recovery of
the fecundity of effective philosophical thought. On the one hand,
the term Transmodernity indicates the geo-conceptual relocation of
the beginnings of modern philosophy. Here philosophical thought is
resituated beyond the Western myth that understands all philosophy

20
as inherently Western i.e., born in Ancient Greece and culminating
with modern rationalism and its postmodern critiques. Neither
Modern nor Post-modern, Transmodern thought transgresses this
myth by showing how Modern philosophy begins with Islamic, Jewish,
African, and American philosophies and with the development of
coloniality, i.e, with experiences, lineages, and ideas appropriated
and/or excluded thereafter by Europe and, after, by North America
(as these powers come to see themselves as the origin and center of
reason, knowledge, and the only possibility for understanding the
senses of humanity.)
Dussel calls the thought behind this shift Anti-Cartesian. That this
thought is Anti-Cartesian does not mean that it is anti-philosophical,
nor that it calls for abandoning reason for irrationality. On the
contrary, Dussel’s Anti-Cartesian Meditations aim at the recovery of
rationality in its most concrete and effective sense, for the sake of
the reconfiguration of the ideas of humanity, freedom, liberty, and
dignity. Dussel’s meditations challenge Western modern rationalism
and its exclusion and appropriative ways of understanding the world
and peoples distinct from it. In contrast to the Western rationalist
construction of an hegemonic system sustained by the domination
and exploitation of peoples, lives, and “mother earth” (translation
of Aymara language “Pachamama” which is not equivalent to the
Eurocentric concept of “nature”), Dussel recognizes and shows the
irrationality of Western hegemonic powers. This occurs as Modern
Western thought is traced back to the histories and lives of those
excluded and oppressed, those wretched lives that in their bare reality
appear as a profound questioning of Western modern thought and as
a call for another way of understanding the ethical character of human
existence viewed in its larger sense. One must keep in mind here that
this questioning does not arise as a call from “the other” (genitive) of
the Western philosophical tradition. Rather, it arises from the peoples
of the peripheries, from the unexpected, out of distinct exteriorities
capable of exposing the limitations of contemporary Western thought
and its history and traditions. Indeed, by speaking out of those
experiences from below, Dussel recovers a fundamental exteriority in
21
light of which hegemonic Eurocentric conceptual knowledge comes
to be questioned and as a result becomes the occasion for the birth
and reconfiguration of our operative philosophical concepts and
structures of knowledge. To say it in another way, Dussel’s tracing of
the dark side of modernity not only opens contemporary philosophy
to its histories but to possibilities for thought and for understanding
the human that have remained for the most part buried until now.
As we saw in the first part above Dussel’s philosophical work
ranges from a philosophical reading of theology, ethics of liberation,
commentaries of Marx unpublished manuscripts, critical engagements
with many Western philosophers to his most recent political
philosophy called politics of liberation. His formation in World
History, Theology, Philosophy, Marxism, and Political Economy
allows him to make connections and links that most Western
philosophers are unable to do. Moreover, Dussel is also well read in
“non-Western” epistemologies and cosmologies and this allows him
to open inter-epistemic conversations and dialogues where most
Western philosophers are simply lost. His philosophy of liberation
provides a new form of thinking about universalism that he calls
transmodernity as a pluriversal project. Transmodernity (beyond
modernity and postmodernity) departs from a decolonial recognition
of the epistemic diversity of the world. He makes a call to move beyond
the mono-logic and monoculture of the West where universalism is
simply a form of provincialism towards a multi-epistemic and pluri-
cultural world where pluriversality replaces universality.
His work represents a life commitment to the decolonization of the
world in its multiple dimensions: decolonization of knowledge, power,
and being. He is the most important living decolonial philosopher
of the world today. Indeed, his decolonial philosophy is a response
to structure of domination and exploitation such as Imperialism,
Capitalism, Patriarchy and Eurocentrism. Dussel’s work is influential
today not only among critical thinkers and intellectuals in all parts
of the world but specifically on decolonial movements in the Third
World and in the centers of empires. Indeed, those working in
decolonial movements of racial/colonial subjects in Western Europe
22
and the United States read Dussel’s work as a fundamental source of
decolonial critique.

B. Themes and Chapters

The seven chapters that compose this volume mark with sharp
clarity and directness some of the primary paths, issues, and positions
in philosophy of liberation today. Chapter one recognizes the cultural
colonialism suffered by Latin America and articulates the path for a
decolonization through the recovery, affirmation, and development
of the cultural alterity of postcolonial peoples.* As Dussel shows, it is
through the interruption of cultural colonialism (and its perpetuation
through the mechanisms of coloniality [Quijano]) and the liberation
of those bonds that a path towards a multicultural and engaged critical
intercultural dialogue may occur. In chapter two Dussel enacts this
shift towards the recognition of cultural alterity by giving a critique
of Cartesian or Western modernity. Dussel resituates modernity
through three anti-discourses: 1. The historical exposition of the Jesuit
education that underlies Descartes’ thought, and links him directly to
the Americas; 2. The discussion of Bartolomé de las Casas’ critique of
European world-empire; and, lastly (3) with a beautiful exposition of
the rational andarticulate account of the Inca world that Felipe Guaman
Poma de Ayala offers in response to the brutality and destruction
brought about by the Conquistadors. Step by step - slowly through
the essay, Dussel resituates our point of departure for philosophical
thought and broadens our possibilities for understanding modernity
and its philosophical configurations.
Chapter three addresses the concrete question of the possibility of a
social-political sense arisen from the excluded and oppressed. Dussel
Situates this possibility not in the discourse of fraternity that sustains
already operative structures of power and exclusion, but rather in the
arising of another sense of order and law from a sense of solidarity
shared by the excluded and oppressed.
‘The next chapter (four) develops this political issue by recognizing
in the “Liberatory event of Paul of Tarsus” a philosophical Messianic

23
moment of self-affirmation that belongs fundamentally to the
excluded and oppressed. Dussel inserts the discourse of liberation
directly in contemporary contexts by addressing some of the crucial
interpretations of the Messianic in the history of modern Western and
post-modern thought, namely, M. Heidegger, Derrida, A. Badiou,
S. Zizek, W. Benjamin, J. Taubes, Hans-Georg Agamben, and F.
Hinkelammert.
In chapter five Dussel gives a careful analysis of the meaning
“populism” distinguishing it from the “populist” movements lead
by political interests exterior to the people and their possibility of
liberation. Here Dussel enages a central issue for the philosophy of
liberation, namely the possibility of referring to the people as the basis
for the creation of normative representational political mechanisms.
As Dussel explains populism may point in its more efficient sense to the
people, i.e., to those agents who out of politico-popular participation
are able to give form to new participative institutions, at all levels of
political structures. He closes this recognition of the concrete people
who stand on the verge of liberation by leaving open the question of
the form of leadership such new politico-popular configurations will
require.
Chapter six confirms the resituating of the modern project through
philosophy of liberation, and its commitment to the concrete political
situation of the excluded and oppressed. However, this time Dussel
engages the post-modern discourses that have taken form around
and towards Latin America. Dussel writes, philosophy of liberation
“is itself a post-modern movement” but then concludes, “a post-
modern movement avant la lettre, a truly transmodern movement
that appreciates postmodern criticism but is able to deconstruct it
from a global perspective in order to reconstruct it according to the
concrete political demands of subaltern groups.” In other words, while
bringing the reader back to a more general consideration about the
place from which Latin American thought may arise, in this chapter,
in light of the concrete issues developed in previous chapters, he now
distinguishes philosophy of liberation from postmodern discussions
in and about Latin America by pointing to the concrete political
24
demands of subaltern groups that situate philosophy of liberation.
The closing chapter (seven) calls the reader back to the central and
pluriversal task of philosophy of liberation in its transformative and
global sense. As Dussel concludes in the final page of the chapter:
For a long time, perhaps for centuries, the many diverse phil-
osophical traditions will each continue to follow their own
paths, but nonetheless a global analogical project of a trans-
modern pluriverse (other than universal, and not post-mod-
ern) philosophy appears on the horizon. Now, “other philoso-
phies” are possible, because “another world is possible” —as is
proclaimed by the Zapatista Liberation Movement in Chia-
pas, Mexico.”

As these words indicate, whatever the present introduction

intimates, what ever we have said, is but a preface to the work to
be done. This work ultimately will require constant ana-logical
encounters, that is, a continuous and vigorous dialogue out of an in
light of distinct peoples’ needs, experiences, memories, and lives. It is
this space of dialogue and encroachments that awaits us in this work.
In terms of Dussel’s language, we are speaking of entering a space in
which world philosophies become sites for the articulate and effective
occurrence of what he has come to name the goodness claim each life
makes on reason, the claim of distinct lives to their culture, freedom,
and dignity, lives which in being heard also will give philosophical
thought direction and actuality.

25
Prologue

Enrique Dussel

This volume contains works written after Volumes I and II of the

Politics of Liberation, and given their variety should not be read as a
group of themes that develop towards maturity in Volume III. The
present work is rather a systematic work that subsumes the ethical
principles expounded in the Ethics of Liberation.“ Some of the works
included here were delivered in 2011 under the Albert Magnus
Professorship at the University of Cologne, Germany; others resulted
from participation in various philosophical events and from requests
for articles in various journals.** Gathering them in this volume
makes possible to get a clear idea of themes developing through these
dialogues and disputations in the Latin American, North American,
European, African, and Asian scenes. The interlocutors are various but
the issues circle about similar questions that slowly deepen. Therefore,
these are the fruit of oral confrontations with thinkers, rather than
being mere reactions to works already written and already settled.
Therefore, these are product of a critical thought without precedent,
which arises from the very novelty of many people’s (pueblos) actual
history. Thought arises in concrete reality and opens paths towards
the unexpected, towards what is not yet thought- new.
The first work, “Transmodernity and Interculturality”’ concerns the
question of the end of modernity and of the beginning of a New World
Age. It is a working hypothesis developed in a seminary dictated in
Germany and organized by Ratl Fornet-Betancourt, professor of
philosophy in Bremen, in 2004. It offers a critical engagement with
postmodernity as modernity’s last facet.
The second article, originally titled “The Anti-Discourse of
Modernity,” is a kind of response to Jiirgen Habermas, and in general
to European and Anglo Saxon philosophy, which only consider the
critiques of modernity made by the same European or North American

26
moderns, ignoring the critiques from the colonial periphery. That
colonial periphery constituted by modern Europe as a fundamental
moment of its very essence, and which was constituted before the
philosophical origin of modernity usually situated in the person of
René Descartes, whom already counted with a philosophical and
geopolitical centrality grounded on the XVI century. Thereby, also
taking for granted a critique done in that space exterior to Europe,
that is to say, in the recent Latin American Continent.
The third contribution, originally titled, “From Fraternity to
Solidarity (Beyond Nietzsche, C. Schmitt and J. Derrida)? was read
in a commemorative symposium in the occasion of the centenary of
Immanuel Levina’s birth, at Jerusalem University in 2006, divided the
numerous audience in two parts: those who consider Palestinians as
the Levinasian “other,” and those who interpreted the thesis I presented
as a critique of a type of Sionism that is not prophetic Judaism. The
significance of this piece, however, can illuminate situations in which
the other (he or she) is negated wherever may be in our violent planet,
torn apart by a fraternity exercised between dominators insensible
to responsible solidarity with those who find themselves outside the
world.
The fifth article, originally titled, “Critic of the Law and the
Legitimacy of the Community of the Victims (Pablo of Tarso as a
Critical Political Philosopher),” was a presentation in the School
of Philosophy of the Methodist University of Sao Paulo in 2008.”
The question raised by Alan Badiou gained much momentum for
contemporary political philosophy, although in Latin America it had
been developed already before and in another context in political
theology in the tradition of liberation.
The sixth work, originally titled “Philosophy of Liberation before
Postcolonial, Subaltern, and Postmodern Studies? was a paper
delivered at a congress on Latin American philosophy in Bogota,
Colombia, in 1999. This work shows that what we call today the
“epistemological decolonization” of all of the social sciences in Latin
America begins to be considered at the end of the 60’ in the XX
Century; as is also the case beginning from philosophy itself (as did
27
originally the Philosophy of Liberation since that period, i.e., before
“orientalism” (E. Said in 1977), “postmodernnity” (Lyotard in 1979),
although at the same time as Guha in 1973 in India).
The seventh work, “A New World Age in the History of Philosophy,”
was presented as a plenary session about “The History of Philosophy”
in the XXI World Congress of Philosophy in Seul, 2008. The paper
was delivered in front of a large audience of colleagues, mostly Asian,
it awoke much interest, and atypically, met with a lengthy standing
ovation.
I think that this group of collaborations aims to present the theme
of the “decolonizing of philosophy,’ and of epistemology in general,
which can be useful to the North American reader unfamiliar with
this contemporary school of critical thought.

Enrique Dussel
Departamento de Filosofia
Emérito de la UAM y del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores
Ciudad de México, 2016
1. Transmodernity and Interculturality: An
Interpretation from the Perspective of
Philosophy of Liberation

1. Insearch of self-identity: from Eurocentrism to

Developmentalist coloniality
I belong to a generation of Latin Americans whose intellectual
beginnings are situated in the 1950s, after the end of the Second
World War. For us, in the Argentina of that era, there was no doubt
that we were a part of “western culture.” For that reason, some of
our subsequent categorical judgments are a natural expression of
someone who opposes himself.
The philosophy that we studied set out from the Greeks, in whom
we saw our most remote lineage. The Amerindian World had no
presence in our studies, and none of our professors would have been
able to articulate the origin of philosophy with reference to indigenous
peoples.** Moreover, the ideal philosopher was one who was familiar
with the precise details of classical western philosophers and their
contemporary developments. There existed no possibility whatsoever
for a specifically Latin American philosophy. It is difficult to evoke in
the present the firm hold that the European model of philosophy had
on us (since at that moment in Argentina, there was still no reference
to the United States). Germany and France had complete hegemony,
especially in South America (although this was not the case in Mexico,
Central America, or the Hispanic, French, or British Caribbean).
In cultural philosophy, there was reference to Oswald Spenger,
Arnold Toynbee, Alfred Weber, A.L. Kroeber, Ortega y Gasset or F.
Braudel, and later William McNeill. But this was always in order to
comprehend the Greek phenomenon (with celebrated works such
as Paidea or W. Jaeger's Aristotle), the debate about the Middle Ages

29
(since the revalorization authorized by Etienne Gilson), and the
understanding of Western (European) culture as the context in which
to comprehend modern and contemporary philosophy. Aristotle,
Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, and Scheler were the key
figures. This was a substantialist view of culture, without fissures and
chronological from East to West, as required by the Hegelian view of
universal history.
With my trip to Europe - in my case, crossing the Atlantic by boat
in 1957 — we discovered ourselves to be “Latin Americans, or at least
no longer “Europeans,” from the moment that we disembarked in
Lisbon or Barcelona. The differences were obvious and could not be
concealed. Consequently, the problem of culture - humanistically,
philosophically, and existencially - was an obsession for me: “Who
are we culturally? What is our historical identity?” This was not a
question of the possibility of describing this “identity” objectively;
it was something prior. It was the existential anguish of knowing
oneself.
In Spain as well as Israel (where I was from 1957-1961, always
in search of an answer to the question of what it is to be “Latin
American”) my studies steered me toward challenging this mode of
questioning. But the theoretical model of culture would inevitably
continue to be the same for many years still. The impact of Paul
Ricoeur's classes, which I attended at the Sorbonne, and his oft-cited
article “Universal Civilization and National Culture,’® responded to
the substantialist model, which was moreover essentially Eurocentric.
Although “civilization” still did not have the Spenglerian connotation
of a moment of cultural decadence - denoting instead the universal
technical structures of human-instrumental progress as a whole
(whose principal actor during recent centuries had been the West) -
“culture” nonetheless constituted the valorative-mythical content of a
nation (or a group of nations). This was the first model that we used
during those years in order to situate Latin America.
It was from this “culturalist” perspective that I began my first
studies of Latin America, hoping to discover the place of the latter in
universal history (a la Toynbee), and discerning new depths inspired
30
 rimarily by P. Ricoeur (as previously mentioned), but also by Max
Weber, Pitrim Sorokin, K. Jaspers, W. Sobart, etc.
We organized a “Latin American Week” in December of 1964,
with Latin American students that were studying in various European
countries. It was a foundational experience. Josué de Castro, German
Arciniegas, Francois Houtart, and many other intellectuals including
P. Ricoeur® articulated their perspectives on the matter. The theme
was “achieving awareness” (prise de conscience) of the existence of a
Latin American culture. Rafael Brown Menéndez and Natalie Botana
disagreed with the existence of such a concept.
In the same year, I was in the process of publishing an article in the
journal Ortega y Gasset in Madrid," which contested the “historicist
reduction” of our Latin American reality. Against the revolutionary,
who struggles for the future “beginning” of history; against the liberal
who mystifies early nineteenth-century national emancipation from
Spain; against the conservatives who, for their part, mythologize
the splendor of the colonial era; against the indigenistas who negate
everything that followed the great Amerindian cultures, I proposed
the need to reconstruct - in its integrity and within the framework of
world history - the historical identity of Latin America.
These philosophical works corresponded to a period of historico-
empirical research (from 1963 onward) that paralleled (through
funding that I was awarded in Maguncia over various years) the thesis
in Hispano-American history that I defended at the Sorbonne (Paris)
in 1967,
A course in the History of Culture at the Universidad del Nordeste
(Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina)® gave me the opportunity to survey
the panoramic of “world history” (in the manner of Hegel or Toynbee),
in the context of which I sought to “situate” (the location of) Latin
America through a reconstruction (a Heideggerian “de-struction’).
‘The product of that course, Hypothesis for the Study of Latin American
within World History,“ attempted to elaborate a history of cultures
that sets out from their respective “ethico-mythical nuclei” (the noyau
éthico-mythique of P. Ricoeur). In order to engage in an intercultural
dialogue, it was necessary to begin by conducting an analysis of the
most remote “contents” of their mythical narratives, of the supposed
ontologies and the ethico-political structure underlying each of the
cultures in question. There is a tendency to quickly theorize such a
dialogue without a concrete understanding of the possible themes of
such a dialogue. For that reason, that Course of 1966, with an extensive
methodological introduction, and with a minimal description of the
“great cultures” (taking into account, criticizing, and integrating the
visions of Hegel, N. Danilevsky, W. Dilthey, O. Spengler, Alfred Weber,
K. Jaspers, A. Toyenbee, Teilhard de Chardin, and many others, and
with reference to the most important contemporary world histories)
allowed me to “situate” Latin America, as mentioned, within the
process of human development since the origins of the homo species,
through the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages, and up to the time of
the West’s invasion of America.** From Mesopotamia and Egypt to
India and China and across the Pacific, one finds great Neolithic
American cultures (a source of Latin American “proto-history”). The
confrontation between sedentary agricultural communities and the
Indo-Europeans of the Euro- Asiatic steppes (among them the Greeks
and Romans), and between these latter and the Semites (mostly from
the Arabian desert), provided me a key to the history of this “ethical-
mythic nucleus,” which had passed through the Byzantine and Muslim
worlds, arriving at the Romanized Iberian Peninsula (the other source
of our “Latin American proto-history”).
In March of 1967, returning to Latin America, when the ship passed
through Barcelona, the editor of Nova Terra hand-delivered to me my
first book: Hipotesis para una historia de la iglesia en América Latina
(Hypothesis regarding the history of the church in Latin America). In
this work one could see, at the religious level, the basic contours ofa
philosophy of culture for our continent. This small work “would make
history,” because it offered the first reinterpretation of religious history
within the context ofa global cultural history. In the historiographic
tradition, the question was formulated as follows: “What were the
relations between church and state?” Now, on the other hand, it
was defined in terms of: “The cultural clash and the position of the
church.” The crisis of emancipation from Spain, enthroned until
32
1810, was described as “the passage from a model of Christendom to
that of a pluralist and secular society.’ In this work we can already see a
new cultural history of Latin America (not only of the church), which
was no longer Eurocentric but still “developmentalist.”
This is why, when I gave the speech “Culture, Latin American
Culture, and National Culture” at a conference at the Universidad del
Nordeste on May 25th of 1967,” it was like a Manifesto, a “generational
take of consciousness.” Rereading it, I find sketched out many issues
that, in one way or another, would be modified or expanded over the
next thirty years or more.
In September of that same year I began giving semester-long
courses in an Institute based in Quito (Ecuador), where I was able to
posit the full breadth of this new reconstructive vision of the history
of Latin American culture in the presence of over 80 participants
from almost every Latin American country (including the Caribbean
and American Latinos). The impression that I caused in the audience
was immense and profound - disquieting for some - and in the end,
inspiring in all the hope for a new interpretive era.* In a course given
in Buenos Aires in 1969,° I began with “Toward a Philosophy of
Culture,” a question which culminated with a section entitled: “The
Achievement of Latin American Consciousness,” which was perceived
as the cry of a generation:
It is commonplace now to say that our cultural past is hetero-
geneous and at times incoherent, hybrid, and even ina certain
way marginal in comparison to European culture. But what
is most tragic is when the very existence of such a culture is
ignored, since what is relevant is that, at any rate, there exists
a culture in Latin America. Although some may deny it, its
originality is evident, in art, in the style of life.”
As a professor in the National University of Cuyo (Mendoza,
Argentina) I let flow this very same historical reconstruction, and
did so in a strictly philosophical way. This took the form of an
anthropological trilogy (in questions such as the conceptualization
of the body-soul and the immortality of the soul; or the spirit-flesh,
33
person, resurrection, etc.) always bearing in mind the question of the
origins of “Latin American culture.” These works were published as
El humanismo helénico (Hellenic Humanism),* and El dualismo en
la antropologia de la cristiandad (The Dualism in the Anthropology of
Christianity). This final work concluded the Course of 1966 - which
had only covered up to fifth-century Latin - Germanic christianity —
by dealing with Europe's relationship with and expansion into Latin
America. I reconstructed anew the history of different Christianities
(Armenian, Georgian, Byzantine, Coptic, Latin-Germanic, etc.), as
well as describing in other later works the clash of the Islamic world
with Spain (between 711 and 1492). *
The obsession was not to leave aside any century without being
able to integrate it into a view of World History which would allow
us to understand the “origin,” “development, and “content” of Latin
American culture. Both existential demands and a (still Eurocentric)
philosophy led us to search for a cultural identity, but it was there that
a rupture began to appear.

2. Cultural core and periphery: the problem of liberation

Since the end of the 1960s, as a fruit of the emergence of critical
Latin American social science (particularly “Dependency Theory”’),
as well as the Emmanuel Levinas’ lecture Totality and Infinity, and
perhaps initially and principally as a result of the popular and student
movements of 1968 (worldwide, but fundamentally in Argentina
and Latin America), a historical rupture was produced in the field of
philosophy and consequently in philosophy of culture. What had been
previously considered the metropolitan and colonial worlds were now
categorized (through the still developmentalist terminology of Raul
Presbisch of the CEPAL) as “core” and “periphery.” To this, we should
add an entire categorical horizon originating in critical economics,
which demanded the incorporation of social classes as intersubjective
actors to be integrated into a definition of culture. This was not merely
a terminological question but a conceptual one, which allowed for
the rupturing of the substantialist conception of culture and for the

34
discovery of fractures (internal to each culture) and between them
(not only as an intercultural “dialogue” or “clash,” but rather more
strictly as domination and exploitation of one culture over others). It
was necessary to take into account on all levels the asymmetry of the
actors involved. The “culturalist” stage was over. Thus, in 1983, in a
»
chapter entitled “Beyond Culturalism? I wrote:
From the structuralist view of culturalism, it was impossible
to understand the changing situations of hegemony, within
the well-defined historical blocs, and in respect to the ideo-
logical formations of diverse classes and factions [...]. Moreo-
ver, culturalism lacked the categories of political society (in
the last analysis, the state) and civil society.”
Latin American philosophy - like the Philosophy of Liberation -
discovered its cultural conditioning (since it understood itself
from the perspective of a determinate culture), but moreover it was
articulated (explicitly or implicitly) from the perspective of the
interests of determinate classes, groups, genders, races, etc. Location”
had been discovered and was the first philosophical theme to be
addressed. Intercultural “dialogue” had lost its simplicity and came
to be understood as over determined by the entirety of the colonial
era. In fact, in 1974 we initiated an intercontinental “South-South
dialogue” between thinkers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America,
whose first meeting was held in Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania) in 1976.”
Those encounters gave us a new and immediate panorama of the great
cultures of humanity.”
This new vision of culture emerged at the last of these meetings,
which took place at the University of El Salvador in Buenos Aires,
at which point the Philosophy of Liberation was already fully in
development.” It represented a frontal attack on the position of
Domingo F. Sarmiento, an eminent Argentinean educator and author
of Facundo: Civilizacion o barbarie. For him, civilization meant North
Americancultureand barbarism wasrepresentedby the federal caudillos
that struggled for regional autonomy against the port of Buenos Aires
(the transmission belt of English domination). My critique was the
35
beginning of a de-mythologization of the national “heroes,” who had
conceived the neocolonial model in Argentina which had already
begun to run out of steam."' An “imperial” culture (that of the core),
which originated with the invasion of América“ in 1492, confronted
the “peripheral” cultures in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern
Europe. The result was not a symmetrical dialogue, but rather one
of domination, of exploitation, of annihilation. Moreover, the elites
of these “peripheral cultures” were educated by the imperialists, and
therefore, as Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in the preface to Franz Fanon's
The Wretched of the Earth, echoed what they had learned in Paris or
London. Enlightened neocolonial elites were so loyal to the empires
that they distanced themselves from their own “people” and used
them like hostages for their dependent politics. Therefore, there were
asymmetries of domination on the world map:
a. a western, metropolitan, and Eurocentric culture (the civilization
of Ricoeur) that dominated and sought to annihilate all peripheral
cultures; and
b. postcolonial cultures (Latin America from beginning of the
nineteenth century and Asia and Africa following the Second
World War) which were themselves split between
i. groups associated with the current empires, “enlightened” elites
whose authority required them to turn their backs on their
ancestral regional culture; and
ii. the popular majority, settled in their traditions, which they
defended (often in a fundamentalist manner) against the
imposition ofa technocratic, economically capitalist culture.
Philosophy of Liberation, as a critical cultural philosophy, needed
to generate a new elite whose “enlightenment” would be integrated
with the interests of the social bloc of the oppressed (Gramsci's popolo).
For that reason, we spoke of the “liberation of popular culture”:
“There is, firstly, a patriotic revolution of national liberation,
secondly, a social revolution that liberates the oppressed class-
es, and thirdly, there is a cultural revolution. The last of these
operates on the pedagogical level, the level of the youth, the

36
 level of culture?

That peripheral culture - oppressed by the imperial culture -

should be the point of departure for intercultural dialogue. We wrote
in 1973:
The culture of cultural poverty, far from being a minor cul-
ture, represents the most uncontaminated and irradiative
core of the resistance of the oppressed against the oppressor
[...] In order to create something new, one must have a new
word that bursts in from the exteriority. This exteriority is the
people itself which, despite being oppressed by the system, is
totally foreign to it.
The “project of cultural liberation”* arises from popular culture,
although thought through the Philosophy of Liberation in the Latin
American context. We had overcome culturalist developmentalism
that believed that a traditional culture would be able to transition into
a secular, pluralist culture. However, it was still necessary to radicalize
our misguided analysis of “the popular sector” (lo popular) (the best),
since it is in the womb of the latter contains the nucleus that would
harbor populism and fundalmentalism (the worst). Another step
would be necessary.

3. Popular culture: not merely populism

In an article published in 1984, I again needed to clarify the
difference between a.) the “people” (pueblo) and “the popular sector”
(lo popular); and b.) “populism,” which has taken various forms: from
“Thatcherite populism” in the United Kingdom - as suggested by
Ernesto Laclau and studied in Birmingham by Richard Hall - through
the contemporary incarnation of “fundamentalism” in the Muslim
world, a “fundamentalism” which is equally present, for example, in
the North American Christian sectarianism of George W. Bush.
In that article we divided the material in four sections. In the first
Section,” we reconstructed our positions since the 1960s showing
the need to overcome the limitations of reductivism (of ahistorical
37
revolutionaries, or of the liberal histories of hispanic-conservatives or
indigenistas), and we reconstructed Latin American cultural history
within the framework of world history (from Asia, our Amerindian
component; the Asian-Afro-European proto-history through
hispanic Christianity; colonial Christianity though postcolonial and
neocolonial “dependent Latin American culture”). The whole project
ended with a project for “a popular, post-capitalist culture”:
When we were in the mountains — wrote Tomas Borge about
the campesinos - and we heard them speak with their pure,
clean hearts, with a simple and poetic language, we understood
how much talent had been lost [by the neocolonial elites]
throughout the centuries.”
This required a new point of departure for the description of culture
as such - the subject of the second section.”
Through a careful and archaeological rereading of Marx (from
his early works in 1835 to those of 1882°) we showed that all culture
is a mode or a system of “types of work. It is no coincidence that
“agri-culture” means, in a strict sense, “work of the earth,’ since the
etymological root of “culture” comes from the Latin “cultus” in the
sense of sacred consecration.” Both material poetics” (the physical
fruits of labor) and mythical poetics (symbolic creation) are forms
of cultural pro-duction (putting the subjective - or better yet the
intersubjective and communal ~ outside, objectively). In this way we
recuperated the economic (without falling into economism).
In a third section,’ we analyzed the various, newly-fractured
moments of a post-culturalist or post-Spengerian understanding
of cultural experience. “Bourgeois culture” (a, below) was studied
in its abstract relation to “proletarian culture” (b), and the “culture
of the core countries” was analyzed in relation to the “culture of the
peripheral countries” (in the order of the global “world-system’).
Moreover, “multinational culture or cultural imperialism” (c) was
described in relation to the “mass or alienated culture,” (d) which was
globalized, and (e) “national or populist culture” was integrated with
the “culture of the enlightened elite,’ (f) and it then counterposed to
38
“popular culture,”® or “resistance through cultural creation” (g).
Evidently, this cultural typology, and its categorial criteria, would
presuppose a long and critical “epistemological struggle” proper to the
new social sciences of Latin America and Philosophy of Liberation.
We had already achieved these distinctions long before, but now they
took a more definitive shape.

Diagram 1

(a) Bourgeois Core Multinational

Culture capitalism culture (c)

Mass
Culture (d)

Periferal Enlightened
capitalism Culture (f) National
_ Culture (e)

(b) Proletarian Wage-labour Campesinos Popular

Culture Culture Culture

—_ | (9)
Ethic groups
Maintain Artisans
exteriority(’) Marginals
Others

(i) Keep in ming that cultural groups (indigenous, lumpen, marginal, etc.) are located “outside”
of the
capitalist order but inside or in the womb of the people (pueblo).

In 1977, in the third volume of Para una ética de la liberacion

latinoamericana (Towards an Ethics of Latin American Liberation), we
had written:
Imperial culture®* (with universal claims) is not the same thing

39
 as national culture (which itself is not identical to the popular
sector), nor is it the same as the enlightened culture of the neo-
colonial elite (which is not always bourgeois, but is always oli-
garchic), nor is it the same as mass culture (which is alienating
and unidimensional, in the core as well as in the periphery),
nor is it the same as popular culture.”
And we added:
Imperial, enlightened, and mass culture (within which we can
include proletarian culture as a negativity) are the imperative
internal moments in the dominant totality. However, national
culture is still wrong despite its importance [....] Popular cul-
ture_is the key moment for [cultural] liberation.”

In the 1980s, with the active presence of the FSLN in Nicaragua and
many other events in Latin America, creative culture was conceived of
as “popular revolutionary culture”:
Latin American popular culture — we wrote in the 1984 article
mentioned - can only be elucidated, decanted, and authenti-
cated in the process of liberation (economically from capital-
ism, politically from oppression), establishing a new demo-
cratic type, thereby representing cultural liberation, taking a
creative step along the path of the historico-cultural tradition
of the oppressed, the current revolutionary protagonists.”

In that era one spoke of the “historical subject” of revolutionary

culture: the “people” (pueblo) as the “social bloc of the oppressed,’
when it recovered the “subjective consciousness” of its historico-
revolutionary function.'"
This notion of popular culture was not populist. “Populist” indicated
the inclusion within “national culture” of the bourgeois and oligarchic
culture of the elite, as well as the culture of the proletariat, of the
campesino, of all the inhabitants of the soil, organized under a State
(designated “Bonapartism” in France). The popular, on the other hand,
was an entire social sector of the nation, insofar as they were exploited

40
or oppressed, but who moreover retained a certain “exteriority,’ as we
will see later. This sector is oppressed in the state system, but maintains
its alterity, difference, and freedom in those cultural moments scorned
by the oppressor, like folklore,’ music, food, dress, and festivals, the
memory of their heroes, their emancipatory moments, their social
and political organizations, etc.
As one can see, the monolithic substantialist conception of a single
Latin American culture had been left behind, and the internal cultural
fissures grew thanks to that very same cultural revolution.

4. Modernity, the globalization of western culture, liberal

multiculturalism, and the military empire of the
“preventative war”
Although the question had been glimpsed intuitively since the end
of the 1950s, there was a gradual theoretical shift from a.) the obsession
with “situating” Latin America within world history - which demanded
a total reconstruction of that vision of history - to b.) calling into
question the standard vision of that universal history (common to the
Hegelian generation) that had “excluded” us, since the “eurocentrism”
of the latter constructed not only a distorted interpretation” of non-
European cultures, but also--and this conclusion was unpredictable
in the 50s and had not been expected a priori - an equally inadequate
interpretation of its own western culture. “Orientalism” (a defect in the
European interpretation of all cultures east of Europe, as Edward Said
shows in his famous 1978 text, Orientalism) was a defect connected to
and simultaneous with “occidentalism” (the misguided interpretation
of Europe’s own culture). The hypothesis that had permitted us to reject
the idea that there was no Latin American culture now enabled us to
discover a new critical vision of both peripheral and even European
Culture. This task was undertaken almost simultaneously in all areas
of peripheral postcolonial culture (Asia, Africa, and Latin America),
although unfortunately to a lesser extent in Europe and the United
States,
In effect, beginning with the “postmodern” problematic about the
41
nature of Modernity - which is still, in the final instance, a “European”
vision of Modernity - we began to notice that what we ourselves had
called “postmodern”: was something distinct from that alluded to
by the Postmodernists of the 1980s (or at least their definition of the
phenomenon of Modernity was different from the understanding I
had developed through my works that sought to situate Latin America
in confrontation with a modern culture as seen from the perspective
of the colonial periphery). For that reason, we saw need to reconstruct
the concept of “Modernity” from an “exterior” perspective, that is to
say, a global perspective (not provincial like the European perspective).
This was necessary because “Modernity,” in the United States and
Europe, had (and continues to have) a clearly Eurocentric connotation,
notorious from Lyotard or G. Vattimo through J. Habermas, and in
another, more subtle manner even in I. Wallerstein, who we identify
with a “second Eurocentrism,
Focusing on this line of argument allowed us to glimpse a
problematic and categorial horizon that relaunched again the subject
of culture, only this time as a critique of “liberal multiculturalism” (in
the manner of John Rawls, for example, in The Law of Peoples), and
also as a critique of the superficial optimism of the ostensible ease with
which some suggested the possibility of multicultural communication
or dialogue, ingenuously (or cynically) presupposing a symmetry
between participants which is nonexistent in reality.
‘This was no longer a matter of “locating” Latin America. It was
a matter of trying to “situate” all of the cultures that today inevitably
confront each other in all levels of everyday life, from communication,
education and research, to the politics of expansion, and cultural
or even military resistance. Cultural systems, minted throughout
the millennia, can be torn apart in decades, or develop through
confrontation with other cultures. No culture is assured survival in
advance. All of these issues are of increasing importance today, a
crucial moment in the history of cultures of the planet.
In our vision of the course Hypothesis
for the study of Latin America
within Universal History, and in the initial works of that period, I
tended to portray the development of each culture as an independent
42
or autonomous whole.'* There were “contact zones” (like the Eastern
Mediterranean, the Pacific Ocean and the Euroasiatic steppes from
Gobi to the Caspian Sea), but I explicitly attributed the unfolding
of the “world-system” to the moments of the Portuguese expansion
into the South Atlantic and toward the Indian Ocean, or to Spain's
“discovery of America,’ or to the first between the great, independent
cultural ecumenes'” (from Amerindia, China, Hindustan, the Islamic
world, Bantu Cultures, Byzantine and Latin-Germanic cultures). This
theory would undergo a radical modification due to A. Gunder Frank's
proposed “five thousand year world-system” - which immediately
imposed itself on me because it mirrored my own chronology - which
changed our panorama. If there existed firm contacts in the steppes
and deserts of Northeastern Asia (through the so-called “silk route”),
it was above all the region of old Persia — first Helenized (around
Seleukon, not far from the ruins of Babylon) and later Islamicized
(Samarkand or Bagdad) - that served as the axis around which the
Asiatic-Afro-Mediterreanean world turned. Latin-Germanic Europe
was always peripheral (although in the South it carried some weight
due to the presence of the ancient Roman empire), but was never the
“center” of that immense continental mass. The Muslim world (from
Mindanao in the Phillipines, Malaka, and Delhi, the “heart” of the
Muslim world, to the Magreb, Fez in Morrocco, or the Andalucia of
Averroés' Cordoba) was a much more highly-developed mercantilist
culture (scientifically, theoretically, economically, and culturally) than
Latin-Germanic Europe after the catastrophic Germanic invasions”
and the Islamic invasions that began in the seventh century. Against to
Max Weber, we must recognize the great civilizational difference that
existed between the future European culture (still underdeveloped)
with respect to Islamic culture through the twelfth century (the
Turkish-Siberian invasions would later cut short the great Arabic
culture).
In the west, “Modernity,” which was initiated with the invasion of
America by Spain - whose culture was inherited from the Mediterranean
Muslims (around Andalucia) and the Italian Renaissance (through the
Catalan presence in southern Italy)" - is the geopolitical “opening”
43
from Europe to the Atlantic; it is the unfolding and control of the
“world-system” in a strict sense (through the oceans, and no longer
the slow and dangerous continental caravans), and the “invention” of
the colonial system, which over 300 years would progressively shift
the politico-economic balance in favor of the peripheral and isolated
old Europe. This was all, moreover, simultaneous with the origin and
development of capitalism (which was mercantile in its initial stages,
based only upon the primitive accumulation of capital). ‘That is to say:
modernity, colonialism, the world-system, and capitalism were all
simultaneous and mutually-constitutive aspects of the same reality.
If this is the case, then Spain was the first modern nation. This
theory runs contrary to all interpretations of modernity as originating
in central of Europe and the United States, and is even contrary to the
opinion of the great majority of contemporary Spanish intellectuals.
However, it asserts itself upon us with increasing force in proportion
to the discovery of new arguments. In effect, the First Modernity,
the Iberian Modernity (from 1492 through approximately 1630),
which came to have Muslim tinges through Andalucia (the most
educated area of the Mediterranean'” during the twelfth century),
was inspired by the humanist Italian Rennaisance. This tendency
was firmly implanted by the “Reform” of Cardinal Cisneros, by the
university reform of the Salamancan Dominicans (whose Second
Scholastic school was not merely medival, but in fact “modern”), and
in particular, a little later, by the Baroque Jesuit culture that in the
philosophical figure of Francisco Suarez inaugurated, in a strict sense,
modern metaphysical thinking.’ Don Quijote is the first modern
literary work of its type in Europe, whose characters have each foot
in a different world: in the Islamic south and in the Christian north,
in the most advanced culture of their era and in emergent European
modernity.’ The first syntactic theory ofa romance language was the
guide to Spanish (Castilian) grammar edited by Nebrija in 1492. In
1521 the first bourgeois revolution, in Castile, was put down by Carlos
V (the commoners fought to defend their urban charters). The first
global currency was minted with Mexican and Peruvian silver, which
passed through Sevilla and eventually accumulated in China. This was
44
a pre-bourgeois, humanist, mercantile Modernity, which initiated the
expansion of Europe.
It was only the Second Modernity that developed in the United
Provinces of the Lowlands, which had been a Spanish province until
the beginning of the seventeenth century'’: this was a new stage of
Modernity (1630-1688), now properly bourgeois in its own right.
The Third Modernity, which was English and then later French,
extended the earlier model (initiated philosophically by Decartes and
Spinoza, unfolding with more practical coherence in the possessive
individualism of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume). With the Industrial
Revolution and the Enlightenment, Modernity reached its fullest
development, and at the same time colonialism was strengthened
through Northern European expansion, first into Asia and later into
Africa.
Modernity, like the “world system,’ is five centuries old, and both
were coextensive with European domination of the world, a Europe
which has represented the “core” since 1492. For its part, Latin America
was a constitutive moment of Modernity. The colonial system could
not be feudal - a central question for social sciences in general, as
demonstrated by Sergio Bag - but was instead peripheral to the
modern capitalist world, and thereby to the modern world itself.
In this context, we mounted a critique of the ingenuous position
that imagined intercultural dialogue as a possible - and in part
idealized - multicultural symmetry in which communication between
rational beings would be possible. “Discourse Ethics” adopted this
Optimistic position. Richard Rorty, and to some extent A. MacIntyre,
demonstrated the complete incommensurability of an impossible
communication, or at least its extreme difficulty. In any case, they
dispensed with the situatedness of cultures (without naming them
concretely or studying their history and structural content), failing
to recognize the asymmetrical that resulted from their respective
Positions in the colonial system. Western culture, with its obvious
“Occidentalism? has positioned all other cultures as primitive, pre-
modern, traditional, and underdeveloped.
Upon delineating a theory of a “dialogue between cultures,” it may
45
seem that all cultures exist under symmetrical conditions. Or, that
through an ad hoc anthropology, the task of neutral observation (or
in the best cases, “engaged” observation) of primitive cultures can be
achieved. In this case there exist superior cultures (ofacademic “cultural
anthropology”) and “the others” (the primitives). In both extremes
there are the developed, symmetrical cultures and “the others” (that
cannot even be situated asymmetrically due to the unsurpassable
cultural abyss separating them from the former). Such is the case of
Durkheim and Habermas. In the face of anthropology’s observational
perspective, there can be no cultural dialogue with China, India, the
Islamic world, etc., because they are neither enlightened nor primitive
cultures, ‘They are “no man’s land.”
These cultures - neither “metropolitan” nor “primitive” — are
being destroyed by propaganda and the sale of merchandise, material
products which are always cultural (like drinks, foods, clothes,
vehicles, etc.), while on the other hand there is an ostensible attempt
to preserve these cultures by valorizing in isolation folkloric elements
or secondary cultural moments. A transnational restaurant chain can
subsume in his menus a plate typical of a specific to a culinary culture
(like ‘Taco Bell). This passes for the “respect” of other cultures.
This type of altruistic mulGculturalism is clearly formulated in
John Rawls’ “overlapping consensus,” which requires the acceptance of
certain procedural principles (which are inadvertently and profoundly
culturally western) by all members of a political community, while at
the same time permitting the diversity of cultural (or religious) values.
Politically, this presupposes that those who establish the dialogue
accept a liberal, multicultural State, overlooking the fact that the very
structure of this multicultural State - as institutionalized in the present
— isan expression of western culture and restricts the possibility for the
survival of all other cultures. Surreptitiously, a cultural structure has
been imposed in the name of purely formal elements of coexistence
(which were an expression of the development ofadeterminate culture).
Moreover, this liberal State is founded upon an economic structure
of transnational capitalism, invisible to its defenders, that has only
smoothed out unacceptable anti- western differences in “incorporated”
16
cultures thanks to the previously-mentioned “overlapping consensus”
(which results from a prior hollowing-out of the critical anti-capitalist
elements of those cultures).
This sort of sterile multicultural dialogue (which also frequently
takes place between universal religions), becomes in certain cases an
aggressive cultural politics, such as Huntington's call, in The Clash of
Civilizations, for the defense of western culture through military means,
particularly against Islamic fundamentalists, under whose soil (they
forget to mention) exist the greatest petroleum reserves in the world
(and without referring to the presence of a Christian fundamentalism
on a comparable scale, especially in the United States). Again, they
fail to mention that “the fundamentalism of the market” - as George
Soros calls it - serves as the foundation for an aggressive military
fundamentalism, taking the form of “preventative wars” which are
disguised as cultural confrontations or the as expansion of democratic
political culture. In this way, we have passed from a.) the claim of
a symmetrical multicultural dialogue to b.) simple suppression of
all dialogue and the forced imposition of that same western culture
through military technology (at least this is the pretext, since we have
suggested that it is merely about the fulfillment of economic interests,
such as the role played by petroleum in the war in Iraq).
Intheirwork Empire, Negriand Hardt maintainacertain postmodern
perspective on the globalized structure of the world-system. It is
necessary to place prior to any such vision an interpretation which
allows for a more dramatic understanding of the present conjuncture
of world history, under the military hegemony of the North American
State, which —as home-State'” for the largest transnational corporations,
is slowly, as when in the Roman Republic Caesar crossed the Rubicon
~ is transforming from a republic into an empire, a post-Cold-War
domination that sets its sights on unipolar control of global power. To
what is multicultural dialogue reduced in such a situation, if not to a
Certain naive recognition of the asymmetries between participants?
How is it possible to imagine a symmetrical dialogue given the near
impossibility of seizing the technological instruments of a capitalism
based in military expansion? Will everything be lost, and will the
47
imposition of an Occidentalism (identified more and more by the day
with the “Americanism” of the United States), erase from the face of
the earth all of the universal cultures which have been developing over
the last few millennia? Will English be the only remaining classical
language, imposed upon humanity which, under such a weight, will
forget their own traditions?

5. The transversality of transmodern intercultural dialogue:

mutual liberation of universal postcolonial cultures
Thus we arrive to the most recent stage of development (which as
always had been anticipated in earlier intuitions), beginning from
the new hypotheses of André Gunder Frank. His ReOrient: Global
Economy in the Asian Age-' (and the more complex argument put forth
by Kenneth Pomeranz in The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the
Making of the Modern World Economy’) which again allows us to
open up a broader critical problematic, which should take up again
the interpretative keys to the problem of culture that we discovered in
the 1960s. We are now able to introduce a new theoretical proposition
- which we call the “Trans-modern” - and which constitutes an
explicit overcoming of the concept “Post-modernity” (since the latter
still represents a final moment of Modernity).
This most recent working-hypothesis can be formulated in the
following, heavily simplified, manner: Modernity (capitalism,
colonialism, the first world-system) isnot contemporary with European
hegemony, which functioned as the “center” of the market with
respect to the rest of the cultures. The “centrality” of the world market
and Modernity are not synchronous phenomena. Modern Europe
became the “center” after it was already “modern” For |. Wallerstein,
these phenomena are coextensive (this is why he delays Modernity
and its centrality in the world market until the “Enlightenment”
and the emergence of liberalism). In my view, the four phenomena
(capitalism, the world-system, colonialism, and modernity) are
contemporary to one another (but they respond to the “centrality”
of the world market). Today, then, I should note that until 1789 (to
48
give a symbolic date for the end of the eighteenth century), China
and the region of Hindustan had a productive-economic weight in the
“world market” (producing its most important goods, like porcelain,
silk, etc.) that Europe was not capable of matching. Europe could not
sell anything in the market of the Far East, and it has only been able to
make purchases in the Chinese market during the past three centuries
thanks to Latin America silver (primarily from Peru and Mexico).
Europe began to function as the “center” of the world market (and
therefore to extend the “world system” throughout the world) with
the advent of the industrial revolution; on the cultural plane, this
produced the phenomenon of the Enlightenment, the origins of which,
in the long run,'* we should look for (according to the hypothesis
of Morrocan philosopher Al-Yabri, who we will discuss later) in the
Averréist philosophy of the caliphate of Cordoba. Europe's crucial
and enlightened hegemony scarcely lasted two centuries (1789-
1989).""" Only two centuries! Too short-term to profoundly transform
the “ethico-mythical nucleus” (to use Ricoeur's expression) of ancient
and universal cultures like the Chinese and others of the Far East (like
the Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc.), the Hindustanic, the Islamic,
the Russian-Byzantine, and even the Bantu or the Latin American
(though with a different structural composition). These cultures have
been partly colonized (included through negation in the totality, as
aspect A of Diagram 1), but most of the structure of their values has
been excluded - scorned, negated and ignored - rather than annihilated.
The economic and political system has been dominated in order to
exert colonial power and to accumulate massive riches, but those
cultures were deemed to be unworthy, insignificant, unimportant,
and useless. The tendency to disparage those cultures, however, has
allowed them to survive in silence, in the shadows, simultaneously
Scorned by their own modernized and westernized elites. That
negated “exterior,” that alterity - always extant and latent - indicates
the existence of an unsuspected cultural richness, which is slowly
revived like the flames of the fire of those fathoms buried under the
Sea of ashes from hundreds of years of colonialism. That cultural
€xteriority is not merely a substantive, uncontaminated, and eternal
49
“identity.” It has been evolving in the face of Modernity itself; what is
at stake is “identity” in the sense of process and growth, but always as
an exteriority.
These universal cultures, asymmetrical in terms of their economic,
political, scientific, technological, and military conditions, therefore
maintain an alterity with respect to European Modernity, with which
they have coexisted and have learned to respond in their own way to
its challenges. They are not dead but alive, and presently in the midst
ofa process of rebirth, searching for new paths for future development
(and inevitably at times taking the wrong paths). Since they are not
modern, these cultures cannot be “post’-modern either. They are
simultaneously pre-modern (older than modernity), contemporary
to Modernity, and soon, to Transmodernity as well. Postmodernism is
a final stage in modern European/North American culture, the “core”
of Modernity. Chinese or Vedic cultures could never be European
post-modern, but rather are something very different as a result of
their distinct roots.
Thus, the strict concept of the “trans-modern”'" attempts to indicate
the radical novelty of the irruption — as if from nothing — from the
transformative exteriority of that which is always Distinct, those
universal cultures in the process of development which assume the
challenges of Modernity, and even European/North American Post-
modernity, but which respond from another place, another location.
‘They respond from the perspective of their own cultural experiences,
which are distinct from those of Europeans/North Americans, and
therefore have the capacity to respond with solutions which would
be absolutely impossible for an exclusively modern culture. A future
trans-modern culture - which assumes the positive moments of
Modernity (as evaluated through criteria distinct from the perspective
of the other ancient cultures) ~ will have a rich pluriversity and would
be the fruit of an authentic intercultural dialogue, that would need to
bear clearly in mind existing asymmetries (to be an “imperial-core” or
part of the semi-peripheral “central chorus” - like Europe today, and
even more so since the 2003 Iraq War - is not the same as to be part
of the postcolonial and peripheral world). But a post-colonial and
50,
eripheral world like that of India, in a position of abysmal asymmetry
with respect to the metropolitan core of the colonial era, does not for
this reason cease to be a creative nucleus of ancient cultural renewal
which is decisively distinct from all of the others, with the capacity to
ropose novel and necessary answers for the anguishing challenges
that the Planet throws upon us at the beginning of the twenty-first
century.
“Trans-modernity” points toward all of those aspects that are
situated “beyond” (and also “prior to”) the structures valorized by
modern European/North American culture, and which are present in
the great non-European universal cultures and have begun to move
toward a pluriversal utopia.
An intercultural dialogue must be transversal,'” that is to say, it
needs to set out from a place other than a mere dialogue between the
learned experts of the academic or institutionally-dominant worlds. It
must be a multicultural dialogue that does not presuppose the illusion
of a non-existent symmetry between cultures. We will now turn to
some aspects of this critical, intercultural dialogue with respect to
trans-modernity.

Diagram 2: Rough sketch of the meaning of cultural trans-modernity

Trans-modernity

\N
other)
Cultures.
 We will take as the leitmotif of our exposition a philosophical
discussion of Islamic culture. Mohammed Abed AI-Yabri, in his texts
Critica de la razén arabe (Critique of Arab Reason) ™ and The Arab
Philosophical Legacy,*! is an excellent example of what we hope to
explain. Al-Yabri is a Maghreb philosopher, which is to say that he is
from a cultural region which was under the influence of the classical
thought of the Caliphate of Cordoba, which began a deconstruction
of Arab tradition.'* This culminated in an authentic philosophical
“Enlightenment,” a direct antecedent of the Latin-Germanic revival
of thirteenth-century Paris, and as such represented even a direct
antecedent of the eighteenth-century European Aufkldérung (which
was, according to the hypothesis of Al-Yabri, Averrdist).

5.1. Affirmation of scorned exteriority

Everything begins through an affirmation. The negation of the
negation is the second moment. How can one negate the disparagement
of oneself but through setting-out on the path of the self-discovery of
one's own value? This is the affirmation of an evolving and flexible
identity in the face of Modernity. Postcolonial cultures need effective
decolonization, but for this they must begin with self-valorization.
However, there are different ways to affirm oneself, some of which
are misguided. For this reason, beginning with the example suggested
in the first place, Al-Yabri criticizes the typical interpretations or
hermeneutic “readings” of the Islamic tradition by contemporary Arab
philosophy in the Muslim world. The first interpretive strand is that of
fundamentalism (the “Salafis” *). This interpretation has an affirmative
intention, like all the rest, since it attempts to recuperate ancient Arab
tradition in the present. But tor Al-Yabri such a current is ahistorical
- merely apologetic and traditionalist. Another interpretative strand
is the liberal-Europeanist, which claims to be merely Modern, but in
the end negates the past or does not know how to reconstruct it. The
third is the leftist interpretation (“Marxist salafism”).* The question,
considering these three interpretative strands, is: “How [can we]
reconstruct our legacy [today]?”
 It seems evident that the first step is to study that legacy affirmatively.
Al-Yabri, a reader whose mother tongue is Arabic and whose training
jn Islamic cultural traditions date back to childhood, has an enormous
advantage above all the other European and North American specialists
who study the Arab world as a scientific “object” and as a “foreign”
culture. Thus, he reads the classics, grasps neglected nuances, and he
does this through contemporary French hermeneutic philosophy that
he, along with all Maghrebs, has studied. In this way he positively
expounds the thought of Al-Farabi, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Avempace
(Ibn Bajjah), Averrées (Ibn Rushd), and Ibn Khaldun, but he does so
not merely as an ingenuous and apologetic pure affirmation.
On the plane of popular culture, another example, Rigoberta
Menchu, in I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala,’
dedicates long chapters to the description of the culture of her Mayan
village in Guatemala. She begins with a self-valorizing affirmation
of herself, and this is the originary (??) reflection upon which she
constructs her entire edifice. Against prevalent opinion, it is necessary
to begin from the positive origin of one's own cultural tradition.
This first step represents a reminiscence of the past from an identity
which is prior to Modernity or which has imperceptibly evolved in
the inevitable and furtive contact with Modernity.

5.2. Critiquing one's tradition with the resources of one's culture

But the only way to grow from within one's tradition is to engage
in critique from within the assumptions of that same culture. It is
necessary to find within one's culture the originary (??) moments of
a self-criticism.
Itis in this way that Al-Yabri carries outa “deconstruction” ofhis own
tradition with critical elements of the same, and with others adopted
from Modernity itself. It is not Modernity that imposes the tools upon
the critical intellectual; it is the critical intellectual that controls and
directs the selection of those modern instruments that will be useful for
the critical reconstruction of her own tradition. In this way, Al- Yabri
shows that the “eastern” schools of the Arab world” should initially

53
confront head-on their primary enemy: Gnostic Persian thought. Ina.
strict sense, the mu‘tazilies strictly created the first theoretical Islamic
thought (which was anti-Persian), with components of the Koran, but
which also creatively subsumed elements of Greek-Byzantine culture,
with the political aim of justifying the legitimacy of the Caliphate
state. * This is how eastern traditions were born. However, the Abbasid
schools in Baghdad, as well as in outlying regions like Samarkand and
Bukhara, as well as the Fatimite traditions of Cairo, with theorists such
as Al-Farabi and Avicenna, were inclined toward the Neo-Platonic
thought with theological-mystic tinges (like “enlightenment”). On
the contrary - and against many historians of Arab philosophy — Al-
Yabri teaches that the properly western Andaluz-Maghreb philosophy
(situated around the great cultural capitals of Cordoba in the north
and Fez in the south), represented an original rupture that would
have a powerful and lasting legacy. For motives as much political as
economic (and here Morocan philosophy utilizes the critical tools of
Modern European philosophy) the Cordoban caliphate, which as we
have seen was western, broke the theologizing perspective of eastern
thought, thereby inaugurating a clear distinction between natural
reason (which achieves knowledge through scientific observation,
developing physics, mechanics, and mathematics in a new way),
and enlightened reason attained through faith. This introduced a
distinction between reason and faith, in which these were neither
blurred together nor negated, but rather articulated in a novel way.
It was the philosopher Ibn-Abdun who brought the rationalist
orientation of the Baghdad school to Al-Andalus (contrary to the
position of Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, and Avicenna). A second generation,
at the beginning of the fifth century of the Hegira (the eleventh
Christian century) specialized in mathematics and medicine. The third
generation, with Avempace, integrated physics and metaphysics and
discarded the neo- Platonic Gnosticism of the eastern school, invoking
rational Aristotelian argumentation (purged of neo-Platonism).'
‘The Almohads had the following cultural motto: “Abandon the
argument from authority and return to the sources.” This was the
cultural movement led by Ibn Tumart, during times of great change
and thereby of great political liberty and critical, rationalist impetus.
[bn Tumart criticized analogy, seeing it as a method which moves from
the known to the unknown." If Al-Farabi and Avicenna had sought
(due to the multiplicity and the political problems of eastern thought)
to unite philosophy and theology,'® Averrées (in the Almohad West)
intended to separate them while showing their mutual autonomy and
complementarity. Such was the theme of his work Doctrina decisive y
fundamento de la Concordia entre la revelacién y la ciencia (Decisive
Treatise Determining the Connection Between the Law and Wisdom),
a veritable “discourse on method”: (revealed) truth cannot contradict
(rational) truth, and vice versa. In particular, his Destruccién de
la destruccién (The Incoherence of the Incoherence)shows that the
arguments with which Al-Ghazali sought to demonstrate the
irrationality of philosophy were not demonstrably true or apodictic.
Thus Averrées elaborated and expressed the so-called doctrine of
“double truth,” so wrongly interpreted in the Medieval Latin World."
At the same time, the Cordoban philosopher suggested a method
through which to interact with other cultures:
It is doubtless that we need to make use, to aid our research
(a rational study of existent beings), of the investigations car-
ried out by all those who preceded us [i.e. the Greeks] [...]
Be that as it is, and since in reality the ancient philosophers
already studied, and with greater care, the rules of reason
(logic, method), it would be useful for us to lay our hands on
the books of those philosophers, so that, if we find everything
they say therein to be reasonable, we accept it, but if there is
something unreasonable, it can serve us as a precaution and
warning."

For this reason, “to adopt the Averrdist spirit is to break with the
Gnostic, obscurantist, and eastern spirit of Avicennes.”* As we can
See, Arab philosophy practiced this method that we are describing. It
Temained faithful to its tradition but it subsumed the best elements of
the other culture (as determined according to its own criteria), which
Were in some aspects more highly developed (for example, in the
55
elaboration of logical science).
In the same way, Rigoberta Menchu searches for the cause for the
passivity and fatalism of related indigenous communities, and initiates
a community critique that will bring them to commit themselves to
the struggle against the mestizo government and military repression.
Thus, the critical intellectual should be someone located “between”
(in-betweeness'“*) the two cultures (their own culture and Modern
culture). This is really the issue of the “border” (the “frontier”) between
two cultures as a locus for “critical thought.” This theme is explored
at length by Walter Mignolo, in the case of the Mexican-American
“frontier” as a creative bicultural space.

5.3. Strategy of resistance: hermeneutic time

In order to resist it is necessary to mature. The affirmation of one’s
own values require time, study, reflection, a return to the texts or
symbols and constitutive myths of one's culture, before or at least at
the same time that one consults the domain of the texts of the modern
hegemonic culture.
Al-Yabri shows the error of “some Arab intellectuals, whose
relations with the European cultural legacy seems to be more narrow
than those that they maintain with the Arab-Islamic legacy, who pose
the problem of contemporary Arab thought in these terms: How can
this thought assimilate the experience of liberalism before or without
the Arab world going through the stage of liberalism?”'* Abdalah Laroui,
Zaki Nayib Mahmud, Mayid Fajri and many others pose the question
in this fashion. The real problem, however, is different:
How can Arab thought recuperate and assimilate the ration-
alist experience of its own cultural legacy and bring it to life
again, with a perspective similar to that of our ancestors: to
struggle against feudalism, against Gnosticism, against fatal-
ism, and to install the city of reason and justice, a free Arab
city, democratic and socialist?»
As one can observe, a project of this scope requires tenacity,
 time, intelligence, research, and solidarity. It requires the long-term
maturation of a new response in cultural resistance, not only to the
elites of other cultures, particularly those that are dominant, but
also against the Eurocentricism of elites in peripheral, colonial, and
fundamentalist cultures.
Rigoberta Mencht shows, for her part, how the community, upon
gaining critical consciousness, reinterpreted traditional Christianity
in order to justify the community's struggle of against the domination
of the militarized white elites in Guatemala. This represents a new
hermeneutics of the constitutive text of the cultural life of the
community (since the symbolic level is fundamental for Amerindians,
which integrates Mayan with Christian/colonial sources).

5.4. Intercultural dialogue between critics of their own culture

This intercultural dialogue is neither only nor principally a dialogue
between cultural apologists that attempt to demonstrate to others the
virtues and values of their own culture. It is, above all, a dialogue
between a culture’s critical innovators (intellectuals of the “border,”
between their culture and Modernity). It is not a dialogue among those
who merely defend their culture from its enemies, but rather among
those who recreate it, departing from the critical assumptions found
in their own cultural tradition and in that of globalizing Modernity.
Modernity can serve as a critical catalyst (if it is used by the expert
hand of critics of their own culture). But, additionally, this is not even
the dialogue between the critics of the metropolitan “core” and the
Critics of the cultural “periphery.” It is more than anything a dialogue
between the “critics of the periphery,” it must be an intercultural South-
South dialogue before can become a South-North dialogue.
This sort of dialogue is essential. As a Latin American philosopher,
I would like to begin a conversation with Al-Yabri beginning from the
following question: Why did Islamic philosophical thought fall into
such a profound crisis after the fourteenth century? This cannot be
explained merely by the slow and growing presence of the Ottoman
Empire. Why did this philosophy enter the blind alley of fundamentalist
thought? It is necessary to lend a hand through a broader world-
historical interpretation in order to understand that the Islamic
world, after having been the “key” to contact with the “ancient world”
(from Byzantium, and to a lesser degree Latin-Germanic Europe, to
Hindustan and China), would slowly but inevitably be left outside the
central zone of contact with other universal cultures by the constitution
of an ocean-based world-system under Spanish and Portugese
domination. The loss of “centrality” (and with it, “information”), the
relative impoverishment (even if only for the inflation of silver due to
the extraction of massive quantities from Latin America), as well as
other non-cultural and non-philosophical factors, plunged the Arab
world into “peripheral” poverty. This led to a political factionalism
and isolationism that “tribalized” it, disintegrating into destructive
separatisms the ancient regions once unified by law, religion, science,
commerce, and the Arab language. This philosophical decadence was
only a moment ina broader civilizational decadence, of the economic,
political and military crisis of a world transformed from “core” to
“periphery.” It is therefore necessary to link, for example, the history
of the Islamic world with the nascent “world system,” with Latin
America and with the growth of European Modernity, which through
1800 was, in cultural terms, as important as Hindu-Chinese culture.
In the nineteenth century, that is to say after the industrial revolution,
this would even allow the “colonization” of the Arab world. Cultural
“coloniality” is expressed philosophically as philosophical decadence.
Salazar Bondy posed a similar question in 1969: “Is it possible to think
philosophically and creatively from the position of colonial being?”™
In the case of Rigoberta Menchu, the most productive dialogue
was realized between the critics of different communities, and
between those of the indigenous communities and critical elements
of the mestizo world and of hegemonic Latin America. Mencht was
transformed into an interlocutor of many voices, of many claims, by
feminists, ecologists, antiracist movements, etc.
Intercultural dialogue brings about a transversal and mutual
cross-fertilization among the critical thinkers of the periphery and
those from “border” spaces, and the organization of networks to
discuss their own specific problems transforms this process of self-
affirmation into a weapon of liberation. We should inform ourselves
and learn from the failures, the achievements, and the still-theoretical
justification of the creative processes in the face of the globalization
of European/North American culture, whose pretense of universality
must be deconstructed from the optical multi-focality of each
culture.

5.5. Strategy for trans-modern liberation growth

A strategy presupposes a project. We have defined the “trans-
modern” project as a libration intention that synthesizes all that
we have discussed. In the first place, it suggests the affirmation, the
self-valorization of one's own negated or merely devalued cultural
moments which are found in the exteriority of Modernity, those still
remaining outside of the destructive consideration of that ostensibly
universal modern culture. Secondly, those traditional values ignored
by Modernity should be a point of departure for an internal critique,
from within the culture's own hermeneutical possibilities. Thirdly,
the critics, in order to be critics, should be those who, living in the
biculturality of the “borders,” can create critical thought. Fourthly,
this means a long period of resistance, of maturation, and of the
accumulation of forces. It is a period of the creative and accelerated
cultivation and development of one's own cultural tradition, which
is now on the path toward a trans-modern utopia. This represents a
Strategy for the growth and creativity ofa renovated culture, which is
not merely decolonized, but is moreover entirely new.
The dialogue, then, between the critical cultural innovators is
neither modern nor post-modern, but rather in a strict sense “trans-
modern,” because, as we have shown, the creative force does not come
from the interior of Modernity, but rather from its exteriority, or better
yet from its “borderlands.” This exteriority is not pure negativity. It
1S the positivity rooted in a tradition distinct from the Modern. For
€xample, for the Indigenous cultures of Latin America there exists
an affirmation of Nature that is completely distinct and much more

59
ecologically balanced, which today is more necessary than ever, given
that capitalist Modernity confronts Nature as something exploitable,
marketable, and destructible. The death of Nature is the collective
suicide of humanity, and yet this globalizing modern culture learns
nothing about Nature from other cultures, which are apparently more
“primitive” or “backwards” according to developmentalist parameters,
‘This ecological principle can also integrate the best of Modernity (and
it should not refuse all elements of Modernity from the perspective
of a pure, substantialist cultural identity), in order even to construct
scientific and technological development that emerges from the very
experience of Modernity.
The affirmation and development of the cultural alterity of
postcolonial communities (peoples), which subsumes within itself
the best elements of Modernity, should not develop a cultural style
that tends towards an undifferentiated or empty globalized unity,
but rather a trans-modern pluriversality (with many universalities:
European, Islamic,Vedic, Taoist, Buddhist, Latin American, Bantu,
etc.), one which is multicultural, and engaged in a critical intercultural
dialogue.

60
2. ANTI-CARTESIAN MEDITATIONS: On
the Origin of the Philosophical Anti-
Discourse of Modernity

This chapter is consciously and explicitly polemical.” It is polemical

toward the disparaging belief in the existence of a “South of Europe”
(and thereby Latin America), a belief that has been epistemically
constructed by the Enlightenment from the center and north of
Europe since the middle of the 18th century. The Enlightenment
constructed (in an unconsciously deployed making'*') three categories
that concealed European “exteriority”: Orientalism (described by
Edward Said), Eurocentric Occidentalism (fabricated by Hegel among
others), and the existence of a “South of Europe.” This “South” was
(in the past) the center of history around the Mediterranean (Greece,
Rome, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, not to mention the Arab
world of the Maghreb, already discredited two centuries prior), but
was already at that moment a cultural leftover, a cultural periphery,
because for the 18th-century Europe of the Industrial Revolution, the
entire Mediterranean was the “old world.” In de Pauw’s phrase: “Africa
begins at the Pyrenees,” and the Iberian Americas, evidently, were
situated as colonies of the already semi-peripheral Spain and Portugal.
With that, Latin America simply “disappeared from the map and from
history” until today, the beginning of the 21st century. The goal of
this work - which will certainly be criticized as “pretentious” - is to
attempt to begin reinstating these Americas within global geopolitics
and the history of philosophy.

1. Was René Descartes the first modern philosopher?

We will begin with an enquiry into one European history of
Philosophy of the last two centuries. Such histories indicate not only
the time of events but equally their geopolitical position. Modernity

61
originates - according to the common interpretation that we will
attempt to refute - in a “place” and in a “time.” The geopolitical
“displacement” of this “place” and this “time” will mean equally a
“philosophic,” thematic, and paradigmatic displacement.

a. Where and when has the origin of Modernity been situated?

Stephen Toulmin writes:
Some people date the origin of modernity to the year 1436'*,
with Gutenberg’s adoption of moveable type; some to A.D.
1520, and Luther's rebellion against Church authority; others
to 1648, and the end of the Thirty Years’ War; others to the
American or French Revolution of 1776 or 1789; while mod-
ern times start for a few only in 1895 [...]'* Modern science
and technology can thus be seen as the source either of bless-
ings, or of problems, or both. In either case, their intellectual
origin makes the 1630s the most plausible starting date for
Modernity.:**

In general, and even for J. Habermas,'" the origin of Modernity

consists of a “movement” from South to North, and from the East
of Europe to the West between the 15 and 17" centuries, which is
approximately the following: a) from the Italian Renaissance of the
Cuattrocento (not considered by ‘Toulmin), b) the Lutheran reform
in Germany, and c) the scientific Revolution of the 17" century,
culminating in d) the bourgeois political Revolution in England,
North America, and France. Note the curve of the process: from Italy,
to Germany, to France, and toward England and the United States.
Well, we need to refute this “enlightened” historical construction of
the process at the origin of Modernity, since it represents an “intra”
European, Eurocentric, self-centered, and ideological view, from the
perspective of the centrality of Northern Europe that has prevailed
since the 18" century, dominating even up to our own days.
Glimpsing the origin of Modernity through “new eyes” requires
that we situate ourselves outside Germano-Latin Europe and see

62
 it as outside observers (“engaged,” clearly, but not the “zero point”
of observation). So-called medieval or feudal Europe of the Dark
Ages is nothing more than a Eurocentric mirage that was not self-
discovered since the 7" century to be a peripheral, secondary, and
jsolated civilization, “cloistered” and “besieged” by the Muslim world,
which had been more developed and connected with the history of
Africa and Asia up to 1492. Europe had to interact with the great
cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, which since 1453 - the seizure
of Constantinople - were definitively Ottoman. Europe was “shut in”
since the 7" century, which prevented - -despite the efforts of the
Crusades - any contact with the most weighty elements of the culture,
technology, and economics of the “Old World” (what we have deemed
the “3" Stage of the inter-regional, Asiatic-Afro-Mediterranean
system”'").
We have studied this geographic-ideological relationship in various
works.'* To sum up the state of the question: Europe was never the
center of world history until the end of the 18" century (let’s say until
1800, only two centuries ago). It comes to be the center as an effect of
the Industrial Revolution. But thanks to a mirage - as we have said - the
entirety of prior world history appears dazzled by Eurocentrism (Max
Weber's position) as though it had Europe at its heart. This distorts the
phenomenon of the history of Modernity. Let’s look once more at the
case of Hegel.
In all of his University Lectures, Hegel espouses his subjects against
the background and horizon of a certain specific categorization of
world history. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History,'** he divides
history into four moments: “the Oriental world?’ “the Greek world,”
“the Roman world” and the “Germanic world” Here we can see the
- completely Eurocentric - schematic significance of this ideological
construction; and what’s more: it is Germano-centric from the North
of Europe (since the negation of the South of Europe had already
Occurred). On the other hand, the “Germanic world” (he doesn’t say
‘European”) is itself divided into three moments: “the Germanic-
Christian world” (ruling out the “Latin”), “the Middle Age” (without
being situated geopolitically in world history), and “the modern age.”
63
And the latter, in turn, has three moments: “the Reformation” (a
Germanic phenomenon), “the constitutional reform” of the modern
state, and “the Enlightenment and Revolution.”
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,” again, Hegel divides
history into three moments: a) “Natural religion” (comprising
“primitive,” Chinese, Vedantic, Buddhist, Persian, and Syrian
religions); b) “the religion of spiritual individuality” (Jewish, Greek,
Roman), and, as its culmination, c.) “absolute religion,” (Christianity),
The Orient is always propaedeutic, infantile, providing the “first steps”
The “Germanic world” (Northern Europe) is the end of history.
In his Lectures on Aesthetics,’~ in another way, Hegel considers
history to be the “development of the ideal of particular forms of artistic
beauty” in three moments: a) “symbolic art forms” (Zoroastrianism,
Brahmanism, Egyptian, Hindu, Mahomedan, and Mystic Christian
art); b) “classical art forms” (Greek and Roman); and c) “the Romantic
art form.’ The latter is divided in three: a) that of primitive Christianity;
b) the caballeresco of the Middle Ages; and c) that of the “formal
autonomy of individual particularities” (which, as with the previous
cases, deals with Modernity).
But nothing is better for dealing with our subject than the
Lectures on the History of Philosophy.'* These begin with a) “Oriental
philosophy” (according to the recently-constructed “Orientalism”),
including Chinese and Hindu philosophy (Vedantic in Sankhara,
and Buddhist in Gautama, among others). Hegel then passes to b)
“Greek philosophy” (without dealing with Roman philosophy). This is
followed by c) the “philosophy of the Middle Ages” (in two moments:
a) “Arab philosophy,” which includes Jews, and b) “Scholastic
philosophy” which culminates with the Renaissance and the Lutheran
Reformation’ *). Finally, he arrives at c) “Modern philosophy” (Neuere
Philosophie). Here, we should pause. Hegel suspects some questions
but doesn’t know how to sufficiently rationalize them. He writes of
Modernity:
The human being acquires confidence in himself (Zutrauen zu
sich selbst) |...) With the invention of gunpowder" individual

od
 enmity disappears in warfare [...] Man'® discovers America,
its treasures and its people, he discovers nature, he discovers
himself (sich selbst).'°

Having said this with regard to geopolitical conditions outside

Europe, Hegel closes himself into a totally Euro-centered reflection.
He thus attempts, in the first pages on Modern Philosophy, to explain
the new situation of the philosopher toward socio-historic reality. His
negative point of departure is the Middle Ages (for me, the “Third
Stage” of the inter-regional system”). “During the 16" and 17" centuries
is when true philosophy reappears.” In the first place, for Hegel this
new philosophy unfolds: a) There is, on the one hand, a realism of
the experience, which opposes “knowledge and the object over which
it falls, ~ having a source a,) as observation of physical nature, and
another, a,) as political analysis of the “spiritual world of States.”'” On
the other hand, there is b), an idealist direction, in which “everything
resides in thought and Spirit itself is the entire content.”
In the second place, Hegel details the central problems of the new
philosophy (God and his deduction from pure spirit; the conception
of good and evil; the question of freedom and necessity).
In the third place, he occupies himself with two historical phases.
“a) First, the reconciliation is announced of those contradictions under
the form of a few attempts [...] still insufficiently clear and precise;
here we have Bacon [born in London in 1561'] and Jacob Boehme?'®
Both are born in the second half of the 16" century. “b) Metaphysical
reconciliation. Here the authentic philosophy of this age commences:
it begins with Descartes.” Let’s think about what we have shown thus
far,
In the first place, evidently, Hegel introduces Jacob Boehme (born
in Alt -Seidenberg in 1575) who is a German, the mystical and popular
thinker of the “Germanic interiority, representing an amusing and
Nationalist folkloric note; but nothing more. In the second place,
although he attempts to speak of “historic-external factors of the life
circumstances of philosophers,’ he doesn’t go beyond indicating
Sociological aspects that make the modern philosopher not a monk

65
but a common man of the street, one who “is not isolated from the regy
of society.” In no way does he imagine - in his Northern-European,
ignorance - the global geopolitical cataclysm that had occurred sincg
the end of the 15" century in all cultures on Earth (in the Far East,
Southeast Asia, India, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Indigenous North|
America, from the European invasion of the “fourth continent”).
It is within this provincial, Eurocentric view that Descartes appearg
in the historical discourse of Hegel as he who “initiates the authenti¢
philosophy of the modern epoch” (Cartesius fingt eigentlich dia
Philosophie der neueren Zeit an). We shall look into the question
more closely.

b. Descartes and the Jesuits

René Descartes was born in France, in La Haye en Touraine in

1596, and died in 1650. That is to say, he lived during the beginnin,
of the 17" century. An orphan shortly after birth, he was educated
by his grandmother. In 1606, he entered Jesuit school in La Fléche,
and it was there that - until 1615 - he would receive his only formal
education in philosophy.’ In other words, Descartes leaves home
at ten years old, and the Jesuit priest Chastellier was like a second
father to him. The first philosophical work that he would study was
the Disputationes Metaphysicae by Franciso Suarez, published in 1597,
a year after Descartes’ birth.
It is known that the Spanish Basque Ignacio de Loyola - who is
born almost at the same time as Modernity, in 1491, a year prior to
Columbus's “discovery of the western Atlantic’; and dies in 1556, forty
years before Descartes’ birth - a philosophy student in Paris, founded
schools to provide a philosophical education for clerics and young
nobles or those from the well-to-do bourgeois classes. In 1603, the
Jesuits were called by King Enrique - after having been expelled from
France in 1591 - to - found the school of La Fléche in 1604, which
was housed in an enormous palace on four square hectares donated
to the priests by the King himself. The education provided, according
to the Council of Trent - which “modernized,” by rationalizing, all

66
aspects of the Catholic Church - was completely “modern” in its
ratio studiorum. Each Jesuit constituted a singular, independent, and
modern subjectivity, performing daily an individual “examination
of conscience,” without communal choral hymns or prayers as was
the case with medieval Benedictine monks.'* Put differently, the
young Descartes needed to withdraw into silence three times a day,'”
to reflect on his own subjectivity and “examine” with extreme self-
consciousness and clarity the intention and content of every action,
the actions carried out hour-by-hour, judging these actions according
to the criterion that “man is raised to praise, revere, and serve God.”
These examinations were a remembrance of St. Augustine of Hippo’s
exercitatio animi. It was a daily practice of the ego cogito: “I have self-
consciousness of having done this and that”; all of which dominated
the subjectivity in a disciplined manner (even prior to the Calvinism
that M. Weber proposes as the capitalist ethic). These studies were
extremely methodical:
They shall not study from textbooks or imperfectly the princi-
pal faculties, first they should go into their foundations, giving
time and competent study [...] The faculties that all should
ordinarily learn are: letters of humanities, logic, natural phi-
losophy, and provided the necessary supplies [aparejo], some
mathematics and moral, metaphysics, and scholastic theology
[...] Without such study there should be an hour every day to
debate whatever faculty is being studied [...] There should be
public debates every Sunday after dinner.”
Hence the Young Descartes, from 1606 to 1611, would have engaged
in the lectio, repetitiones, sabbatinae disputationes, and at the end of
the month, the menstruae disputations.'” In those exercises, students
read Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Sturm, and texts by the “Brothers
of the common life” although the most frequent was the Spanish
Jesuit F. Sudrez (who was alive during the time that Descartes studied
Philosophy and would only die in 1617, when Descartes left the school).
He had therefore begun his properly philosophical education with the
Logic (in approximately 1610, after his classical studies in Latin). He
67
studied it in the consecrated text used by all European schools of the
Company, of which there were innumerable editions all over the old
continent, from Italy and Spain to Holland and Germany, and also at
that time in France. This was the Logica menicana sive Commentarii
in universam Aristotelis Logicam (Koln, 1606, the year in which René
entered school at La Fleche) by the Mexican philosopher Antonio
Rubio (1548-1615). Who would have thought that Descartes studied
the hard part of philosophy - the Logic, the Dialectic - in a book by a
Mexican philosopher! ‘lhis constitutes part of our argument. In 1612,
he was introduced to mathematics and astronomy, as part of the
curriculum we have seen. He would be occupied with metaphysics
(Suarez’s Disputationes Metaphysicae is the first work that Descartes’
read according to his own contession, and as we have seen above), and
the ethics during the years 1613 and 1614.
As we will see later, this work by Suarez - anticipated by suggestions
by Pedro de Fonseca in Coimbra, as we will explain later - is not at
this point a commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, but rather the first
systematic work on the subject (which would anticipate all ontologies
of the 17" and 18" centuries, like those of Baumgarten, Leibniz, or
Wolff, and those to which they reterred explicitly).
At all moments of the “Cartesian argument,” one can observe the
influence of his studies with the Jesuits. From the radical reflection
of consciousness on itself in the ego cogito, to the “salvaging” of the
empirical world through recourse to the Infinite (a question dealt
under this name in Suarez’s Disputatio 28), demonstrating its existence
in an Anselmian manner (a question dealt with in Disputatio 29),
in order to on this basis reconstruct a mathematically-known real
world. This method - which took mathematics as its model - was one
of the subjects that were passionately debated in the halls of the Jesuit
schools. Such schools, as is evident, come from Southern Europe,
from Spain, from the 16" century, from the Mediterranean as it
dumps into the Adantic. Shouldn't the 16" century, then, have some
philosophical interest? [s Descartes not the fruit of a prior generation
that prepared the path? Were there not modern Iberian-American
philosophers before Descartes, who opened up the problematic of
s
modern philosophy?

c. Descartes and the Augustinianism of the ego cogito. The

modern “new paradigm”
The subject of the ego cogito' has its Western and Mediterranean
antecedents, although this does not undermine in any way its novelty.
The references to Augustine of Hippo are undeniable, although
Descartes occasionally tried to seem to not have been inspired by the
great Roman rhetorician from Northern Africa. And nor did he admit
the influence of Francisco Sanchez, or anyone else. In effect, during
his time Augustine argued against the skepticism of the academics;
Descartes against the skepticism of the libertines. To do so, he referred
to the indubitable character of the ego cogito.
The subject always returns to self-consciousness, a philosophical
question that also referred to a classic Aristotelian text from the
Nicomachean Ethics, which would inspire Augustine, and later, among
others, R. Descartes:
There exists a faculty by which we feel our acts [...]. He who
sees feels (aisthanetai)'* that he sees, he who hears [feels]
that he hears, he who walks [feels] that he walks, and so in
other things we feel (aisthanémenon) what we bring about.
Because of this we can feel (aisthanémeth’) what we feel (aist-
hanoémetha) and know (noédmen) what we know. But we feel
and we think because we are, because to be (einai) is to feel
and to think.'”*

We are dealing, then, with the phenomenon of “self-consciousness,”

that should be defined according to Antonio Damasio as a “feeling”
neurologically linked to speech centers."
For his part, and in an analogous way, Augustine had written in the
De Trinitate:
Yet who ever doubts that he himself lives, and remembers,
and understands, and wills, and thinks, and knows, and jud-
es? Seeing that even if he doubts, he lives...

69
 Concerning these truths [ do not fear any argument from the
academics who say:What if vou are mistaken? For if Lam mistaken,I
am,
This is why Mersenne, having scarcely read Descartes’ Discourse,
warned his friend of the similarity of his text with that of Augustine in
De civitate Dei, book XI, chapter 26. Descartes responds that it seems
to him that Augustine “has taken the text in a way other than the one
I give it?™ Arnauld reacts in the same way, referring to the previously
mentioned text De Trinitate. Descartes would later, in his responses
to the objections raised against the Meditations. suggest still another
text.- We could say, then, that Descartes had certainly read and
been inspired by Augustine, which doesn’t take away from the new
and profound meaning of his argument - one which not only refutes
the skeptic, but bases subjectivity on itself, an intention completely
absent in Augustine, who had to base it on God, and moreover this
was never a solipsistic subjectivity in the case of the Carthaginian.
This new foundation - sensed in the ontological experience of 1619
alongside the Rhine - still needed register itself within the Augustinian
tradition:
Augustine's method is of the same nature as Descartes’ [...]
Because [Descartes], as a mathematician, decides to set out
from thought, [and] will no longer be able, as a metaphysi-
cian, [to?] set out from a thought other than his own. Because
he has decided to go from thought to the thing he will no
longer be able to define his thought other than by the content
that said thought exhibits to the intuition that learns it [...]
A metaphysic of the distinction between body and soul had
in Augustine a powerful support [...as with] the proof of the
existence of God [...that] San Anselmo had deemed neces-
sary to modify and simplify |...being] the only escape offered
to Descartes. >

So Descartes took mathematics - on Francisco Sudrez’s third level

of abstraction“ - as the prototypical mode for the use of reason. He
discovered thus a new philosophical paradigm, which while known

0
among earlier philosophy, had never been used in such an ontologically
reductive way. The metaphysic of the individual, modern ego - the
aradigm of solipsistic consciousness (as K.-O. Apel would say) - began
its long history.

d. Ratio mathematica, epistemic rationalism, and subjectivity as

foundation for the political domination of colonial, colored,
female bodies
Anthropologically - which is to say ethically and politically -
Descartes faced an aporia that he would never be able to resolve. On the
one hand, he needed the ego of the ego cogito to be a soul independent
of all materiality, all extension. The soul was, for Descartes, a res, but a
“thing” which was spiritual, immortal, a substance separate from the
body:
[...] I have thereby come to know that I was a substance (sub-
stance) whose essence in its totality or nature consisted only
in thinking, and that, to be, needed no place, nor did it de-
pend on any material thing. Such that this I (moi), that is, my
soul (ame), as a result of which | am what I am, was totally
distinct from the body, and was even easier to know than that
body, and that even if that body didn’t exist my soul would not
cease to be everything that it is."
After the appearance in 1637 of the Discourse, and later of the
Meditations, Arnauld felt that Descartes “attempted to prove too
much,” since by categorically affirming the independent substantiality
of the “soul” (res cogitans), it was then impossible for him to unite
that soul with an equally substantial body (res extensa). Regius, more
clearly, showed that the only solution that remained for him was the
accidental unity (per accidens) of soul and body.
Descartes therefore needed to assert the substantiality of the
Soul in order to have all of the sufficient guarantees for skeptics of
the possibility of a mathesis universale; of a certainty without the
Possibility of doubt. But in order to be able to include the problem

71
of feelings, imagination, and passions, he needed to define how the
body (a quasi-perfect machine, consisting only of quantity) could
come to be present in the soul. Moreover, after the existence of God
was ensured - through a purely a priori Anselmian proof - he then
needed to be able as well to access a real, physical, “external world?
‘The body was the necessary mediation. Hence Descartes fell into g
circle: to open himself up to an external world he needed to be able
to assume the union of body and soul; but the union of body and soul
was based on the assumption of an external world opened up to ug
by our feelings, imagination, and passions, that have been put inta
question by the cogito. Gilson writes:
From the moment at which Descartes decides to unify the
soul and the body, it becomes difficult for him [...] to distin-
guish them. Not being able to think them except as two, he
must nevertheless feel them as one.'”

Thinking the body asa machine without quality - purely quantitatives

an object of mathematics, mechanics - complicates Descartes’
hypothesis with regard to two objections. The first: how can a physical
machine communicate with an immaterial substance? The hypothesis
of the “animal spirits” (transported in the blood) that unite with the
body in the “pineal gland” was not convincing. The second: how can
the passions move or withhold the cognitive activity of the soul? As
hard as Descartes tries he can never show that the passions, linked
to the body, connect to the soul and the cognitive activity that moves
it. Moreover, since the body is a purely quantitative machine, and the
passions would necessitate a qualitative organism, they themselves
remain totally ambiguous.
That pure machine would not show skin color or race (it is clear
that Descartes thinks only from the basis of the white race), and nor
obviously its sex (he equally thinks only on the basis of the male
sex), and it is that of a European (he doesn’t sketch nor does he refer
to a colonial body, an Indian, an African slave, or an Asian). The
quantitative indeterminacy of any quality will also be the beginning
of all illusory abstractions about the “zero point” of modern
 pilosophical subjectivity and the constitution of the body as a
yantifiable commodity with a price (as is the case in the system of
slavery or the capitalist wage).

2. The crisis of the “old paradigm” and the first modern

philosophers. The ego conquiro: Ginés de Sepulveda
But prior to Descartes the entire 16" century had passed, a period
which modern, central-European and North American philosophy
attempts to ignore up to the present. In effect, the most direct way of
providing a basis for the praxis of trans-oceanic colonial domination
- a coloniality which is simultaneously the very origin of Modernity,
and asa result a world-historical novelty - is to show that the dominant
culture grants the benefits of civilization to the most backward (a
“stupidity” that Ginés will call turditatem in Latin and I. Kant will
deem unmiindigkeit®). This argument, which lies beneath all modern
philosophy (from the 16" to the 21“ century) is put forward masterfully
and with great impact for the first time by Ginés de Sepulveda (+1573),
a student of the Renaissance philosopher P. Pomponazzi (1462-1524),
in the Valladolid debate beginning in 1550, promoted by Carlos V
(1500-1558) in the manner of the Islamic Caliphates to “reassure his
conscience.” This wasan “Atlantic” dispute - no longer “Mediterranean,”
between Christians and “Saracens” - which sought to understand the
ontological status of the “Indians.” These were “barbarians” different
from those of Greece, China, or the Muslim world, that Montaigne
- with a profoundly critical implications - defined as cannibals (or
indigenous Caribes™), that is, those “we can call barbarians with
respect to our rules of reason.” Ginés writes:
It will always be just and in conformity with natural law that
such [barbaric] peoples be subjected to the empire of princes
and nations that are more cultured and humane, so that by
their virtues and the prudence of their laws, they abandon
barbarism and are subdued by a more humane life and the
cult of virtue."
 This is a reworking of Aristotle, the Greek philosopher of slavery iy
the eastern Mediterranean, but one now situated on the horizon of the
Atlantic Ocean, which is to say, one with global significance:
And if they reject such an empire, it can be imposed on them
by way of arms, and such a war would be just according to the
declarations of natural law [...] In sum: it is just, convenient,
and in conformity with natural law that those honorable, in-
telligent, virtuous, and human men dominate all those who
lack these qualities.’

This tautological argument - which is such because it sets out from

the superiority of its own culture simply because it is its own - will be
imposed throughout all of Modernity. The content of other cultures,
for being different from one’s own culture, is declared non-human,
as when Aristotle declared Asians and Europeans to be barbarians,
because the only “humans” were “those residents who lived in the
[Hellenic] cities.”
The most serious part of this philosophical argument is that just war
against the indigenous peoples is justified for the very fact of having
impeded the “conquest,” which to the eyes of Ginés is the necessary
“violence” that needed to be exercised in order to civilize the barbaric,
because if they were civilized there would no longer be any cause for
just war:
When the pagans are no more than pagans [...] there is no
just cause to punish them, nor to attack them with arms: such
that, if some cultured, civilized, and humane people are found
in the New World, that do not adore idols, but instead the true
God [...] war would be unlawful.’

The cause of just war was not being pagans, but being uncivilized.
So the cultures of the Aztec Empire, of the Mayans, or of the Incas!
were not an indication for Ginés of high civilization. And, on the
other hand, the ability to find another people who might adore “the
true God” (who was European, Christian) was an absurd condition.
For that reason, the war of conquest against “backward” peoples was

74
 tautologically justified, but always through an argument that included
the “developmentalist fallacy”:
But look how much they fool themselves and how much I dis-
agree with such an opinion, seeing on the contrary in these
of the coarse and innate ser-
[Aztec or Inca] institutions proof
vitude of these men [...] They have [this is true] a republican
institutional structure, but no one possesses anything as their
own," not a house, not a field at their disposal to leave in
their will to their heirs [...] subjects of the will and caprice [of
their bosses] rather than their own liberty [...]. All this [...]
is an absolutely clear indication of the submissive and slavish
mindset of these barbarians.'”
And he concludes cynically by showing that the Europeans educate
the indigenous peoples in “the virtue, the humanity, and the true
religion [that] are more valuable than the gold and silver” that the
Europeans brutally extract from the American mines.
Once the justice of European expansion is proven to be a civilizing
task, emancipating those living in barbarity, the rest - armed conquest,
the plunder of the gold and silver mentioned, the abstract declaration of
Indians but not their cultures as being “human, ’ a political structure in
which power resides in colonial institutions, the dogmatic imposition
ofa foreign religion, etc. - is justified.Earlier, Juan Mayor (1469-1550),
a professor in Paris, a Scottish Scotist, had written in his Comentario
a las Sentencias in reference to the American Indians: “those people
live bestially (bestialiter) [...] and so those who first conquer them will
tule justly over them, because they are slaves by nature (quia natura
sunt servi)?"
‘The entire argument is based politically - in the final instance - on
the right that the King of Spain had to such colonial domination. In
book I, title 1, law 1 of the Recopilacion de las Leyes de los Reynos de
las Indias (1681) we read: “God our Master in his infinite mercy and
g00dness has given us without us deserving it such a large part in the
Dominion of this world |...]? This concession granted by the papal
bull Inter caetera of 1493 and signed by the Pope served asa political
(and religious) justification, but not a philosophical one. As a result,
the argument offered by Ginés was necessary and complementary.
‘There is a final argument that I would like to recall, and it is the
following: “The second cause is to exile unspeakable stupidities [...]
and to save from great injury the many innocent mortals that these
barbarians sacrificed every year." That is to say, war was justified to
rescue the human victims offered up to the gods, as in Mexico. We
will see later the surprising response from Bartolomé de las Casas.

3. The first early modern academic-metaphysical

philosopher: Francisco Suarez
‘The impact of the modern invasion of the Americas, of the
European expansion to the western Atlantic, produced a crisis
in the old philosophical paradigm, but without yet formulating
another, entirely new one - as Descartes, setting out from 16"-century
developments, would attempt to do. It bears mentioning that 16"
century philosophical production in Spain and Portugal was linked
on a daily basis to Atlantic events, with the opening of Europe to the
world. The Iberian Peninsula was the European territory that most
lived the effervescence of the unexpected discoveries. News arrived
constantly trom the overseas provinces, from Spanish America and
the Philippines to Spain; from Brazil, Africa, and Asia to Portugal.
Philosophy professors in universities in Salamanca, Valladolid,
Coimbra, or Braga - which, since 1581, functioned asa single university
system due to the unity of Spain and Portugal - had students who
arrived from or set out for those territories, and the subjects related to
those worlds were worrying and well-known to them. No European
university north of the Pyrenees had such a global experience. So-
called “Second Scholasticism” was not a simple repetition of what had
already been said in the Latin Middle Ages. The irruption into the
universities of a completely modern religious order - but not simply
through being influenced by Modernity, but instead through being
one of the intrinsic causes of that very Modernity - the Jesuits drove
the first steps of a modern philosophy in Europe.

6
 The philosophical thought of the new modern order that was
the Jesuits, founded in 1536, is of interest to any history of Latin
American philosophy, since they arrived in Brazil in 1549 and in
Peru in 1566, when the conquest and colonial institutional order had
been definitively established in the Indies. They no longer called the
established order into question, turning their attention instead to the
two “pure” races on the continent: the Creoles (children of the Spanish
born in the Americas) and the indigenous Amerindian population.
Race, as Anibal Quijano has shown, was the habitual mode of social
classification in early Modernity. Mestizos and Africans did not have
the same dignity. As a result, in Jesuit schools and haciendas there
were African slaves who worked so that the benefits could then be
invested in missions for Indians.
For its part, on the Iberian Peninsula there was a simultaneous
development, because in reality colonial Ibero-America and
metropolitan Spain and Portugal constituted a philosophical world,
continually and mutually influencing one another. We will see some
of those great masters of philosophy of the first early Modernity, who
will then open the way to the second early Modernity (that of the
Amsterdam of Descartes and Spinoza, the latter being a Hispanic or
Sephardic Jew even by philosophical training).
In this, we cannot leave out Pedro de Fonseca (1528-1597), as one
of the creators in Portugal of so-called Baroque Scholasticism (1550-
1660). Between 1548 and 1551 he studied in Coimbra, where he began
to teach from 1552. His most famous work is the Commentaries on the
Metaphysics of Aristotle (1577),°* and his writings were published, in
Many editions (up to 36 times in the case of his commentary on the
Metaphysics), in Lyon, Coimbra, Lisbon, Colonia, Venice, Mayence,
and Strasbourg.
Although not Fonseca’s personal work, he educated the team of
Jesuits - among them Marcos Jorge, Cipriano Soares, Pedro Gomes,
Manuel de Gois, and others - who proposed to completely modify
Philosophical exposition, to make it more pedagogical, profound, and
Modern, incorporating recent discoveries, critiquing old methods,
and innoy ating in all subjects. The course went into publication
in 1592, in eight volumes that concluded in 1606, under the title
Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis, a fundamental text for students
and professors of philosophy alike across all of Europe (Descartes and
Leibniz, for example, praised its soundness).
Descartes proposes in his famous work a reflection on method. Thig
was the preterred subject of 16"-century Coimbrian philosophers,»
inspired by the problematic opened up by, among others, R. Agricola
(1442-1485), who would influence Pedro Ramo, in his treatises in
Dialectics, which was where method was studied. Luis Vives (1492-
1540) would equally be influential on the question of method, and
Fonseca himself, in his famous work Dialectical Institutions (1564),
identified “method” as “the art of reasoning about whatever probable
question” (I, 2). After innovative clarifications, Fonseca indicates
that “methodological order has three objectives: to solve problems,
to reveal the unknown, and the clarity the confusing,” using
mathematical method as his example, which leads to a sui generis
“topical-metaphysical essentialism? which in sime ways anticipates
Cartesian method.
For his part, Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) - from the same order
and with the same renovating impulse - represented the culmination
of the work of his predecessors. He was professor in Salamanca
trom 1570 and also in Coimbra and Rome, and his Disputationes
Metaphysicae (1597) can be considered the first modern ontology. He
abandoned the mode of exposition of the Commentaries on Aristotle,
and for the first time set forth a systematic book that would mark all
later ontologies (we have already mentioned Baumgarten, Wolff - and
through his intermediary Kant - Leibniz; but we could add moreover
all those from A. Schopenhauer to M. Heidegger and X. Zubiri). He
had an exemplary independence of spirit, using great philosophical
masters but never confining himself to any one of them. After Aristotle
and St. Thomas Aquinas, it was Duns Scotus who most inspired him.
Suarez’s work is of a systematic order. In the first 21 Disputas, he deals
with ontology in general, and from the 28" on, as we have seen, he
enters into the question of the “Infinite Being” and the “finite being.”
the Disputationes Metaphysicae* appeared in 19 editions from 1597
"Ss
to 1751, eight of these in Germany, where the work replaced for a
century and a half the manuals of Melanchthon.
For his originality and possible influence on Descartes, we
should also mention Francisco Sanchez (1551-1623), a Portuguese
thinker who penned an innovative work entitled Quod nihil scitur
(That Nothing is Known) - which appeared in Lyon in 1581 and was
republished in Frankfurt in 1628 - from which it is possible that
Descartes took some ideas for his crowning work. In Sanchez’s work,
the proposal was to arrive at a fundamental certainty by way of doubt.
Fundamental science is that which can prove that nihil scimus (we
know nothing): “Quod magis cogito, magis dubito” (the more I think,
the more | doubt). The later development of such a science should
be, firstly, Methodus sciende (the method of knowing); then, Examen
rerum (the observation of things); and thirdly, De essentia rerum
(the essence of things). As a result, although “scientia est rei perfecta
cognitio” (science is perfect knowledge of things), in reality this is
never achieved.
Similarly, Gomez Pereira - a Sephardic Jewish convert born in
Medina del Campo, and later a famous doctor and philosopher who
studied in Salamanca - wrote an autobiographical scientific treatise
(like the Discourse on Method) under the strange title Antoniana
Margarita, opus nempe physicis, medicis ac theologis.... There, after he
puts in doubt all certainties like the nominalists, we read that: “Nosco
me aliquid noscere, et quidquid noscit est, ergo ego sum” (I know
that I know something, and he who is capable of knowing something,
therefore that is me).°” In the philosophical environment of the 16"
century a certain skepticism toward the old would open the doors to
the new philosophical paradigm of 17"-century Modernity.
‘The influence of these authors from the South in Central Europe
and the Low Countries was decisive at the beginning of the 17"
Century: they ruptured the structure of the old (Arab-Latin) paradigm
(of the Middle Ages).

79
4. The first philosophical anti-discourse of early
Modernity. The critique of the Europe of the World-
Empire: Bartolomé de las Casas (1514-1566)
Although he came prior to the other thinkers explained above, we
have left the philosophical position of Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-
1566) for last in order to show with greater clarity the difference
between his and other positions. Bartolomé represents the first head-
on critic of Modernity, two decades after its birth. But his originality
is not to be located in Logic or Metaphyisics, but rather in Ethics, in
Politics, and in History. It all begins on a Sunday in November 1511,
when Anton de Montesinos and Pedro de Cordoba launched in the
city of Santo Domingo the first critique of the colonialism inaugurated
by Modernity. On the basis of Semitic texts (from Isaiah and John 1,
23) they exclaimed: “Ego vox clamantis in deserto |...] 1am a voice [...«
| in the desert of this island [...] you are all amid mortal sin, and in it
you live and die, for the cruelty and tyranny that you use toward these
innocent victims.” This is an accusative ego clamo, which criticizes
the new established order; an J criticize in the presence of the ege
conquiro that inaugurated Modernity:
Are they {the Indians] not men? Do they not have rational
souls? Are you not obligated to love them as you love your-
selves? [...] How can you be in such a deep dream and so
lethargically asleep?*''

The entirety of Modernity, during five centuries, would remain in

this state of “lethargy” of ethical-political consciousness, as if “asleep?
without “feeling” toward the pain of the peripheral world of the
South.
Only three years afterward, and not unrelated to this critical
irruption in Santo Domingo, but now in 1514 in Cuba, in the hamlet
of Sancti Spiritus, and three years before M. Luther put forward his
theses in Erfurt and Machiavelli published his I] Principe, Bartolomé
de las Casas clearly grasped the meaning of this critique. When Europe
still had not awoken from the shock provoked by the discovery (for

80
Europe) of an entire New World, Bartolomé had already begun his
critique of the negative effects of this modern process of civilization.
In a strictly philosophical and argumentative manner, Bartolomé
refutes, a) the claim of the superiority of Western culture, from
which the barbarism of indigenous cultures was deduced; b) with
an exceedingly creative philosophical position he defines the clear
difference between, b,) granting the Other (the Indian) the universal
claim of his truth, b,) without ceasing to honestly affirm the very
ossibility of a universal validity claim in his proposal in favor of the
gospel; and finally, c) he demonstrates the falseness of the last possible
cause justifying the violence of the conquest, that of saving the victims
of human sacrifice, as being against natural law and unjust from all
points of view. He proves all this argumentatively in his voluminous
works written amid continuous political struggles, on the basis of a
valiant praxis and confronting failures that do not bend his will to
serve those recently-discovered and unjustly-treated inhabitants of
the New World: the Other of this nascent Modernity.
The life of de las Casas can be divided into stages that allow us to
discover his theoretical-philosophical development: from his arrival
in the Caribbean to the day of his rupture with a life of complicity
with the conquistadors (1502-1514). He was a young soldier under
Velasquez in Cuba, and later a Catholic priest (ordained in Rome in
1510) on an encomienda in Sancti Spiritus, until April of 1514, when he
read the text of Ben Sira 34, 20-22, ina liturgical celebration requested
by governor Velasquez: “To offer in sacrifice that which is stolen from
the poor is to kill the child in the presence of the father. Bread is the
life of the poor, and whosoever takes it away commits murder. To take
away the food of one’s fellow man is to kill them; to deprive them ofa
the salary owed is to spill their blood” And in an autobiographical
text, Bartolomé wrote:
He began to consider the misery and servitude that those
people [the Indians] suffer [...] Applying the one [the Semitic
text] to the other [the reality of the indigenous Caribes] he
determined within himself, convinced of the truth, that all
 that in these Indies was committed toward the Indians was
unjust and tyrannical.”

And that early philosopher still refers:

In confirmation of which everything he read he found favo-
rable and he was accustomed to say and affirm, that, from the
first moment that he began to reject the darkness of that igno-
rance, he never read in a Latin volume any reason or authority
to prove and corroborate the justice of those Indian peoples,
and for the condemnation of the injustices done to them, and
evils and damages."
From 1514 to 1523 were years in which Bartolomé traveled to Spain,
receiving counsel from Cisneros (regent of the Kingdom), and from
the King, in preparation for a peaceful community of Spanish farmers
who would need to share their lives with the Indians in Cumana (the
first project for peaceful colonization), returning to Santo Domingo
after the failure of this plan. The new period (1523-1539) would be
one of long years of study for Bartolomé, and the beginning in 1527 of
his History of the Indies - a book which must be read through the optic
of a new philosophy of history - as well as his monumental Apologetic
History of the Indies, in which he begins to describe the exemplary
development and the ethical life of the Amerindian civilizations,
against criticisms of their barbarism:
It has been published that they were not people with suffi-
cient reason to govern themselves, lacking humane policies
and well-ordered republics [...] For the demonstration of
the truth which is the opposite, [innumerable examples] are
brought and compiled in this book. With regard to politics, I
should say, not only did they show themselves to be very pru-
dent peoples with sharp and notable understanding of their
republics [...] prudently governed, well-equipped, and with
thriving justice [....]#!° All these universes and infinite peoples
of all types God made the simplest, without evilness or deceit-
fulness, extremely obedient and faithful to their natural mas-

82
 ters, without quarrels or tumult, that there are in the world.”
He thereby proves that they were in many ways superior to the
Europeans, and certainly from the ethical perspective of strict
fulfillment of their own values. It is for this reason that they cannot
handle - and bursts in an immense cholera - the violent brutality with
which the modern Europeans destroyed these “infinite peoples”:
Those who have passed through there, who call themselves
Christians [but are not in fact] have had two general manners
and principles, in eradicating and scraping off the face of the
earth those pitiable nations. The one, through unjust, cruel,
and bloody wars. The other, after all those who would be able
to yearn or long for or think of liberty had died,’® all those
who could escape the storms they suffer, as is the case with
all natural masters and men (because commonly wars only
leave women and the young alive), oppressing them with the
harshest and most horrible servitude in which man or beast
could ever be put.”
In 1537 - a century prior to Descartes’ Discourse on Method™" -
Bartolomé writes in Latin De unico modo (Concerning the Only Way
of Drawing All Peoples to the True Religion), and with this work in
hand undertook peaceful preaching among the indigenous people
who would later receive the name of Vera Paz in Guatemala. Of that
Part of the book that has reached us (only chapters five to seven),””
what most calls the attention is the theoretical power of the author,
his enthusiasm for the subject, and the enormous bibliography
that must have been at his disposal in Guatemala City at that time.
It is a breathtaking intellectual work. With exacting logic, with an
extraordinary knowledge of Semitic texts - from the Greek and Latin
tradition of the Church Fathers and Medieval-Latin philosophy - with
an imperturbable sense of distinctions, he proceeds by wearing down
arguments with a profuse quantity of citations, such that even today
he would be envied as a detailed and prolific writer.
Bartolomé was 53 years old, with a population of conquistadors

83
against him, and an indigenous Mayan world he didn’t know concretely
by respected as equals. This was a manifesto of intercultural philosophy,
of political pacifism, and a sound and anticipatory critique of ajj
“just wars” (like that justified by John Locke) of Modernity (from the
conquest of Latin America - which extended afterward through the
Puritan conquest of New England - Africa and Asia, and the colonial
wars right up to the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars of our own times). It would be useful for European and North
American leaders to re-read this crowning critique at the very moment
of the critical origin of modern thought.
The central argument is formulated philosophically in the following
way:

The understanding voluntarily knows when that which it

knows is not immediately manifested as true, being as a re-
sult necessary a prior reasoning in order to be able to accept
that what is at stake is the case of a true thing [...] proceed-
ing from a known thing and another unknown by way of the
discourse of reason.-”

To accept what the Other says as true entails a practical act, an act of
faith in the Other that intends to say something true, and this “because
understanding is the beginning of the human act that contains the
root of freedom [...]. Effectively, he reasons that all freedom depends
on the mode of being of knowledge, is because the understanding only
understands to the degree that the will desires.’ Having come some
centuries before discourse ethics, Bartolomé recommended for this
“to study the nature and principles of rhetoric.” That is to say, the only
way to attract members of a foreign culture to a doctrine unknown ta
them is - applying the art of persuasion (“a persuasive mode, by way
of reasons in terms of understanding, and gently attractive in relation
to the will”’) - to count on the free will of the listener in order thats
without coercion, they might rationally accept the reasons given. It
is clear that fear, punishment, the use of weapons and warfare, aré
the furthest possible thing from this sort of possible acceptance of
argumentation.

84
 partolomeé is clear that the imposition of a theory onto the Other
py force, by arms, was the mere expansion of “the Same’ as “the same.”
It was the dialectical inclusion of the Other in a strange world, as an
instrument, alienated.”

Diagram 3: The Violent Movement of the Expansion of Modernity

Clarifications of the figure: I. Indigenous World. II. Modern

European World. A. European ontological horizon. B. Horizon of the
inclusion of the Other in the project of the modern-colonial World-
Empire. 1. Violent act of modern expansion (the conquest, which
situated the indigenous world I as a thing, an objectum dominatum).”
2. The act of domination by the modern over the peripheral world.
To the contrary, Las Casas proposes a double act of faith: a) in
the Other as other (because if the equal dignity of the Other is not
affirmed and if one does not believe in its questioning then there is no
Possibility of rational ethical agreement); and b) in the assumption that
the Other will accept the proposed new doctrine, which also demands
an act of faith from that Other. For this it is necessary that the Other
be free, that it voluntarily accept the reasons proposed to it.
Diagram 4: The Movement of Faith in the Word of the Other as
Responsibility to the Other

A B

Clarifications of the figure: Firstly: 1. Christian World (Las Casas).

I. Indigenous World. A. Ontological horizon of the Christian. B,
Alterity of the Other. 1. Appeal of the Other to indigenous justice. 2
Faith of Bartolomé in the word of the Other (the revelation of their
other culture). In the second place, if the situation were inverted now,
| would be the indigenous world and | the rational interrogation by
Bartolome de las Casas. That interrogation should have been followed.
by argumentation, whose reasons would - through the “gente motion
of the will” - allow the Other (the indigenous) (arrow 2) to accept thé
proposals of those who did not use weapons to propose Christianity
(II: Bartolomé de las Casas).
Having practiced the peaceful method of indoctrinating the
Mayans in Vera Paz, Bartolome sets out for Spain, where thanks to
many struggles he achieves the promulgation of the New Laws of
1542, which gradually eliminate the “encomiendas” throughout the
Indies. This is a period of many argumentative writings in defense if
the Indians: Modernity’s Other. He is named Bishop of Chiapas, but
is torced to resign shortly thereafter in response to the violence of
the conquistadors (not only against the Mayans, but also against the
Bishop himself).
Prom 1547 he is based in Spain, but still crossing the Ocean on
x6
 yeral occasions. It is there that he drafts the majority of his mature
. rks. In 1550 he confronts Ginés de Sepulveda in Valladolid, in
. a
“ firs! public and central philosophical debate of Modernity. The
erennial question to Modernity will be: What right does Europe have
to colonially dominate the Indies? Once this subject is resolved - one
refuted convincingly by Las Casas, but which fails categorically in the
modern colonial praxis of the absolute monarchies and the capitalist
system as a world-system - Modernity will never again, up to the
present, ask existentially or philosophically for this right to dominate
the periphery. Rather, this right to domination will be imposed as
the nature of things and will underpin all modern philosophy. Put
differently, modern philosophy after the 16" century will be developed
with the obvious and hidden - but never rational - need (because
it is impossible and irrational) to provide an ethical and political
foundation for European expansion, which doesn't contradict the
imposition of said domination as an incontrovertible fact of having
built a global system on the basis of the continuous exploitation of
the periphery. The first modern philosophy of early Modernity still had
a restless conscience toward the injustice committed, and refuted its
legitimacy.
It is for this reason that we would like to return to two rational
arguments that prove the injustice of the colonial expansion of
Modernity. Refuting the false argument that the idols revered by the
indigenous peoples could serve as cause for a war to exterminate
them. Bartolomé argues the following:
Since they [the Indians] take pleasure in insisting [...] that, in
worshiping their idols, they worship the true God [...] and de-
spite the assumption that they have an erroneous conscious-
ness, until the true God preaches to them with better and more
credible and convincing arguments, above all with examples
of Christian conduct, they are, without a doubt, obligated to
defend the cult to their gods and their religion and use armed
force against any who attempts to deprive them of that cult
|...|; they are thus obligated to battle against them, kill them,
 capture them, and exercise all those rights which are the cor-
ollaries ofa just war, in accordance with the law of peoples.”
This text demonstrates that there are many philosophical levels to
analyze. What is essential is to grant the Indians a universal truth clain,
(since from their perspective, “they worship the true God”), which
doesmt mean that Las Casas himself would not have the same claim
(since Las Casas believes that theirs is an “erroneous consciousness”),
Las Casas grants such a claim to the Indians because they have
not been given “credible and convincing arguments.” And since they
have not been provided with such arguments, they have every right to
assert their convictions, defending them to the point of the possibility
of a just war.*’ In other words, the proof offered by Ginés is inverted: it
isn't that their “barbarism” or their false gods justify a just war against
them, but rather quite the opposite, that the fact of having “true gods”
(until the opposite is proven) is what gives them reason to declare a
just war against the European invaders.
The argument reaches the paroxysm of confronting the most
difficult objection for a Christian, one proposed by Ginés, who
justifies the war conducted by the Spanish in order to save the lives of
the innocent victims of human sacrifices to the Aztec gods. Las Casas
reasons in the following way:
Men, according to natural law, are obligated to honor God
with the best means at their disposal and offer them the best
things as sacrifice [...] However, it is up to human law and
positive legislation to determine what things should be of-
tered to God; the latter already confided in the entire com-
munity [...]. Nature itself dictates and teaches |...] that in the
absence of a positive law ordering the opposite even human
victims should be sacrificed to that God which, true or false,
is considered to be true, so that by offering him the most pre-
cious thing, they show themselves to be especially thankful
for so many benefits received.”

Once again we can see, as always, that by granting the Other the

88
daim 0 truth - Teaise, Gensikdiened [by them, until the contrary is
roven] to be true” - Bartolome arrives at what we could call “the
maximum possible degree of critical consciousness for a European in
the Indies.’ This was still not the critical consciousness of the Indian
herself, but the argument is so original that he would later confess that
“{ had and proved many conclusions that no man before me had ever
touched upon or written, and one of these was to not oppose the law
or natural reason |...] of offering men to God, false or true (holding
the false as true), in sacrifice”’* With this, he concludes that the effort
of Ginés to justify the conquest in order to save the human victims
of sacrifice not only does not prove what it proposes to, but rather
demonstrates that the indigenous - by considering these sacrifices
to be the most honorable to offer, according to their beliefs (which
have not been refuted with convincing arguments) - have the right, if
prevented by force from carrying out such sacrifices, to engage in war,
in this case a “just war,’ against the Spanish.
In terms of Political Philosophy, moreover, and a century before T.
Hobbes and B. Spinoza, Bartolomé de las Casas defines his position in
favor of the law of the people (in this case the Indian people) against the
prevailing institutions, and even the King himself, when these fail to
fulfill the conditions of legitimacy or respect the freedom of members
of the republic. On the occasion in which the encomenderos in Peru
wanted to pay a tribute to the King for practically appropriating forever
the services of the Indians, Bartolomé wrote De regia potestate, which
should be considered alongside his De thesauris and the Treatise of
Twelve Doubts. In the first of these works, he tells us:
No king or governor, however supreme, may order or mandate
anything concerning the republic to the harm or detriment of
the people (populi) or subjects, without having had their con-
sensus (consensus) in licit and due form. Anything else would
not be valid (valet) by law [...] No one can legitimately (Jegi-
fime) [...] cause harm of any sort to the freedom of their peo-
ple (libertati populorum suorum); if someone were to decide
against the common utility of the people, without enjoying

RY
 the consensus of that people (consensus populi), such deci-
sions would be null and void. Freedom (libertas) is the most
precious and admirable thing that free people can have.

‘This threatened the King’s claim to exercise absolute power. Lag

Casas understands clearly that the seat of power resides in the people,
among the subjects - not merely between the kingdoms that signed the
pact with the King or Queen of Castile - and as a result the legitimacy
of political decisions was based on the prior consensus of the people,
We are in the first century of early Modernity, before the consolidation
of the myth of European Modernity as the obvious and universal
civilization that exercises power according to universal law over the
colonies and the globe (Carl Schmitt's ius gentium europium), a myth
definitively fetishized in Hegel's Philosophy of Law. ' As Bartolomé de
Las Casas explains:
All infidels, of whatever sect or religion they were [...] with
regard to natural or divine law, and that which they call the
law of peoples, justly have and possess dominion over their
things [...] And also according to the same justice they pos-
sess their principalities, kingdoms, states, ranks, jurisdictions,
and lordships. ‘The regent or governor cannot be other than
he who the entire society and community chose in the begin-
ning. °

The Roman Pope and the Spanish Kings - under the obligation to
“preach the gospel” - granted a “right over things” (iure in re), ” that
is, over the Indians. But Bartolome again writes that said right only
operates in potentia, needing the intervention of a consensus by the
indigenous to operate i actu. Since such consent has never existed,
the conquest is illegitimate, and so he correctly concludes that:
Hence the King, our lord, is obligated by the threat of being
denied salvation, to restore those kingdoms to King Tito [as
a surviving Inca was called], the successor and heir of Gayna
Capac and the other Incas, and grant him all force and pow-
er:

on
 We are dealing with the most rationally argued work of early
Modernity - the first modern philosophy - which meticulously
refuted the proofs that had been given in favor of a justification for
modern Europe’ colonial expansion. We are dealing, as we have tried
to show, with the first anti-discourse of Modernity (an anti-discourse
that was itself philosophical and modern), inaugurating a tradition
within which there would always be representatives during the entire
history of Latin American philosophy throughout the five following
centuries.
This critical philosophical anti-discourse offered by Las Casas would
be used by the rebels of the Low Countries (Holland) to emancipate
themselves from Spain in the early 17" century; it would again be re-
read during the North American Revolution, the independence of the
Latin American colonies in 1810, and in other processes of profound
transformation that took place on the continent. Politically defeated,
his philosophy would nevertheless radiate outward up to the present
day.

5. The critique of Modernity from “radical exteriority.”

The critical anti-discourse of Felipe Guaman Poma
de Ayala
But the maximum universally-possible consciousness is the critical
consciousness of the indigenous people themselves, those suffering
modern-colonial domination, those whose body receives the trauma
of the modern ego conquiro most directly. For this, nothing could be
better than the touching account - the anti-discourse of Modernity
Properly speaking - of one Guaman Poma de Ayala. In this case, it is
the victim himself who utters the critique. We will attempt to track
the arguments that Guaman Poma erected against the first early
Modernity.
‘There were three moments in which the indigenous communities
Suffered increasingly the process of modern-colonial domination. In
the first, indigenous people suffered the horrors of the conquest, and
those communities that managed to survive were enclosed within
91
the encomienda system and the miita mining system; institutiong
that were the object of Bartolome de las Casas’ frontal critique. Ty
the second, after the so-called “Junta Magna” of Felipe I convokeg
to unify colonial policy, and which is headed by the Viceroy of Pery
Francisco de Toledo, the messianic utopias of the Franciscans and of
those struggling in favor of the indigenous communities receive the
frontal shock ofa new colonization project (1569). At that point a new
and directly anti-Las-Casian strategy is decided upon. The counter.
argument within modern rationality was orchestrated during the
government of the - decidedly Eurocentric - Viceroy, who entrusted,
(it seems) to his cousin Garcia de Toledo the task of writing the Parecer
de Yucay, * in which he attempts to demonstrate that the Incas were
illegitimate and tyrannical, and that as a result the Europeans were
justified in carrying out the conquest and “sharing out” of the Indies,
to emancipate them from such oppression. Sepulveda’s position had
been modified, but regardless, in practice, it would be imposed as a
hegemonic argument. From the economic-communitarian reciprocity
of the great indigenous cultures we pass to despotism; there had been.
a demographic catastrophe - in certain regions only one third of the
population had survived — and indigenous people had abandoned
their communities to wander the Viceroyalty (these being the vanas,
from which we get the name Yanaconas), for among other reasons not
having paid tribute now demanded in silver coins.
In the third moment, under the hacienda regime, the mita system
of mining, the payment of tribute in silver, and the “reductions” (of
various types), the indigenous peoples ended up definitively subsumed
within the structure of domination of colonial society. We would
like, therefore, to situate the critique offered by Guaman in this third
moment.
We will pause to discuss a dramatic account, a critical protest against
the nascent modern colonialism, a final effort to save what could be
salvaged of the old order that prevailed under the Incas, the incredible
work of Felipe Guaman Poma de Avala. El Primer Nueva Corénica
v Buen Gobierno - The First New Chronicle and Good Governments
Which sets out from experiences probably collected between 1583 and
2
1612, but written as late as 1616*" - is a “testimony” of the critical
interrogation of Modernity’s Other, a perspective unique in its genre,
since it allows us to discover the authentic hermeneutic of an Indian,
from an Incan family, written and illustrated with a splendid semiotic
capacity, with an inimitable mastery.
Guaman Poma, more even than the case of the Inca Garcilaso
de la Vega, since he was an indigenous person with a command of
the Quechua language and the traditions of his oppressed people,
demonstrates aspects of the everyday life of the indigenous community
prior to the conquest and modern colonial domination." In effect,
Guaman Poma producesan interpretative synthesis, a critical narrative,
which contains an ethic and a political view rooted in a “localization”
of his perspective, an extremely creative perspective that takes its
central situation in terms of space and time. First of all, he argues:
Consider’ that the Indians of the time of the Incas were idol-
aters like the gentiles and worshipped the sun the father of
the Inca and the moon their mother and the stars their broth-
ers [...] With all this they kept the commandments and good
works of the mercy of God in this kingdom, which Christians
now do not keep.**

He thereby adopts the modern Christian perspective that will be

critiqued, as part of a rhetorical strategy which makes his proposals
More acceptable. From this perspective he sketches the past: it was
idolatrous, this is true, but they fulfilled ethical obligations similar to
the Christian “commandments.” The only difference is that the Indians
did indeed fulfill these obligations, whereas the modern European
Conquistadors did not. That is, Guaman will show with reasons the
Contradiction in which Modernity lives. The domination praxis of the
Spanish Christians themselves is thereby critiqued on the basis of their
Own sacred text: the Bible. This is a closed argument that demonstrates
the performative contradiction of Modernity in its totality.
We want to make clear, then, that Felipe Guaman distinguishes
between the belief that we could call theoretical (or “cosmovision”)
and practice or ethics properly speaking. In the time of the Incas,
93
these people were idolaters according to their cosmovision (from the
perspective of Christian dogma), but they “kept the commandment:
in their ethical behavior, “which [European] Christians now do
not keep.” In other words, the indigenous people were, practically,
and even prior to the conquest, better “Christians” because of theig
practices than the Spanish Christians of “the present.” Guaman’g
entire Chronicle is an argument against the Modernity contributed by
the Spanish conquistadors in the name of the same Christianity that
they preached.“ Like the Creoles, the already-Christian Indian Felipe
Guamian thinks that it wasn't the Spanish that brought Christianity,2#
and this allows hima hybrid understanding of time and space fitting for
his syneretic narrative. He unifies the Incan and Christian visions into
a “grand narrative” (more than merely fragmentary like postmodern
narratives) on the basis of the oppressed existence of the Indians, “the
poor of Jesus Christ.” He thereby shows that he possesses his own
understanding - one which is Indian, American, and which sets out
from the poor, oppressed, colonial, peripheral - of Christianity itself:
T say truly that God became man and true God and poor, that
if the majesty and light he brought there was anyone who
would not adhere to it, then the sun he produced would not
be seen [...] And hence he ordered that they bring poverty
so that the poor and the sinners might come together and speak.
And hence he ordered the apostles and saints that they be poor
and humble and charitable |...] This ] say certainly, counting
on my poverty, placing myself as poor among so many ani-
mals that eat the poor, they ate me as they eat the others.
‘This entire interrogative account is constructed, normatively, from
the horizon of the dialectic that is established between, a) the “poverty,
humility, and happy equilibrium of the satisfaction of primary needs” of
all in the late Incan community, against the “wealthy, arrogance, and
infinite and unsatisfied longing” of gold and silver, the idols of nascent
Modernity. This is a categorical critique of Modernity on the basis
of the world that preceded it; on the basis of an ecological utopia of
ethical-communitarian justice, where there existed “good government”
od
and not violence, theft, filth, ugliness, rape, excess, brutality, suffering,
cowardice, lies, “arrogance”... death.
Guaman'’s Chronicle is divided systematically into three parts. In
the first part he illustrates - with many informative novelties and
using the Quechua language - the cultural-political order that existed
prior to the conquest: the ex quo utopia. The second part describes
the atrocities of Modern colonial domination on the great Incan
culture, comparable in its splendor to the Roman, Chinese, or other
empires celebrated as examples by European moderns. In the third
part, which always begins with “conzedérese” (i.e. exhorting the
reader to consider, ponder, analyze, and take into consideration from
ethical consciousness), Guaman establishes a face-to-face with King
Felipe IT of Spain, to explain to him possible solutions to the disaster
of colonial disorder in the Indies. This work was written a century
after Machiavelli’s classic work Il principe (written in 1517 for an
Italian condottiero), but it has a global rather than a provincial Italian
significance; and some forty years before Ming-i tai-fang lu (Waiting
for the Dawn) by Huang Tsung-hsi (1610-1695), a Chinese political
text written in 1663 giving recommendations to a young Manchu
prince.
Inthe first part, Guaman Poma demonstratesa sui generis integration
of chronological modern and Incan traditions, but under the
framework of the dominant logic of the “five [classic] ages” of the Aztec,
Mayan, or Incan worlds. Hence he sets out from the Judeo-Christian
Old and New Testaments and a European historical perspective, but
he progressively links up with the historical chronology of the Incas
in unexpected ways. The “First world” (like the first sun of the Aztecs
and Mayans) is that of Adam and Eve*; the “Second world” is that
of Noah; the “Third world” that of Abraham; the “Fourth Age of the
world” that since “King David”; the “Fifth Age of the world? which
within indigenous cosmovision represents the current order, begins
with “the birth of Jesus Christ?” And this is followed by the history
of “Popes” Saint Peter, Damasus, John, and Leo.
At this point in the narrative - which was up to this point purely
European - the story is interrupted with an exemplary illustration:
95
 POVITIFICAL
toe
shout
The Pontifical World (Pontific
Hea
The Indies of Peru in the highty
ot Spain (las Indias del Pirti em
lo alto de Espana)
Castile below the Indies (Cas.
tilla en lo avajo de las Indias)
Castile (Castilla):”

Poma’s drawing gives us a spatial imaginary “above, with the

mountains as horizon and the sun (/nti) in the sky, this is Peru, with
Cuzco at its center with its “four” suwyos (four regions according to
the four cardinal points). “Below” is Castile, in the center, also with
“four” regions. Here Incan spatial logic is used to organize the modern
European world.
Immediately thereafter Almagro and Pizarro appear with their
ships, and arriving from Europe they now locate the story in Peru.#
Now located in Peru through this act of the “irruption” of Modernity,
the story in the Indies paradoxically, only now and for the first time -
and without an Incan description of the origin of the cosmos, which
betrays a certain degree of modern influence in this “Christianized”
Indian - does the narrative of the “five ages” or “generations” of
Amerindian myth begin, expressing thereby an entire complex
discourse indicating the particular way in which Guaman Poma
structures his hybrid “cosmovision.” In effect, the story has various
levels of depth, its own bipolarities, and extremely rich signifying
structures.

96
 Inthe first place, everything begins anew with the “five generations”
of indigenous peoples (beginning with the “four generations” from
vari Vira Cocha Runa to Auca Runa). With the Incan Empire as
the “fifth,” Guaman then describes the twelve Incas, beginning
with Capac Ynga. But it is interesting to note that in the reign of the
second Inca, Cinche Roca Ynga, the two stories - the modern and the
Incan - become linked, thereby placing the Incas on the same level
as the Roman emperors. Guaman locates in that period the birth of
“Jesus Christ in Bethlehem,” and shortly thereafter Saint Bartolomé
the apostle appeared in Peru installing the “Carabuco cross” in the
province of Collao, testifying to the tradition of Christian preaching
in the era of the apostles.*” This method of unifying chronologies -
that of modern, Western culture with that of the Incas - shows us a
particular sort of historical account, that of the “meaning of history,”
exemplars that teach us to attempt comparisons on the centro-
peripheral khrono-topos, with the periphery “above” and not “below,”
and where the South is the point of “localization” of discourse, the
locus enuntiationis.™
Guaman then describes the facts, on the basis of the dual principle
- of all cosmovisions in the Americas from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego
- since after describing the Incas, he now needs to deal with the twelve
“Coyan queens and ladies,” wives of the Incas*’; the fifteen “captains”
of the Empire; and the four first “queen ladies” of the four parts of
the Empire.” Here we can see that both the “Incan Coyas” and the
“queens” of the four regions demonstrate the clear presence of women
within the Andean cosmovision: always alongside the male (the Sun),
Wwe find the woman (the Moon).
Having finished the long list of principal figures, Guaman
describes a collection of ordinances, orders, and laws promulgated by
the Incas,” like an Incan version of “Hammurabi’s Code,” but much
More complete than the Mesopotamian version, at least in terms of its
More varied subject matter. The authorities of the Empire “rule and
8ive orders” from Cuzco to the various regions, provinces, peoples,
communities, the diverse governing, accounting, administration,
and military structures, dealing with the construction of aqueducts
97
and roads, of temples, palaces, and houses. ‘Ihese laws govepy
principal and secondary priests, auxiliaries, celebrations, rites, Cult
traditions, gods (huacas); the entire manner of organizing agricul
harvesting, taxes, the distribution of lands; as well as the ethical codey
of the family, marriage, education, judges and trials, and the beari
of witness, all of which demonstrate the political complexity of thg
Incan civilization.
He then describes the obligations of males according to ages (whiey
are referred to as “streets”).” He discusses the sick and those hindered
from working (called the uncoc runa):
The blind married the blind, the lame with the lame, the mute
with the mute, the midget with the midget, the hunchback
with the hunchback, the cracked nose with the cracked nose
[...]. And they have their farm land, houses, inheritances,
and help from their service and thereby there was no need for
hospitals” nor alms with this sacred order and policy of this
kingdom, as no kingdom in Christendom or among infidels
has had or could have no matter how Christian [they might
be].

In effect, when a male child was born in the Incan Empire he would,
be granted a parcel of land, which if he were not able to work another
would do it in her place for her “nourishment and sustenance.” Upon
death, this land would be redistributed. By right of birth the child was
given nota certificate or a document but rather the mediation necessary
to reproduce her life until death. Itis this sort of institution that Guaman.
refers to as nonexistent in the modern system of civilization.
These same ages (“streets”) are similarly described tor women2#
Activities or tasks are also explained month-by-month.* Guamap
explains the system of gods (“idols”), rites, sacrifices, > witchcraft
ceremonies, fasts, penitences, funerals; those of the “Coya nuns” (the
vestal virgins of the Sun).
‘This is all followed by a “Chapter on Justice.” containing the
“punishments” that the Inca applied to those who did not follow theif
ordinances. There were caves (zancay) where poisonous animals would,
vs
 devour alive the enemy (auca), traitor (yscay songo), thief (suua),
adulteret (uachoc), warlock (hanpioc), or those gossiping against the
Inca (ynca cipcicac), etc. There were also lower prisons, floggings,
hangings, and the hanging of the guilty by the hair until death, etc.
There were also great celebrations,” sacred as well as profane, “love
songs” (haray haraui),”* with beautiful musicand dance fromall regions
ofthe empire. He describes the massive palaces - always accompanied
by impressive illustrations - by city, the large merchandise depots, the
statues, the Incan trails, the types of gifts. Finally, Guaman describes
some political functions’: the viceroy (Yncap rantin), the mayor of
the court, the greater sheriff, the magistrate (tocricoc), administrator
(suyucoc), messengers (chasqui), and the “boundary placers” (sayua
cchecta suyoyoc) who confirmed the land that each held, that of the
Inca, and that of the community. Moreover, he goes to some length
explaining the royal roads,” the hanging bridges, etc., and concludes
discussing the secretaries of the Inca, the accountant and treasurer
(with his quipoc: a text written in knotted cords, with which he carried
out measurement and memorized numbers, taxes, debts, etc.),?%
inspector, and royal counsel.
This testimony concludes its first part with an interrogation:
Christian reader, you see here the entire Christian law.’” I have
not found the Indians to be as careful with gold or silver, nor
have I found anyone who owed one hundred pesos, or a liar,
or a gambler, or anyone lazy, or a male or female prostitute
[...] You say that you must redeem yourself; I don’t see you re-
deeming yourself in life or death. It seems to me, Christian,””
that you are all doomed to hell [...] In arriving in this land,
it was then against the poor Indians of Jesus Christ [...] As
the Spanish had idols as written by the reverend father friar
Luys de Granada [...], the Indians like barbarians and gentiles
wept for their idols when the were smashed in the time of the
conquest. And you have idols on your haciendas and silver
from the world over.”*

This was a fierce critique of the new fetishism of modern capitalism,

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which would sacrifice the humans of the South and nature to a new
god: the increase in the profit rate (capital). Guaman sees this ang
describes it clearly.
In the second part of his magnum opus, Guaman begi
systematically, to show the Christianity that is preached and thg
perverse praxis of early Modernity. This isa most ruthless, ironic, and
brutal description of the violence of the first expansion of moderg
Western culture. He begins the story with the question the Inca Guaing
Capac puts to Candia, the first Spaniard to arrive to Peru:
And he asked the Spaniard what it is that he ate; he responded
in the Spanish language and with gestures indicating that he
ate gold and silver. And [Ancina] gave large quantities of gold
dust and silver and gold plates.*”
From that point onward, it was all an anxious search tor “gold and
silver”: “They all said: Indians, gold, silver, gold, silver from Peru?
Even musicians sang the ballad Indians, Gold, and Silver
And as a result of this gold and silver part of this kingdom
is already depopulated, the poor Indian peoples tor gold and
silver. [...] That is how the first men were; he did not tear
death through interest in gold and silver. But it is those of this
lite, the magistrates, priests, and encomenderos. With the av-
arice of gold and silver they are going to hell.” |...] How the
Indians wandered lost without their gods and aucas and their
kings, their great masters and captains. At this time of the
conquest there was neither God of the Christians nor King of
Spain, nor was there justice.>

Ihe primitive accumulation of capital - of Modernity itself - had

begun its destructive expansion as a predatory world-system. After
the initial chaos and violence begins the period of “good gover nment™
- which Guaman writes with irony - beginning with Viceroy Mendoz&
since he writes
|...] Poor useless and pusillanimous idiots were the Spanish,
as arrogant as Luciter. From Luzbel Lucifer, the great devil,
100
 was made. That is how you are, that I fear that you want to
hang yourselves and take off your own head and dismember
yourselves and hang yourselves like Judas and throw your-
selves into hell. What God orders, you want to be more, If
you are not king, why do you want to be king? If you are nei-
ther prince nor duke nor count nor marquis nor knight, why
would you want to be? If you are a commoner [pichero] or a
shoemaker or a Jew or Moor, do not rise up and disturb the
land, but instead pay what you owe.”
Guaman discovers the process through which the ego conquiro -
this expanding, self-centered subjectivity - passes, wildly overcoming
all limits in its arrogances, until it culminates in the ego cogito based
on God himself, as his own mediation to reconstruct the world under
his control, at his service, for his exploitation, and among these the
populations of the South.
And Guaman progressively describes one by one the public offices
and how they oppress, rob, punish, and violate Indian men and women,
such that “they lose the land and the kingdom will end up empty and
uninhabited and the king will be very poor’** And since the first
period of the presidents and magistrates of the “very Christian”™
Audiences, “it has never been found that they have ruled in favor of
the poor Indians. They come first to burden the Indians even more and
to favor the neighbors and the rich and the miners.”*” Guaman feels
particularly scandalized by the way in which the authorities, and even
the Spanish residents and slaves, use the wives of the Indians, since
“they keep stealing their haciendas and fornicate with the married
women and deflower the maidens. And as a result they find themselves
lost and become prostitutes and give birth to many little mestizos
and the Indians do not reproduce”** The Spanish - and especially
the “Christian encomendero of the Indians of this kingdom” - are
criticized for their actions, which show special sadism, since “they
punish the poor of Jesus Christ in the entire kingdom?! Guaman
thereby dismantles one by one the injustices of the entire colonial
political and economic order of Modernity. The Church does not

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escape his accurate, ironic, and acute criticism either.*? He collects
still more documents regarding the various “treaties” and “sentences,
to give examples of the unjust oppression that is practiced on the
Indians.”
Regarding the Indians that collaborated with the conquistadors,
he termed them “mandoncillos, or “little bosses,” who often without
being from Inca families pass for nobles for the simple fact of ruling
in the name of the Spanish. There were Incas, “principal” leaders, who
had under their orders a thousand tributary Indians (quranga curaca),
or five hundred, or a “greater boss” with one hundred, or a “little boss
of fifty Indians,” or of only five or ten. There are also those curacas
who run mines and stores. There were exploiters, thieves, “drunks,
liars, “fakers,’ highway bandits, “who steal the haciendas of the poor
Indians.” As always, this is followed by a list of “women, queens, and
Coyas,’ the wives of the “little bosses,” which he calls “madam, or
“dofia?* To top it all off, the Christian Indians put into power by the
Spanish, the collaborators, whose role is to impart “justice”’”’ given
the generalized corruption - which was not permitted during Incan
times - do not always fulfill their functions.
Finally, Guaman confronts the Indians themselves, those poor
members of the population:
If the priests of the doctrines and the mentioned magistrates
and encomenderos and Spanish would permit it, there would
be saints and great lettered and very Christian men [among
the Indians]. But said officials all obstruct this with their treat-
ment.”

That the Indians remain good and “political” they owe more to the
memory of their old customs and despite all of the extortions that
the conquistadors exercise on them. Modernity, in this case, is the
cause of corruption and destruction. Now, Guaman describes the
beliefs, “from below,” from the indigenous peoples (as previously he
had described the gods and the uacas of Incan times): from crucified
Christ, the Trinity, Saint Mary and other saints, purgatory, devotions,
baptism, and alms. Despite so many truths, the communities were
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now full of poor who were begging for alms (there didn’t exist the
possibility for beggars, as we have seen, during Incan times):
For this, the inspectors of the holy mother Church are guilty
of not visiting the poor, sick, crippled, lame and one-handed
and old and blind, the orphans of all peoples.”
This shows great misery among the Indians, a misery impossible in
the times of the Inca. The situation of the Indian had visibly worsened
with the presence of Modernity. Hence appeared the “Creoles and
Creole Indians, Indians born into this life of the time of Christians,”
who are easily corrupted because they have lost their community; they
become yanaconas, drunks, cocaine addicts, and “the most Christian,
even if he knows how to read and write, carrying the rosary and
dressed like a Spaniard, with a collar, appears holy, [but] when drunk
talks to demons and reveres the guacas [pre-Columbian tomb].”™ As
a result, there is no shortage of “Indian philosophers, astrologers that
know the hours and Sundays and days and months, years, to sow and
collect the foods every year [...].’*’ Our critic ends his description of
the lamentable state of the Indies by indicating that, “he the author
walked in the poor world with the rest of the poor Indians to see that
world and manage to write this book and chronicle, to serve God and
his Majesty and the good of the poor Indians of this kingdom”
In the third part, from the utopia of the past and the negativity
of the disastrous present, Guaman now imagines a future project of
“good government,” from the utopian future horizon of the “City in
the sky for the good sinners” and of the “City of Hell” [...for] the
avaricious, ungrateful, lustful, arrogant, punishment for the arrogant
sinners and the rich who fear not God.’ The argument occupies the
first part (“Consideration of the Christian of the world that God exists
[que ay Dios]”***). Here Modernity is located “in hell”
This is followed by the “question chapter”’ where he argues
within a densely rational political logic, confronting a critical reader
regarding the gravest problems that he has progressively discovered in
the colonial world of Modernity, narrated in his Chronicle. He places
questions in the mouth of the Spanish King, hurled at the “author”

103
(Guaman), which deserve to be dealt with individually, but for limits
of length, we cannot discuss them here. Finally, he sadly describes
“the world [to which] the author returns,” his poor point of departure,
the people “of the poor of Jesus Christ,’ after they have passed more
than thirty years, the time in which he traveled all over Peru, to
inform the King of Spain and propose corrections for such disorder.
‘These possible “corrections” are deemed “Considerations,” and like all
of Guaman’s work, these proposals are framed within a horizon that
derives its meaning from a profound cosmic wisdom, setting out from
the beginning: “God created the sky and the whole world and all that
is in it?" Then, he divides time into ten ages with “Peru” - neither
Modernity nor Judeo-Christianity - as its axis. These include the
already discussed ages - from the Uari Vira Cocha to the Auca Runa
- the fifth of the Incas; the sixth of the Pachacuti Ruma (the age in
which everything was turned “upside-down” and “stood on its feet”:
here we are dealing with a cosmic revolution prior to the conquest);
the seventh, which refers to this very “Christian conquest of the runa?
the Indians; the eighth that of the wars between the conquistadors
in Peru; the ninth that of “Christian justice, well-being” (read this
expression in an ironic sense), of the first colonial era; and the tenth,
the imposed colonial order.
Guaman begins from the framework of the origin and the process
of the “universe” (pacha) with a first “consideration”: the service to
the “wandering and sick poor people” which fulfills “the old law and
God's law,”""' with the corpachanqui (“You must give them lodging”).
“Works of mercy” are the final criterion of Guaman’s argument:
compassion toward the weak, the sick, the poor. In this ethical and
political demand the “old law” of Peru and the best of Christianity -
as reinterpreted by our “author” - coincide. Effectively, Guaman had
a messianic interpretation of Christianity, an explicit anticipation of
Liberation Theology:
Jesus Christ died as a result of the world and man. He suffered
tortures and martyr [...]. He walked this life poor, persecuted.
And after the day of judgement he will come [...] to pay the

104
 despised poor." [...] The first priest on earth was God and live
man, Jesus Christ, a priest who came from heaven poor and
loved the poor man more than the rich. It was Jesus Christ liv-
ing God who came to take souls and not silver from the world
[...] Saint Peter [...] left everything to the poor [...] And all
[the apostles] were poor and asked not for a salary nor rent
nor looked for haciendas.**

In sum:
He who defends the poor of Jesus Christ serves God. This is the
word of God in his gospel and defending the Indians of your
Majesty serves your royal crown.*'

Moreover, he advocated structuring institutions with a certain

degree of unity, since in the earlier times, everything was understood
because it was under the paternal power of a single Inca, while in
the disorder of colonial Modernity “there are many Incas: the Inca
magistrate, his twelve assistants are Incas, the brother or son of the
magistrate and his wife and scribe are Incas [...].”"" It was also necessary
to be conscious of the fact that, with the presence of the Europeans,
everything got worse for the Indians: “consider that the Yndians [now]
have many lawsuits [pleyto/pleito] in this life. In the time of the Yncas
there were none.”™*,
But the most significant political argument for “good government”
consisted in the “restoration of power” to the Incas:
What you need to consider is that the whole world belongs
to God and hence Castile [is] of the Spanish and the Indies
belongs to the Indians and Guinea belongs to the blacks. That
each of these is legitimate owners, not only by law [...] And
the Indians are then cultural owners of this kingdom, and the
Spanish natural [owners] of Spain. Here in this kingdom, they
are strangers, mitimays.”

On the basis of the Incan understanding of global geopolitical

spatiality, Guaman attempts to justify his project by counting

105
strategically on the support of the Spanish King. Just as in the past
the Inca Empire had been the “center” of the universe (Pacha), its
“Navel” (Cuzco), from which the “four parts” of the world extend
outward (in the direction of the four cardinal points, as in China or
among the Aztecs in the “altepetl”**), taking the shape of a “cosmic
cross”; so too he now proposed, extrapolating from these imaginary
geopolitical structures in a more global world, situating King Felipe
of Spain in the “center,” with his “four parts” or kingdoms (the Incas,
who reestablished power over all the Americas; the Christians around
Rome; the Africans of Guinea; and the Turks up to Greater China).
Guaman speaks of a “monarch of the world” with “four” kingdoms
(a globalized projection of the Inca Empire), but at the same time
he proposes - as did Bartolomé de las Casas - the restoration of the
autonomy of the Incas, even if this be “under the world hand”™ of the
Spanish King: “Because he is Inca and King, so that some Spaniard
or priest does not need to enter because the Inca was owner and
legitimate king””' A project of future political liberation is clearly
in sight, our present “second emancipation” (the first was partially
completed in 1810), the second includes the emancipation of the
indigenous peoples, announced by Evo Morales in Bolivia, an Aymara
rather than a Quechua like Guaman.
Were such a “restitution” impossible, it was necessary to think of
a multitude of measures, on all levels of the administrative, political,
ecclesiastical, military, sexual, and educational structures, etc., that
Guaman sets himself to describing with infinite patience in these
“considerations.” As an example let us look at one final quotation:
Consider that the magistrate enters saying: “I will do justice
for you,’ and steals. And the priest enters: “I will make you a
Christian. I will baptize you and marry you and teach you,”
and he steals and pulls to pieces and takes away wife and
daughter. The encomendero and other Spaniards say: “Justice,
let it serve the King because I am his vassal” And they rob
and pilfer whatever one has. And even worse are the Indian
[caciques| and bosses; they tear everything away from the

106
 poor and unfortunate Indians.”

Adorno and Horkheimer in San Diego did not express as clearly

this darkest face of Modernity, not in their Dialectic of Enlightenment.
As a result, after these dramatic “considerations, Guaman passes to
the second of fifteen organized points that the “author” puts in the
mouth of King Felipe. The second of these reads:
“Tell me, don Felipe Ayala, in that time, how were there so
many Indians in the times of the Inca?” I tell your Majesty
that in those times the only king was the Inca [...] But one
lived in the law and commandments of the Incas. And since
there was a king, they served restfully in this kingdom and
multiplied and had their haciendas and food to eat and chil-
dren and wives of theirs.
In the fifth question, the King inquires:
“Tell me, author, how will the Indians become rich?” You
must know your Majesty that they need to have communal
haciendas that they call sapci, sowing corn and wheat, pota-
toes, peppers, magno, cotton, vineyards, handicrafts, dying,
coca, fruit trees."
“Good government” would consist - by members of Modernity
- and would be completely summarized by, “all Spanish living like
Christians.’* But if this were to occur in Modernity as such it would
collapse, there would be no accumulation of wealth in the core. So we
see that Guaman, like Karl Marx, organizes his argumentative strategy
according to the same principle as the critic from Trier: to place he
who claims to be a Christian in a clear performative contradiction
between his perverse actions and the ethics dictated by Christianity
itself.”
What world did the “author” discover upon returning to his
people?:
Having served your Majesty for thirty years, he found every-
thing ruined, entering his houses and fields and pastures. And

107
 he found his sons and daughters naked, serving Indian com-
moners [picheros]. And he did not recognize his children and
nieces and nephews and relatives because they had become
so old; they appeared eighty years old, all pale and thin and
naked and barefoot.”
And this is not all, since his work, his Chronicle, would end up
entombed in a European library in Copenhagen until 1908. The
world of the poor “Indians, the “poor of Jesus Christ” in full-blown
Modernity, would have to wait centuries for justice to be done...

6. Conclusions
We could still consider the thought and wisdom of the indigenous
people of the Americas themselves, who were not impacted by
Christianity (as was the case with Guaman Poma). They represent a
critical “future reserve” as a result of their radical exteriority, but here
we will leave off to not go on at great length.
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala appears to have completed his
Chronicle in 1616. One year earlier, the young René Descartes
abandoned his nearly 20 years of study in the Jesuit school at La Fléeche.
No one knew or could have known about this original philosopher
of an entire peripheral and colonial world founded by Modernity.
Descartes’ future ego cogito would constitute a cogitatum which -
among other beings at its disposition - would situate the corporality
of colonial subjects as exploitable machines, like those of the Indians
on the Latin American encomienda, mita, or hacienda, or the African
slaves on the “big house” of plantations in Brazil, the Caribbean, or
New England. Behind Modernity’s back these colonial subjects would
have their “human being” taken away from them forever, until today.
If the suspicion that we have attempted to introduce were true,
it would shed significant light on new investigations regarding
the meaning of philosophical Modernity. If Modernity does not
commence philosophically with Descartes, and if he should be
considered instead as the great thinker of the second moment of early

108
Modernity - when the concealment, not of Heideggerian “being” but
rather “colonial being,’ had already occurred - then an entire process
of philosophical decolonization needs to be undertaken. 17-century
Holland centered on Amsterdam, that of the East Indian Company,
would be a world which emerged after the crisis of the 15""-century
Spanish Kings and the empire of Carlos V (Wallerstein’s world-
empire), which opened up to Europe the broad horizon of the first,
colonialist, capitalist, Eurocentric, modern world-system. The 1637
of the publication of the Discourse on Method in the Low Countries
- from an order already dominated by the triumphant bourgeoisie -
would not be Modernity’s origin but rather its second moment. The
solipsistic paradigm of consciousness, of the ego cogito, inaugurates
its overpowering, crushing development through all later European
Modernity and would be modified many times, in Hume, Kant, Hegel,
J. P. Sartre, or P. Ricoeur.
In the 20" century this Modernity would be radically critiqued
by E. Levinas who, setting out from the fifth of Edmund Husserl’s
Cartesian Meditations,” attempts to open himself to the Other, and
also to the other of European Modernity... but still within Europe.
The Jewish holocaust would be, anyway, an irrational, intra-European
disaster, far from the Enlightenment, as discussed by Adorno and
Horkheimer. However, neither Levinas himself, nor any of the three
generations of the Frankfurt School, manage to overcome Modernity,
since they failed to recognize the coloniality of the exercise of Western
power. Levinas remains inevitably Eurocentric, despite discovering
the irrationality of totalizing modern subjectivity, since he could
not situate himself in the exteriority of metropolitan, imperial, and
capitalist Europe.

109
3. From Fraternity to Solidarity - (Towards
a Politics of Liberation)

My aim in this chapter is to explaining a material category from

the horizon of a Politics of Liberation that we are elaborating. It will
provide an example of a theme that would require much more space
for its full development.*' The following pages represent then some
suggestions regarding the question.

1. An enigmatic text of Nietzsche

Nietzsche, as usual, is a genius whose pre-conceptual intuitions
exceed his own capacity to express in an analytic manner whatever is
indicated in a poetic aesthetic manner. He often gives an exposition
of an experience that certainly surpasses the words aiming at
philosophical univocity. In his collection of adages, Human All Too
Human, after reflecting on the difficulty of “friendship” (Freundschaft),
he puts forth an adage full of suggestions:
[...] Perhaps to each of us there will come the more joyful hour
when we exclaim:
{a.1] Friends [A.1], there are no friends! [A.2], [a.2] thus shouted
the dying sage;
[b.1] Foes [B.1], there are no foes! [B.2], [b.2] shout I, the living
fools”
[...] Vielleicht kommt jedem auch einmal die freudigere Stunde, wo
er sagt:
Freunde, es gibt keine Freunde! So rief der sterbende Weise;
Feinde, es gibt keinen Feind! ruf ich, der lebende Tor.*®
The text has two moments, the first on “friendship” [a], and the
second on “enmity” [b]; each with two components; the first consists
in the well-known Aristotelian expression [a.1], to which Nietzsche
adds an opposing dialectic (friend/enemy) of its own, outside of the
Aristotelian or Hellenic context [b.1], which has, as we will see, many

110
cultural origins and derives from diverse philosophical currents.
But, above all, and in the second place, Nietzsche enriches the adage
with another moment that sounds like a commentary that proposes
“who” announces the contents of the first part [a.1 and b.1], which
disconcerts, which provides the key to the enigma [a.2 and b.2], and
which will be the theme of my commentary (in §3 of this chapter).
Without getting to the bottom ofthe question yet, Nietzsche suggests,
or so the tradition shows it, that it is very difficult (qualitatively and
quantitatively) to havea true friend [a.1], especially given the proverbial
solitude of philosophy that is hard to please in its eccentric, solipsistic
reflections, and (in the case of Nietzsche) given his exaggerated
(perhaps unhealthy) requirements about the qualities necessary for
“the friend” (since Nietzsche in his time had no close friend), and
given also that his odd life involved no effort to form friendships as a
condition of enjoyment. His skholé, insofar as it involved masochism,
frequently needed romantic pain to generate his strokes of brilliance.
The “friend” was a characteristic for he mobs, the “masses” the happy
one: ideal of the herd (Der Gliickliche: Herdenideal) [...]. How can one
pretend that one has aspired to happiness?”
The second moment [b.1] is the more interesting. What does
Nietzsche mean when he says that “there are no enemies”? Certainly
this is not something we find in the classical Hellenic-Roman tradition,
but it only occurs in the Semitic-Christian-Occidental tradition that
tries to reverse that earlier tradition. In what sense is “enmity” broken
up by the exclamation that “there are no enemies”? It is evident
that Nietzsche, the critic, who “annihilates values,” thought himself
the “enemy” of vulgar society, of the herd, of the prevailing Judeo-
Christian “asceticism” - as the one who reverses the reigning values.
He, the “Antichrist? is the enemy of modern society and his friends
are the enemies of the common people. But the critique is a return to
the origin, to the ontological foundation of “distorted” values. But his
“madness” is not as radical as the one we will seek to realize.
Perhaps the more disconcerting opposition is that which is
established between “the dying sage” [a.2] and “the living fool” [b.2].
But we leave this for later.
iil
 Moreover, this text is the key to the work of Jacques Derrida, in his
book Politiques de lamitié (Politics of Friendship).*° How does Jacques
Derrida interpret this?

2. Fraternity and enmity. The reflection of Jacques Derrida

In the above named work of Derrida, Politics of Friendship, he
assumes the task to think “politics? from a horizon that surpasses
the rationalistic Neo-Kantian tradition in the fashion of political
philosophy (from John Rawls to Jiirgen Habermas, to name two
extremes). Instead of speaking of practical-political reason, of the
contract, or of discursive “agreement,” though without rejecting them,
Derrida attempts to establish the political from the affective bond, from
the pleasurable dimension of the impulses; neurologically it would be
to pay attention to the limbic system more than to the neocortical.
It is not a formal, procedural consideration, but rather runs across the
contents of human political life, the drives, the virtues; that is to say,
the material aspect of politics.*” The unity of the political community
is not reached only by agreements starting from reasons, but also by
friendship that unites citizens in a political whole. At bottom Derrida
pursues the deconstruction of the concept of fraternity, a postulate
of the French Revolution, yielding as fruit a baroque work with a
thousand creases. I think, however, that Derrida gets caught between
these folds and in the end gets lost between them. “The sword is bent,”
(Wittgenstein would say) before its time because, though Derrida
appreciates E. Levinas very much, he never, I think, managed to
understand him, and this deconstruction demonstrates it.
In effect, everything occurs within the ontological horizon — with
two antithetical poles — but it never manages to get beyond the said
horizon toward the metaphysical or ethical limit that from a third pole
would give us the ability to find the solution to the double aporiae
presented with grand erudition (according to the same possibilities of
interpretation of the “fool of Turin”). The work is a dialogue with Carl
Schmitt, through Nietzsche, when, Derrida, upholding as a horizon
the tradition of the treatises on friendship beginning with Aristotle,

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approaches various ways of treating the theme of “friendship” (or
“enmity”), which determines the different ways of understanding the
political, having as a permanent reference the Nietzschean aporiae.
Beginning with the Prologue, however, the question is raised
about what would “then be the politics of such a beyond (au-dela) the
principle of fraternity.» But this “beyond” would be “enmity,” that
which surpasses the horizon of the political field as such. The State,
as a general rule, refers itself to the family, and this to “fratriarchy” -
the brothers who sacrifice the originary father of S. Freud — for “life”
“At the centre of the principle, always, the One does violence to itself,
and guards itself against the other”’; in this consists “the political
crime,’ on the other hand, an inevitable crime within the Derridean
or Nietzschean dialectic.
Carl Schmitt wants to return to the political its strong sense,
material (as will and not as a pure liberal legality), and for this he
opposes to “friendship” “enmity,” remaining permanently though
in a political horizon. This is an enmity that is not a mere physical,
warlike, total crime. The difference between the “political enemy” -
that one yet finds within fraternity - and the “complete enemy” —- who
is outside of the political - is the theme to be clarified. That is to say,
is a certain enmity possible (ontical: a.2, in Diagram 5) from within
the horizon of a friendship (ontological:B.1) that includes it? Is the
political still possible in the face of an enmity (f.2) that is situated
beyond the ontic friend (a.1) and the ontic enemy (a.2)? An ontological
friendship admits the other (the political enemy), at a first level, since
it is within the fraternity, and, at a second level, it no longer admits
such an enemy who is outside of the horizon of ontological fraternity.
Let us observe the expression: “[A.1] Friends, [A.2] there are no
friends!” One possible interpretation is that the first “friends” [A.1]
means all of those who are encountered within ontological fraternity,
the political community as a totality (within the political horizon as
such); the second “there are no friends” [A.2] refers to ontic enemies
(still within the political horizon) based on an ontological fraternity
that allows a certain enmity (of the political opponent) within the
political field as such.
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Diagram 5: Diverse levels of opposition

a.1. Ontic friendship 4.2. Ontic enmity

6.1. Ontological friendship (fraternity) 8.2. Ontological enmity

Ontological Order (Totality)

The first aporia [a] — with respect to the second: “Foes, there are no
foes!” [b] -is traditionally interpreted as the contradiction ofa criticism
of those who ought to be friends (Friends!) [A.1] that they are not true
friends [A.2]. With respect to this interpretation as a private relation
(“my closest friend”), the “best friend” refers to all fellow humans, to
those who are joined together with each other in familiarity, to the
fraternal community of those who are nearby. In the tradition it is
interpreted that the exclamation “there are no friends!” [A.2] refers
to the impossibility of the “perfect friend? because perfect friendship
is only for the gods, which is to say, is empirically impossible. This is
friendship in the Modern sense, where individuality gains importance.
Though still it is “friendship” cultivated by the sages who retreat into
a community (as in Memphis, Egypt) outside of the city in order to
contemplate divine things. This is the philia that unites the souls of
sages (beyond simple éros). Derrida devotes chapter 1 to this theme.
For the classical age, for Plato, Aristotle, or Cicero, “friendship” was
not only intimate or private, but rather it was always situated in the
political horizon, and this still is the perspective of C. Schmitt, whom
Derrida follows. He treats “political friends”, who maintain a certain
public, not private, fraternity, and for whom it might be said that
this does not mean “friends” - in the private sense. What is certain
is that the text permits many possible interpretations (that perhaps
sophistically pleases Derrida).
Moving forward in his reflection, in chapter 2, Derrida now

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unfolds the second aporia that permits him to confront Nietzsche's
texts. “Foes, there are no foes!, shout I, the living fool”. However, in a
way a bit precipitately the second moment of the aporiae [a.2 and b.2]
appears, especially in the second statement: “shout I, the living fool.;
It seems, though, that he does not point out that the question ought
to have been analytically divided. First one would have to analyze the
question of “enmity” (before “friendship”), in order later to reflect
upon the: “thus shouted the dying sage” [a.2] and the “shout J, the
living fool” [b.2]. Derrida works out the second statement, now that
“madness” is a theme already treated by Nietzsche:
That one must be mad, in the eyes of the metaphysician” of
all ages, to wonder how something might rise up out of its
antithesis; to wonder if, for example, truth might be born of
error [...] Anyone who merely dreams of such a possibility
immediately goes mad: this is already a fool."
In that sense Nietzsche is a “fool” who still innovates in the present,
thatis to say, who is “living,” but always from within the same ontological
horizon, which cannot be put in question as it is. In some way he is
the “complete enemy,’ but not as the one who declares war, but as the
one who totally criticizes merely ontic enmity. This “madness” of the
critic is equally a “responsibility”: “I feel responsible towards them (the
new thinkers who are coming), therefore responsible before us who
announce them” -comments Derrida. He continues treating these
themes in chapter 3: “This Mad Truth: the Just Name of Friendship.”
In chapter 4 he refers directly to Carl Schmitt.** He takes up the
suggestion to construct a politics from the “will? as an ontological
“decision” that criticizes liberal “depolitization” of the mere “state of
law” or pure legal reference to the State. Politics is a drama which
establishes itself in the first place, in the Latin contradiction between
inimicus and hostis; in Greek between ekhthrés and polémios. The
amicus is opposed to the inimicus (ekhthrds) or the “private rival,”
even though inadvertently reference is made to a text from the other
cultural tradition (Judeo-Christian), as we shall see later.
For his part, Plato, in the Republic, in book V, distinguishes war to
M5
the death, properly speaking, against the barbarians (pdlemos) and civil
war between the Greek cities (stdsis). Likewise, Schmitt in the end has
three types of enmities: two types of enmity that we have called ontic
{a.2], still split into a “private rivalry” [B.1] and a “public antagonism”
or politics, properly speaking, [B.2] (stdsis), both of which are opposed
to “complete enmity” [8.2] from which one declares war to the death
- moving out from the “political field” and penetrating the “military
field” properly so called.
Fraternity (from phratria) is based in an “equality from birth”
(isogonia), in a “natural equality” (katd phusin), which determines
“equality before the law” (isonomia kata nédmon). The philia of the
indicated isonomtia is the political friendship, fraternity, which is
bound to demokratia.
In chapter 5 he addresses “absolute enmity” (hostis, polémios) or
the war to the death. As much in “political antagonism” as in “absolute
enmity” there is always a reference to an “ontology of the human life?”
because the indicated dramatic character of the political lies in the
perpetual possibility of the loss of life. After all since every citizen is
a possible antagonist in politics (in the second sense indicated, B.2),
there is always the risk of physical death. In this case, one would have
to indicate that it is human life itself that is the ultimate criterion which
establishes the possibility to discern between friend/enemy: the enemy
is the one who can place life in jeopardy up to the limit of murder.
Schmitt, the same as Schopenhaeur, Nietzsche, or Freud, all take their
start from human life, and from it they discover the importance of
Will, and from there they discover the possible material, affective,
drive-directed foundation of politics.
It is worthwhile here to make a detour and add a comment. In
all of these thoughts, there always exists an affirmation of a certain
implicit vitalism (that has been distilled from the reactionary elements
of right, referring me always to Marx or Freud). The fundamental
material question of human life continues to be of importance in the
reflection of Derrida:
Schmitt [...], who names this putting to death unequivocally.

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 He sees in it a sense of ontological origination (...) that one
must recognize in the words enemy and combat; but first of all
and on the backdrop of a fundamental anthropology or on-
tology of human life: it is a combat (...), and every person is a
combatant (...) says Schmitt [...] This does not so much mean
that the being-for-death cannot be separated from a being-
for-putting-to-death or for-death-in-combat.*”
Itisa politics founded in life, but, like all thought of right (including
Heidegger), itis alife “for death.” Itis the danger of death that constitutes
the political field as political, and therefore enmity is more essential
than fraternity (as friendship). Further, we must remember that if the
power of the community is the positive power,* the political field is the
domain where strategic actions are deployed and political institutions
are organized to achieve the reproduction and amplification of life, and
not its contrary. Its contrary, death, recalls the vulnerability of politics,
its limit, the fetishized potestas as domination. Inevitable yes, but it is
not essential because it is inevitable. In the Schmittian pessimism, as
in Machiavelli, Hobbes and so many other modern thinkers, all of this
derives from “hostility”:
Just as hostility is entirely dependent on the real possibility of
this putting-to-death, so also, correlatively, there is no friend-
ship independent of this deadly drive [...] The deadly drive
of the friend/enemy proceeds from life, not from death, not
from some attraction of death by death or for death."
One seeks to affirm life, but always through the detour of death,
and one does not succeed in constructing the categories beginning
with the fundamental category (the power of the community as
a power of life, positively). Fraternity makes itself impossible as a
starting point. The starting point is enmity, because it is “by beginning
with this extreme possibility [friendship vs. enmity] that the life of the
human being acquires its specifically political tension.” The political
acquires its concept in this tension between life and death, between
friendship and enmity. Fraternity only fulfills the first moment, but

117
not the second, as a tension always in danger before death, which like
a sword of Damocles constitutes the (modern) political field as such.
In classical Greek philosophy one spoke, also, of a virtue or habit
that makes the citizen tend to or desire to give to all other participants
of the political whole that which corresponds to them according to
their right (and not according to a selfish inclination): dikaiostine. In
German Christianity, one expressed the same by the adage Justitiam
ad alterum est.** The evolution of this concept of justice, which would
take along time to trace,** would show us that it has not lost its actuality
if it could be understood as a certain discipline of desiring subjectivity
that allows one to place at the disposition of the other members of the
community common goods, over which the power delegated to the
State as an institution ought to be exercised in such a way that there
is an equitable distribution of the means for the reproduction and
amplification of the life of all citizens. A political claim of justice points
to the ultimate term of this question. The classics divided justice into
three types: a) legal justice that is inclined to the fulfillment of the laws
(it would be a discipline of the citizens in the “state of law”); b) justice
which directs from the part to the whole, or productive justice, in which
the members of the society tend economically to work for the ability
to count on having the goods necessary for the reproduction of life;
and, lastly, c) distributive justice, from the whole to the part, by which
the institutionalized community allows citizens to participate in the
common goods of the whole — it is to this which the utilitarianism of
J. Bentham pays special attention. All this is part of that which ought
to be treated regarding the material aspect of politics, the problematic
that ought to be actualized, and surely something of this was of use for
the classical discussions.
One would still have to hold clearly, definitively, that the decisive,
conclusive moment and the end of the fulfillment of the material
principle of politics is satisfaction, or more exactly the consummate
consumption (the expression is of value). When the living corporal
subjectivity physically subsumes and absorbs the material satisfier,
the real thing, it transforms it into its own body. To give “bread to the
hungry” (from the Book of the Dead in chapter 125, which has Osiris
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as a member of the court in the “final judgment” of the goddess Maat
- the later Greek Moira - as fulfillment of an exigency of justice beyond
the mere positive law of the pharaonic economic system of the Nile)
becomes for the ingestion really the corporal subjectivity of the citizen:
“subjectivation of objectivity” Marx wrote correctly:
In the former [the production], the producer reified himself
(versachlichte); in the latter [the consumption], the thing he
produced personifies (personifiziert) itself.
This “personification” of the produced material thing (in the
ecological, economical, or cultural sub-spheres) is the fulfillment by
its material content of the happiness of the citizen, the fundamental
finality of politics. This is still the truth of utilitarianism, inasmuch as
happiness is the verification or subjective resonance of corporeality
reconstituted in its vitality and felt as pleasure, enjoyment. Politics
does not hold feeding only as a condition (Aristotle placed, in this
sense, agriculture as the condition of the possibility of the existence
of the polis), but as an accomplishment of the essence of politics
in so far as it effectuates reproductive action (permanence) and
amplification (development) of human life (now that in the cultural
level the possibility of the quantitative and qualitative deployment of
life does not have limits and can always improve: endless creation of
new human necessities and therefore a demand for new production
toward , future, more excellent satisfactions). Material political reason
discovers the practical truth of physical and cultural reality as much
as it is manageable; the fraternal unifies wills materially, but, in the
end, in order to be able to live fully the contents of human life. We have
thus described the material moment of the political common good (the
objective of the political claim of justice and the finality that precedes
and directs political practice), and this material moment also calls for
a formal democratic legitimacy, and, lastly, a real factical possibility to
complete all its minimum components.**
We turn then, after this commentary, to the work of Derrida.
To distinguish between the “political opponent” (B.2 of a.2) and
the “complete enemy” (8.2) is to be able to distinguish between the
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political (fraternal “antagonism”) and the military (pure “hostility”).
The political becomes apparent within fraternity in antagonistic
tension, within the fraternity that impedes murder - which signifies
the discipline of knowing how to exercise isonomia. But it requires
of itself a greater dramatic character than the depoliticized reference
to an indifferent system of law with which it is necessary to comply
externally and legally. Therefore, the mere liberal “state of law” can
be put in question as a “state of exception”: which thus would
additionally show the Will to be prior to the Law.
In chapter 6 he deals with the political in the situation of armed
struggle.** It would seem to be located, like the Spanish resistance
to the Napoleonic invasion at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, between the “political opponent” and the “complete enemy:’
“Revolutionary war” or “subversive war” is clearly not elucidated,
since Schmitt, as well as Derrida, lacks sufficient categories (as we
will see later), and therefore such war is often taken for “the most
unfortunate tragedy of fratricide”* Everything concludes completely
only in face of the evidence of the confrontation of “true brothers
[against] true enemies” while one wonders in doubt: “On biblical or
Hellenic ground?”™
It is here where, without more prelude, Derrida moves additionally
to the second moments (a.2: “the dying sage’, and b.2: “the living fool”)
without taking advantage ofits reference.** He ought to have wondered:
Why discuss a “dying sage”? Derrida never explains this fact well. In
reference to the second moment (b.2), it remains hidden and without
solution in all the work of Derrida, since he does not explain clearly
why it is living madness to decree that the aforementioned enmity has
ceased existing. From what horizon does enmity disappear and the
enemy become transformed into the “friend”? This enigma does not
have a solution for Derrida (because he does not even discover it as
an enigma).
In the same way, he “leaps” abysmally to another completely distinct
tradition, the Semitic, bringing with it a collation texts of highest
complexity (which would require other hermeneutic categories than
those used up to that moment) and this even though the quotations
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are never hermeneutically explained (quotations that, paradoxically,
form a part of the best of Nietzsche's verbal expressions of great beauty,
but perhaps still incomprehensible for Nietzsche). These Semitic texts
(now that the poetry of Theodor Daubler*’ has its roots in Hebraic
lineage) refer to the second aporia of the Nietzschean enigma (b]. This
text cited by Derrida, similar to that of Nietzsche, opposes friendship
to enmity (in contrast to Aristotle who only speaks of friendship),
but it treats an amazing statement, that goes far beyond the same
Nietzschean text. He puts it this way:
Cursed is the one who has no friends, because his enemy will
take a seat on the tribunal to judge him. Cursed he who has
no enemy, because IJ will be, I, his enemy on the day of final
judgment.
Derrida (and likewise Nietzsche) circles around this question so
enunciated, but, I repeat, he cannot resolve it. The other text, that
only refers to enmity, unthinkable for Aristotle, and that Nietzsche
expresses in the second aporia [b] of his statement, is encountered
again within the Semitic tradition (so detested by Zarathustra):
Thave heard you say: Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I tell you: Love your enemies.**

We cannot follow “the goings and comings” of Derrida in chapters 7

to 10, where he treats the positions of other authors such as Montaigne,
Augustine, Diogenes Laertes, Michelet, Heidegger, etc. The question
remains posed, in its foundation, in the fact that fraternity in the
political community is impaled upon a contradiction that fractures
it: the line passes between friend/enemny. It is not the complete enemy,
the hostis; it is only the inimicus in the public sense (the Greek stasis)
of fraternity, within the Whole of the community. But this fragmented
fraternity, in addition to being defectively phallo-logo-centric, has
nothing to do with sisterhood (sisterhood with the sister) but rather
patriarchal fratrocracia.
Wishing to think the Nietzschean enigma, Derrida gets lost, does
not clarify, gets bogged down, does not advance:

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 That saying which Aristotle often repeated is, then, indeed one
of someone who is saying — his last will and testament — al-
ready speaking from the place of death. A testamentary wis-
dom to which must be opposed, even at the price of madness,
the exclaiming insurrection of the living present. The dying
person addresses friends, speaking of friends to them, if only
to tell them there are none. As for the living person, he ad-
dresses enemies, speaking to them of enemies, if only to tell
them there are none. The dying person dies, turning towards
friendship; the living person lives on, turning towards enmity.
Wisdom on the side of death, and the past came to pass: the
being-past of the passer-day. Madness on the side of life and
the present is: the presence of the present.*

He does not clearly demonstrate the meaning of “wisdom,” why it

confronts “death, and why friendship dwells in that horizon. Less still
does he demonstrate of which “madness” he is speaking (as a negation
of wisdom in the face of death, and therefore of the other wisdom in
the face of life, distinct from that of which Nietzsche speaks), and why
in the horizon of “living” the enemy disappears. All this remains in an
intelligent, suggestive shadow, but this does not resolve the enigma.
The deconstruction of Derridean fraternity, which nevertheless
can be useful to us as a first ontological moment (not being able to
radicalize the negativity and less to advance the subsequent positive
construction), unfolds, as we have said, opposing Schmitt, therefore:
Let the political itself, the being-political of the political, arise
in its possibility with the figure of the enemy. This is the Sch-
mittian axiom in its most element form. “The political itself,
the being-political of the political, arises in its possibility with
the figure of the enemy. It would be unfair, as is often done,
to reduce Schmitt’s thought to this axiom, but it would nev-
ertheless be indispensable to his thought, and also to his de-
cisionism, his theory of the exception and sovereignty. The
disappearance of the enemy would be the death knell of the
political as such. It would mark the beginning of depoliticiza-
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 tion (Entpolitisierung)?”

Itis evident that Schmitt, as also Nietzsche, Derrida, and Modernity

in general, understand political power as domination, and the political
field is structured by a “Will to Power, which orders this field on
the basis of forces organized by the sole criterion of friends versus
enemies. It will be necessary to overcome this radically.

3. Solidarity: Beyond fraternity

We must proceed by analytically resolving each one of the steps in
order to be able to reach better precision.
In the first place, the first aporia [a] is encountered in that which
we wish to designate an “ontological order” - like the “world” of
M. Heidegger in Being and Time. The “friend” and the “sage” are
placed within the horizon of the “understanding of being,” as in the
illuminated space in the middle of the forest when the woodcutters
have cut a good number of trees (the Lichtung of the Black Forest
around Freiburg). The “friend” in fraternity [a.1] is the one who lives
the unity in the Whole (of the family, of the political community). In
this sense friendship is nonetheless ambiguous: a member ofa “band
of thieves” is able to love with the love of friendship (with mutual
benevolence) and to struggle for the common good of the band. The
totality remains affectively united for fraternity, but this has no other
measure than the grounds of the whole: being not only understood
but also equally desired. Therefore, the exclamation of “Friends!” [A.1]
refers to those who are joined and who can receive nonetheless the
inevitable reproach from the one who searches for “perfect friendship”
to verify that “there are no friends” [A.2]. We have not moved beyond
the ontological order.
In the same way, in the second moment [a.2], the one who
“understands being” is the sage, the one who knows the totality. He
has the farsightedness of the system; he relies on the triumphant
tradition, that of the past. The future will be a repetition of what is
already achieved. Wisdom is contemplation of “the Same,’ it is not
novelty, it approximates death. The ontological sage is always “facing
death” (in Heidegger, in Freud, in Schmitt). The death of each one
permits the permanence of being in the unity of the community for
fraternity.
In the second place, the second aporia [b] is obligatory within
the horizon of “being.” “War (pédlemos) is the origin of all” said
Heraclitus.** How is it that “being” is able to be determinate if it does
not take account of the original “opposite”: “non-being”? Friendship is
unthinkable for ontology without enmity. This perfectly explains the
Hellenic position, and equally that of Carl Schmitt, in the exclamation
of the first moment: “Foes!” [B.1]. Up to this point everything turns in
accord with Greek and Modern ontological logic.
But there soon appears a discordant, incomprehensible, unexpected
moment: “there are no foes!” [B.2] Because if “there are no friends”
[A.2], then inevitably “there are foes.” But if there are not enemies
either, then one falls into an irrational cul-de-sac without any exit from
the domain of ontology. In effect, that “there are no foes” dislocates
ontology, contradicts the position of Heraclitus and of Schmitt. If
there are no “enemies” there is no wisdom (which stands out from
“being” in the face “non-being”), nor is there being-for-death,* and
not even fraternity, because this supposes the unity of the community
against the stranger, the other, the enemy (hostility in ontology is the
other side of fraternity). How has it occurred to Nietzsche to place this
negation in opposition to friendship? From what tradition does this
disconcerting intuition arise?’ Derrida cites — in a sense contrary to
the thought of Nietzsche” - a text of the Semitic tradition that begins
to weaken “enmity,” but this supposes a complete collapse, a radical
overcoming of ontology, a going beyond “being. The text starts by
affirming fraternity, but concludes by diluting enmity; at the least it
opens a door for its annihilation:
“You have heard it said: [a.1 and B.1]*? Love your neighbor
(plesion) and [a.2 and 6.2] hate your enemy (ekhthron) [i]. But
I tell you: Love (agapate) your enemies [ii]? 373

This negation of the negativity of the “private rival? of the “political

124
opponent” and of “absolute hostility” (of the enemy to death in war),
means that the “ontological order” [i] is transcendend as such, and
therefore the experience of the “enemy” occurs (the Samaritans were
enemies of the Jews, though of a second level, in [a.1], as “antagonistic”
brother within the people of Israel) on the basis of a type of supra-
fraternity,” of “love” (agape) in that which Other is constituted on the
outside of its ontical-ontological function as “enemy, from a trans-
ontological, metaphysical, or ethical order, in which “enmity” has
been dismantled.
In the Semitic world’* an ethical experience unknown in the
Greco-Roman world appears, and it is constituted philosophically in
the quasi-phenomenological analysis of E. Levinas in the Modern-
Western tradition. The “neighbor” of whom he speaks in the cited text
is the one who is revealed in “proximity” (face-to-face, in Hebrew: N
[panim el panim)]), that is to say, the immediate, the non-mediated,
as in the nudity of the erotic contact of the “mouth-to-mouth”:
“who kisses me with the kisses of his mouth.” This experience of
“subjectivity-to-subjectivity,’ of living corporalities “skin-to-skin,” as
an originary philosophical category, does not exist in Greco-Roman
or Modern thought. In the midrash of the founder of Christianity
called by the tradition that of the “good Samaritan, the Samaritan is
called “good” because he establishes this experience of the face-to-face
with those robbed, injured, or abandoned outside the path (outside of
the ontological Totality). For the Samaritan the “neighbor” is thrown
outside the path, into Exteriority: the Other. And we must not forget
that the Samaritans were the “enemies” of the tribe of Judah.
Like philosophy, effecting a political hermeneutics of a symbolic
text,” I will take this midrash as an example of a narrative or ethical-
rational tale** constructed by this Semitic master in the face of the
question: “Who is my neighbor?”* which could be better translated
as: “Who is he who confronts the Other in the face-to-face?”, or even:
“Who establishes the subject-subject relation as proximity?” In the
face of this question, that subtle, methodical expert in critical ethical-
rational categories, answers it, structuring a narration with pedagogical
intention, which contains the “story” of a socio-political tale.
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 On the road “a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and some
bandits attacked him.” The hermeneutic situation departs first of all
from the “established system,” “totality” ( the Jewish political system,
the road) and a victim (“attacked him, stripped him, pounded him
with sticks”). There was the victim of the attack “on the side of” the
road, of the order, of the system, in the “exteriority” of the political,
established, legitimate totality. With a profound, critical sense, that
does not exist in the “myth of Plato's cave;*! this rabbi (methodical
master of critical rhetoric) makes the most prestigious of the social
and political order of Israel first pass along the road: “a priest passed?
one who was going to the temple in fulfillment of the Law. And ina
critical, ironic, brutal way it is expressed that the victim interpellates
the “scribe” (jurist): “seeing him, he took a detour and passed him by’
The totalization of the Totality, of the system in which he finds himself,
formally fulfilling the Law, impedes him from opening himself to the
socio-political exteriority of the victim.’ For better provocation still,
(much more than the Nietzschean Zarathustra), the story turns to the
tribe of Levi, the most venerated by the Jerusalem elite: “a Levite did the
same,’ that is, one who also ought to fulfill the Law. That is to say, the
sages, the best, the legalists, the most venerated of the system could
not assume responsibility for the victim, for the Other. The legitimate
horizon of the reigning system clouds their minds or impedes them
from taking a step “outside” of it, outside of the Law (since one can
end up being impure and this would keep them from fulfilling their
required worship). The despised according to the table of values of
the positive system, the one who was outside the Law, a Samaritan (a
barbarian for a Greek, a Gaul for a Roman, an infidel for a Medieval
Christian or a Mahommedan, a slave or an Indian in early Modernity,
a lumpen proletarian in capitalism, a Sunni in Iraq for a marine, etc.)
further the irony, the scathing critique, the subversive intention of
values: “upon seeing him, he felt solidarity for him, approached
him and bound up his wounds [...]”. These texts have not been taken
seriously by contemporary political philosophy, neither in the United
States nor Europe. However, it is the most revolutionary thought
that we have been able to observe in the history of Western politics,
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impossible for Greek or Roman politics even to think.
The concept of plesios (the nearby one or the “near” one, neighbor),
or plesidzo (to come near or “to be made near”), in Greek does not
indicate adequately the Hebrew reduplicative of “face-to-face” (panim
elpanim). In this case, it is the empirical immediacy of two human faces
confronting each other, which, when it “is revealed” in the suffering
of the victim, to that degree appeals to the political responsibility for
the Other and requires the overcoming of the horizon of Totality (the
“going outside of the path” that has been established).
This ethical-political position is not a stoic therapy of the desires
in order to reach subjective peace (for nothing else like apdtheia is
ataraxia), but rather the simple and direct “public-political therapy
from the point of view of the Other” (“he bound his wounds, pouring
oil and wine in them”); so life goes for the one who dangerously risks
getting involved for the Other.
The foundational categories of a critical politics are then two.
[i] The “established order” (“of this world”: ek totitou tots késmon),
Totality, as what is presupposed in order to be deconstructed; and
{ii] the horizontal transcendence of historical temporality as political
exteriority, future in time (“I do not belong to this world”: otk eimi ek
tou késmou totiton)**: Exteriority. The “Law” structures the “established
order” (“this order” or “world”) and is necessary. But when the “Law”
kills it is necessary not to fulfill it, because the spirit” of the law is life.
Abraham had to kill his son Isaac — in accord with the practice of the
“Law” of the Semites and with the strict practice in the Phoenecian
towns of Tyre and Carthage — but Abraham himself, evading the law
for love of his son (Anti-Oedipus), searches for a way to replace him
with an animal (according to an interpretation of one Jewish tradition,
in which Jeshua was included, in opposition to the dogmatic position
of the priests of the temple who affirmed that Abraham perhaps killed
his son to fulfill the Law and who were the enemies of Jeshua). Before
the authority of the “Law,” Jeshua accuses the very court that judged
him:
If you were sons of Abraham you would comport yourselves

127
 like him. On the other hand, you are trying to kill me [...] Ab-
raham did not do this® [...] Do we not have reason to say that
you are a Samaritan?” [exclaimed the members of the Sanhe-
drin...] 1am not crazy®*' [the accused defends himself].

The “Law” gives life when the order is just. When it represses the
possibility of novelty the Law kills. Therefore, that which is constructed
from the challenge of victims who interpellate from the exteriority
[ii] (proving by its mere socio-political existence the injustice of “this
world” [i], the established order), from the project of a new order that
“js not of this world” (that is historical, really possible, more just: it is
the postulate that Marx explains in the economic field as a “Reign of
Liberty, and that Kant explains as a “regulative idea” in his “ethical
Community”) is beyond the Law that kills. Jacques Lacan introduces
the theme by making the Law in some way the equivalent of the Ueber-
Ich (superego), when in his Seminar on The ethics of psychoanalysis®
he explains:
In effect, with the reservation of one very small modification
- Thing in place of sin -, this is the discourse of Paul with re-
gard to the relations of the Law and sin, Romans 7:7. Beyond
what is thought in certain media of these sacred authors, it
would be mistaken to believe that the sacred authors do not
have a good reading.

This has produced recently

in political philosophya rereading
of Paul
of Tarsus,** which allows us nonetheless to invert the interpretation
now in fashion. In general it is understood that the Law, as formal
obligation, denies desire, and in the degree to which this desire
presses to fulfillment sin appears, which Bataille takes as a foundation
of eroticism (as occurs in the enjoyment of the transgression of the
Law). Nonetheless, with Hinkelammert, I feel obliged to interpret the
relation of Paul of Tarsus in an inverted way. The fulfillment of the
Law produces death, for example of Steven in Jerusalem, because he
was stoned for not having fulfilled the Law - and Paul looks after the
clothes of the murdered. It is the Law that required Abraham fo kill

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his son. Paul, in fulfilling the Law persecuted the Christians; that is
to say, the Law produced death. It was thus necessary, in the name of
Life, not to fulfill the letter of the Law that kills (but to fulfill its spirit).
The death that produces the Law, when it has become fixed, entropic,
is oppression of the dominated. In this way, to free oneself from the
Law is to affirm Life, or, better, to affirm a Law of Life — that supposes
the transformation of the formalist fulfillment of the Law. The Life of
Nietzsche is the originary life of the system itself, it is never the Life
of the oppressed, of the excluded, of the victim, of the weak in the
exteriority of the system dominated by “the Aryan warrior.”
In the same way we can now point to the essence of solidarity
(beyond the mere fraternity of the Law, in the system as totalized
totality as domination). In effect, the “Enemy!” [B.1, a.2, or 8.2] can
be the mere “enemy” of the “friend” in and of the Totality [i] (be it
ontic, functional, or ontological). But for “the Other? that which
situates itself beyond the flourishing system, in its Exteriority [ii],
this “enemy” is not his enemy. In the Code of Hammurabi, which is
constituted from the horizon of a Semitic metaphysics,” which is not
that of the Roman law as studied by G. Agamben, because it is so
complex and critical, it is expressed:
So that the strong do not oppress the poor, in order to create
justice for the orphan and the widow, in Babylon [...] Let the
oppressed affected in a process come before my statue of the
King of Justice and be made to read” my written stele“
The “enemy” of the “strong” is the poor, insofar as they are potential
possessors of the goods of the strong, given the state of necessity in
which they find themselves. The orphan is the competitor of the proper
son; the widow is the enemy of the one who desires to appropriate
the goods of her deceased spouse — that is the theme of the Code
of Hammurabi. That is to say, the “enemies” of the dominators of
the system, of totality [i], are not necessarily the “enemies” of the
dominated, of the oppressed, of the excluded [ii]. These, the excluded
and dominated, cry out now comprehensibly (but they are discovered
neither by Nietzsche nor by Derrida): “Enemies [of the system], there

129
are no enemies [for us]!, because we ourselves are the enemies of the
system!”

Diagram 6: The two orders of fraternity and solidarity

Face-to-Face

Totality (the Same, the Law} Exteriority, the Other, Life

Ontological Ethical-metaphysical

order order

of of

fraternity solidarity

(equality {alterity

liberty) eration)

"flesh" (sarx) “word” (logés)

Now the cited text of Derrida is completely cleared up, since he

himself does not achieve clarity in his commentaries. Now we have
equally two moments; but he introduces in the first [1] the opposition
friend-enemy (and not only to the friend as in [a.1]); and, in the second,
he distinguishes between two types of enemies [2]:
[1] Cursed he who has no friends [1.a], because his enemy seats
himself in court to judge him [1.b].
[2] Cursed he who has no enemy [2.a], because I will be, I, his
enemy on the day of final judgment [2.b].
‘The first moment [1] treats the totalized order of the flesh [i]. From
the point of view of the flourishing morality, one has to have friends in
order to have a defense, possibilities of success, when one is surrounded
by intrasystemic enemies [1.b], in an empirical judgment.

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 The second moment [2] is upsetting for the ontological order: the
one who has not known how to have enemies is cursed [2.a]. But, what
class of enemies is this? Now it treats those enemies which are caused
by one’s solidarity by one’s trans-ontological friendship with the poor,
the orphan and the widow, with the Other, with the unprotected in
inhospitable rough weather, in Exteriority of power [ii], of the Law,
of wealth... The one who establishes the relation of solidarity, who is
cordial with the miserable (miseri-cordia, compassion) surpasses the
fraternity of friendship in the system [a.1-6.1 ini] and endangers herself
in opening herself to the wide field of Alterity that originates because
of a pre-ontological “responsibility for the Other?” Metaphysical or
ethical solidarity is prior to the deployment of the (ontological) world
as a horizon wherein one “decides” to help or not the Other. But the
one who helps the Other, in an empirical realization of solidarity,
does not avoid that the fact that she was always already responsible
for the Other before. The one who does not help him betrays that pre-
ontological responsibility. In a way there will then be an a priori pre-
ontological solidarity and a trans-ontological empirical effecting of the
solidarity it makes concrete: “Give bread to the hungry” (from the
Egyptian Book of the Dead).
In the system, the face for the Other presents itself before the court
of Law of this system, which always declares it guilty (because of
defending the enemy of the system). The defense of the defenseless,
because of solidarity, leaves the tutor of the orphan as responsible
before this court of the system and as occupying the place of the victim
(by substitution) in his defense; she is his witness (marttis):she gives the
testimony of the innocence of the Other. The former enemies of the one
responsible in solidarity are not now her enemies [y.2], and her former
friends {a.1-B.1] in the system (when they were exploiting in fraternity
the poor, the orphan, and the widow) are now her new enemies. Now
her new friends have been won for a new type of friendship: solidarity
with the Other, with the oppressed, with the excluded [y.1].

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Diagram 7: Friendship, Enmity, Fraternity, and Solidarity

Jotalzed friendship: ‘raternty [0.1-6.1] rea

Enmity in the totality [a.2-6.2]
Wisdom of the sages
(Court of th s)
The formalism of the Law

The traitor-witness (martys), the messiah {meshiakh) [y 3]

(Enemy of the pewerfu' [i], friend of the weak [if], living fool)

He who was a friend [a.1-8.1] held the poor, the orphan and the
widow, as his radical enemies [y.2]. It is now a different enmity from
the mere enmity in the system [a.2-8.2]. The enemy in the system can
be a competitor in the marketplace, an opposing political party, and
even a foreign enemy in war. But all those enemies affirm the Same
[i].
On the contrary, the poor, the exploited, the excluded support
the system from below. It is those who, if they withdraw, the system
falls to pieces. They are the radical enemies of the system in alterative
exteriority [y.2]. Now, the one who has negated the enmity of former
enemies, exclaims: “Enemies? [of the dominant perhaps, but, for the
victims, among themselves] there are no enemies!” (transforming
the statements [B.1] and [B.2]). The exploited and excluded who
were from the start the enemies, are not now enemies: the opening in
solidarity to the Other dismisses the former enmity for an alterative
friendship: solidarity [y.1]. Upon establishing solidarity with them
now, the situation with respect to former friends of the dominant
system has been transformed into something distinct: now this one
is a traitor who deserves to be judged as guilty [S], and for a greater
contradiction in the court which intends to condemn this one, he or
she must testify in favor of the Other (the enemy of the same court),

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taking, on the day of judgment, interior to the system, the place of the
Other, of the exploited, of the accused whom he or she now defends
and for whom he or she substitutes.
Whereas the judge of the transcendental [E]*” or ethical-
metaphysical tribunal, curses, criticizes all those who have not made
themselves enemies within the system [2.a], who are the enemies of
the poor and oppressed (and who are the dominators of the system);
enemies who “throw themselves on top of” “the one who is in solidarity
with the Other, with the exploited and the excluded. The one who has
not transformed former friends in the system into enemies, shows
that he or she continues considering as enemies the poor, the Other,
and in this it is manifest that he or she is a dominator. And therefore
he or she will be declared guilty on the day of transcendental ethical-
political justice: “T will be, 1, your enemy on the day of final judgment”
(2.b]. As we have said, the “final judgment” of Maat is the metaphor of
“ethical-political conscience in solidarity” which has for its universal
criterion the requirement of the negation of enmity towards the poor
(“Give bread to the hungry”); the poor who is always a latent danger
for the rich, the powerful, the order strengthened “with its blood”
(in Judaic or Aztec metaphors). The “myth of Osiris,’ celebrated in
African Memphis (twenty centuries before the ontological “myth
of Prometheus” chained to the Totality), and even its corollary (the
“Adamic myth’, which Paul Ricoeur studies in his work The Symbolism
of Evil, in times that I took his classes from the beginning of the 60s
in The Sorbonne of Paris) lie at the origin of the ethical critical myths
of the ancient Mediterranean, from whence proceeds Athens and
Jerusalem.
The court of the system [S] judges according to the formalism of the
Law" of totality [i]. The other ethical-metaphysical, transcendental,
or alterative court [E], judges critically from the life of the victim,
that is to say, according to the criteria of the oppressed and excluded,
and therefore founds the new and future system of law [ii]. Before
this ultimate court (which is the critical consensus of the community
of the oppressed and excluded; it is the plebs which amounts to the
consensus popoli of Bartolomé de las Casas"), “on the day of final
133
judgment” (which acts as a postulate which establishes a criterion of
orientation, logically thinkable, but empirically impossible to realize
perfectly, and which since the beginning has exercised its function in
all acts of justice that are fulfilled according to the requirements that
the necessities of the Other, of the poor, of the orphan, of the widow
establish), the traitor is very similar to the one Walter Benjamin
describes as the one who irrupts in the “now-time” (Jetzt-zeit) as the
“meshiakh? The messiah is the cursed and the traitor from the point
of view of former friends in the dominant system: the messiah has
turned into their enemy, not an ontic one [a.2], but an enemy much
more radical still than Derrida’s “absolute or ontological enemy” [6.2]
(the barbarian on whom one has made war to the death). It is Miguel
Hidalgo, whom a court with a majority of criollos (white Mexicans)
condemned to death (for having raised up an army of Indians and
slaves) in 1810. The Other is the “radical enemy” [y.2] because the
Other demands of the system, of the totality [i], a complete inversion
of its sense: the Other is the metaphysical enemy; the Other demands
the transformation of the system as fotality.
I think that now it is understood of whom it is said, “Cursed is
he who has no enemy!” [2.a]. That one is cursed in the eyes of the
Judge who judges on the basis of the Alterity of the poor, of the Other,
simply because the cursed one has lived in complicity with the system,
exploiting and excluding “the poor, the orphans, and the widows’, the
Other. This cursed one does not have to have been persecuted and
does not have to have had enemies; it is the sufficient sign (that one
should be judged) to have negated solidarity and to have maintained
oneself in the dominating fraternity. And because this cursed one has
done nothing for the weak, then he or she will be judged as guilty
before the ethical-metaphysical alterative court of history.
This introduces the last theme, perhaps as unclear in Nietzsche as in
Derrida. It treats the second moment [b.2] of the second Nietzschean
aporia: “Shout I, the living fool” Here, moreover, enters the entire
essential theme for the philosophy of all times.
It treats of the opposition between the “wisdom of the sage” (sophia
tén sdphon)** as being-for-death (wisdom in the dominant system,
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that is to say, “wisdom of the flesh”* [sophia sarxha])*” [a.2], and
the “critical knowledge,’ that is “madness for the system” (mora tou
késmou)” as being-for-life [b.2]. The messiah of W. Benjamin was the
“fool” before the wisdom of the system. In all the commentary Derrida
never gives a clear explanation of this dialectical opposition. I think
that now we have sufficient categories to understand the question.
The “consensus of the excluded” [ii] is “wisdom” as exteriority
(logos, dabar)."” When that critical consensus forms-—the consensus
that delegitimates the “state of law,” which as the Will of the oppressed
(ina “state of rebellion”) puts in question the same “state of exception”
(of C. Schmitt), where the word critically breaks in upon the prevailing
system of domination: the “word [ii] made flesh [i]”*" (enters into
the Totality, the flesh, destructuring the system of domination). The
meshiakh of W. Benjamin now justifies with an anti-systemic wisdom
(“madness” of the Totality), against the “wisdom of the sages,” the
former friends, a new wisdom, namely that of the enemies of the
system in their liberating praxis, those who are no longer the enemies
of the meshiakh.
Hidalgo, one of the priestly class, of the white race and in the
position of dominator, struggles against the same elite to whom he
had belonged, in a war for anti-colonial Emancipation. His reasons
sounded to the ears of his former friends (the Viceroyal authorities
who persecuted him militarily, the bishops who excommunicated him,
and the criollos who condemned him to death) as senseless madness,
unjustified rebellion, betrayal of the lese majesté. The empirical fact
involves the death of the innocent one, of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla,
who, taking solidarity as presupposed, discovers himself as already
always responsible for the Other, and he is the fool hostage in the
hands of the system. To this event, the death of the innocent guilty of
solidarity, E. Levinas gives the name of the revelation in history of “the
glory of the infinite” — a theme about which we argued for a long time
with A. Putnam in the professor's dining room of Harvard University
at some time.
We treat here, then, a central moment of Politics of Liberation,
namely, the moment in which the community of the oppressed and
135
excluded, the plebs*" (messianic people in W. Benjamin’s sense“), from
the exteriority of the system of power of those who “order ordering”
(as the ELZN, the Zapatistas, express it), tend to constitute from below
an alternative Power, that of the new people (populus), constructed
from the “madness” of a dominating system. The wisdom of the critical
sage, popular wisdom of those “from below,” has been able to unfold,
to express thanks for its previous subjective “liberation” against the
system of domination on the basis of the power of solidarity, love,
friendship for the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger.
Such wisdom is already suggested by the system of law that includes
its contradiction (the victims of the Law), exemplified in the Code of
Hammurabi, that Semitic king of Babylon, a city whose ruins are near
the present Baghdad, destroyed by the barbarians at the beginning of
the twenty-first century, enemies of all the wretched of the Earth.
And with Nietzsche, against Nietzsche, we can exclaim at the end
that only when those “condemned” enemies of the dominators of the
world free themselves, then, and only then “there will come the more
joyful hour”
It is still worth one last reflection on a work that has lasted four
hundred years (1605-2005). In Don Quixote de la Mancha, the first
novel of Modernity according to literary critics, the “Cide Hamete
Benengeli, Arabian and Manchegan author,’ whispered into the ear
of Miguel de Cervantes," that don Quixote disappears in readings of
fiction, and that “for these reasons the poor knight lost his judgment
[...] staying awake to understand them and to get to the bottom of
their meaning, though Aristotle himself would not have unraveled
them or understood them,”* And it is thus that he fell into madness.
In chapter xxii of the First Part, “Of the liberty that gave Don
Quixote to many unhappy people,’ it is recounted that some soldiers
and twelve prisoners “strung together as links in a grand iron chain”
came down the path bound for the galleys, those who were “subjugated
people of the king” About which Don Quixote asks: “Is it possible that
the king uses force on no people?” And worriedly he reflects: “However
it might be, these people, though they are conducted along, come by
force, and not of their will. -Thus it is— says Sancho. —Then, in this
136
way- says his master [Quixote] - here one captures the execution of
my office: to maintain one’s force and to succor and to attend to the
miserable.’ Sancho remarks that “justice [...] is the same king””"*
Quixote brings it about that the soldiers allow him to ask each one
about “the cause of his disgrace.” After lengthy questions and answers
exchanged with each one of the prisoners, Quixote concludes:
Everything that represents itself to me now in memory [thanks
to the tale of the criminals] [appears] in such a manner that
it is speaking to me, persuading me, and even forcing me to
show you the effect for the sake of which heaven hurled me
to the earth and compelled me to make my profession in the
order of the knight that I profess, and J took a vow in this pro-
fession to favor the needy and those oppressed by the greater
ones.*”

Quixote, throwing himself against the soldiers, freed the prisoners.

One of the liberated, thanking the bold madness** of the knight,
exclaims: “Our lord and liberator [...and not] to think that we have to
return now to the fleshpots of Egypt, | say, to take up our chains and to
set out on the path [...toward the ancient prison].”
The author of Don Quixote de la Mancha, that great critic of the
system of his time, shows the injustices at the very beginning of
Modernity through the madness of that apparently anachronistic
knight. It was a way of showing the madness of solidarity in front of
the fraternal rationality of the established order!
4, The Liberatory Event in Paul of Tarsus

With the following discussion we hope to rethink a very timely

subject for political philosophy in recent years. For epistemological
reasons, however, we must deal in a different way with some themes
common to the philosophy currently in vogue in Europe and the
United States.
Today, political philosophy has unexpectedly taken up a subject
which had been ignored since the Enlightenment. Kant himself, in
Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason,‘” addressed the subject
with some degree of precision. In The Conflict of the Faculties, he
distinguished clearly between the tasks of the Faculty of theology
and the Faculty of philosophy.” In his time, the great university
Faculties (or disciplines) - both those of Latin-Germanic Europe and
those in the Byzantine and Muslim worlds - had always consisted
of theology and law. It was only with the Enlightenment that the
Faculty of philosophy (and above all with the Humboldt’s founding
of the University of Berlin) would gain the status of the fundamental
Faculty within the university. In an Appendix’! to chapter 1 of the
latter work, Kant sketches out the conflict between the Faculties of
theology and philosophy as a question of “interpretations.” For the
philosopher from K6nigsberg, “the biblical theologian is, properly
speaking, he who is learned in the Scripture (der Schriftgelehrte) of
the Church’s faith?’ while with regard to Scripture (or the “Bible”)
the philosopher “is he who is learned in reason (der Vernunftgelehrte)
. .. based on the internal laws that can be deduced from the very
reason of each human being?*”’ And after an extensive argument
he concludes that, “this is how one must conduct all interpretations
of Scripture (Schriftauslegungen)”** - that is, of the texts of Judeo-
Christian Scripture (and the same could be said of the Egyptian Book
of the Dead, the Indian Upanishads, the corpus of Buddhist texts, the
Islamic Qur'an, or other texts considered sacred, and often held to
be direct revelation, by their respective communities). Within the

138
structure of the university, scripture resides within the Faculty of
theology (in Germano-Anglo-Saxon universities at least, because in
Latin Europe these faculties would disappear from public universities
for well-known historic reasons). Within the Faculty of philosophy
- since the Enlightenment - one could teach with reference to texts
consisting of extensive, symbolically-based rational narratives like
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey or Hesiod’s Theogony, which are religious
texts “full of gods,’ but which were nevertheless considered suitable
for philosophical interpretation. On the contrary, it was strictly
forbidden to philosophically use or interpret texts from the Judeo-
Christian Bible such as Exodus, the Gospel of John, or Paul of Tarsus’s
Epistle to the Romans, as though these were intrinsically theological.
The present task is to haul out these moth-eaten symbolic narratives
(considered “theological” by enlightened Jacobin secularism) which
are housed and studied in the Faculty of theology, and to situate them
for the first time within the Faculty of philosophy as well. This would
entail subjecting these texts to a hermeneutics, a “strictly philosophical”
interpretation. And yet, going beyond Kant’s meditations on the
subject, we wish to clarify the question in a different and more precise
manner.
In the first place, a) since they belong to everyday languages of
the past, these symbolic, religious, and even in some cases mystical
texts, ought to be defined as: “symbolically-based rational narratives,’
in the sense that they constitute myths, as Paul Ricoeur defines the
term.” These narratives, in the second place, can undergo a double-
hermeneutic or interpretation: on the one hand, b.1) theological,
that is, and as Kant indicated, executed from a position of subjective
conviction (what we could call “religious faith”), and c.1) with
reference to a religious community (what Kant calls a “Church’). Or,
on the other hand, b.2) philosophically, to take up these symbolically-
based rational texts or narratives toward the goal of discovering their
full rational meaning and the implicit theoretical-universal categories
embedded within them (what Kant terms “concepts established
through reason”"”*), a process which occurs c.2) with reference to a
secular community.
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Diagram 8: Various Methods of Interpreting a Rational Symbolic
Narrative

a. Text (when we are dealing with a rational symbolic

b.1 Theologica! interpretation b.2 Philosophical interpretation

| b.2.a Philosophical theology b.2.B Political philosophy

c.1 For a community ¢.2.¢ For a philosophical ¢.2.B For a political

community
of believers community

In our case, then, we are dealing with the philosophical interpretation

(b.2) of a text (a.) as an activity in relation to a political community
(c.2.8), dealing specifically with the categories used implicitly by the
everyday rational narrative constructed on the basis of symbols (that
is to say, which hermeneutically has a double-meaning with respect to
possible semantic references).” This interpretation still needs to be
distinguished from what Kant calls “philosophical theology”** (which
is the so-called “Theodicy”) (b.2.a). We will term it more precisely -
correcting the ambiguous common use of the term “political theology”
- a philosophical-political interpretation of symbolically-based, rational
texts or narratives (b.2.8) (religious or not), and whose target audience
is the political community.
The expository strategy of this article will have two parts. In the first,
I will clarify a critical position toward the debate surrounding Saint
Paul as interpreted within a Politics of Liberation, taking advantage
of all the positive and recoverable elements with which the subject
is dealt by contemporary political philosophers. In the second part,I
will present critically the positions of other fashionable philosophers,
indicating both agreements with and critical dissidences toward the
thesis proposed in the first part. In general, and to foreshadow my
argument, we will see that all interpretations of the texts - with the
exception of those originating in peripheral countries, as we will see
- tend not to link the hermeneutic process with the concrete political-
140
economic reality of the exclusionary globalized system of the time,
thereby exposing in their proponents various degrees of “idealism,”
indifferent to the terrible global situation.
This subject was instigated at the suggestion of Carl Schmitt and
his “political theology,’ on the basis of a reflection upon the work of
Th. Hobbes. We must specify the question from the outset. Hobbes,
in Part II of his famous Leviathan, according to the distinctions
proposed above, engages in a strictly “theological interpretation” (b.1),
that is, a “political theology” that takes up the Scripture no longer as
a philosopher but as member of a community of believers, because
the Hobbesian text is written for this historical Christian community.
This he clearly indicates:
But in that Iam next to handle, which is the Nature and Rights
of a Christian Commonwealth, whereof there dependeth
much upon Supernaturall Revelations of the Will of God; the
ground of my Discourse must be, not only the Naturall Word
of God,"*"! but also the Propheticall.’”

Hobbes then indicates explicitly that his will be the “Propheticall”

discourse of a believer, which would nevertheless also make use of
“feelings and experience,’ and “our natural reason” (and as a result
his text is already a theological [b.1] construction) setting out from
“this Scripture, out of which I am to take the Principles of my
Discourse”(a.)**. Schmitt indicates that the philosophy of modern
law (b.2.8) takes elements of theological constructions (b.1), without
warning that to do so involves passing to a different level. There are
other cases in which there is a direct passage from the early everyday
symbolic texts of Western culture - which were frequently religious
(a.), as in all other cultures of the epoch - to a political philosophy.
Such is the movement of C. Schmitt - as we can see in the dramatic
dialogue before his death with J. Taubes - who takes Paul's Epistles
as the inspiration for his political doctrine of the “katégon, passing
from Paul's rational symbolic narrative (a. in Figure 1) to his political
philosophy (b.2.8). We, on the other hand, should follow a more
precise itinerary.

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 That is, we will take the symbolic narratives (a.), which should
not be worked hermeneutically only within the Faculty of theology
(b.1), locating these instead within the Faculty of philosophy (b.2),
to engage in the philosophical-political interpretive task (b.2.B) of
a Politics of Liberation, a task which is strictly philosophical. This is
not a philosophical recovery of theology, but rather a recovery for
the sake of philosophy of foundational texts which implicitly contain
critical categories which gave rise to a culture (that of Eastern and
Western Christendom, including Modern Europe), and can be
constructed as critical philosophical categories of great relevance for
our present moment. To repeat: there would be critical categories
and methodological distinctions implicit in these in these symbolic
rational narratives - with their everyday language, expressed in the
religious sphere (in the case of our study) - that can be abstracted from
their religious environment and univocally or analogically fixed or
determined in one of the meanings of the symbolic text. This specific
philosophical determination (which does not yet entail the double-
meaning of the symbol) is the task of political philosophy (b.2.8) with
reference to a secular political community (c.2.8). All this has led to
abundant confusion as to how these questions are dealt with from
Hegel to Nietzsche, passing through M. Heidegger, and including the
majority of contemporary political philosophers!
The case that we want to tackle, then, is that of a Saul (Paul’s given
name), a Jew, a Pharisee from the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem,
a Roman citizen, in the generation that followed that of Jeshtia ben
Josef,“ the founder of Christianity.

1. Paul’s political categories as implicitly philosophical

In the first place we would like to indicate the hermeneutic categories
according to which we will philosophically read the Epistles of Paul,
which we understand to be symbolically-based rational narratives
addressed to communities of believers - religious believers, at the time
- representing a critical diagnosis with a view to a political-religious
praxis which produced a radical transformation (Veriinderung) of the

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given historical order.
Recalling what many contemporary philosophical interpreters of the
Epistles forget, these writings must be situated in the political economic
context of the Roman Empire during the stage of the consolidation
of the structure of slave-based domination and an oligarchy marked
by tragic inequalities, which awoke an immense clamor among the
growing majority of oppressed and exploited masses, reduced to
withstanding indescribable suffering: “Humanity watches impatiently
(apokaradokia) waiting for what it is to be children of God to be
revealed” (Romans 8, 19).** The Epistles constitute a response to this
clamor for universal political and economic justice. In her Contra toda
condena. La justificacién por la fe desde los exclutdos,’*° Elsa Tamez, a
Costa Rican specialist on the subject, shows us the way.
In effect, the situation of injustice upon which the Roman Empire
was constructed was far more serious than what is revealed by an
institution of Roman law like the mere homo sacer.**”’ Saul was a Jew,
a tolerated ethnicity (enjoying certain rights) in the Empire, from a
commercial transit city in the eastern Empire (Tarsus), in the diaspora,
which is to say primarily urban religious communities dispersed since
the Babylonian exile. These communities were heavily exploited by
special tributes (the /aographia) which were applied to those not of
Roman origin. Paul, from a family of artisans, learned the manual
trade of weaver and supplier of shops (skenopoios), working with
his hands day and night, living always as a poor among the poor. He
was jailed several times in Philippi, Caesarea, and Rome; he faced
tribunals in Thessaloniki; he was imprisoned in Ephesus. He lived
the violence, torture, and humiliation typical to slaves. Although
likely a Roman citizen, he received the summum supplicium (the
death penalty). This dominated life was suffered within a militarily,
politically, and economically domineering Empire. Since the death of
Caesar Augustus (29 C.E.) the urban prosperity of the Empire rested
ona horrific system of slavery, in which the majority of the population
of the Empire were slaves, poor freed slaves, or farmers smothered by
countless tributes that were, in practice, converted into a position of
servitude or semi-servitude. Roman civilization leaned strategically
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upon the inexpugnable efficiency that its legions enjoyed at the time,
as military organizations of unmatched strategic effectiveness at that
moment. Wars of colonial domination were vital to providing the
Empire's slaves, who constituted the booty of all expansive military
actions, The patricians appropriated the fertile fields, the new provinces,
and the ager publicus of the exploited peoples. After the Romans, the
local elites were the beneficiaries of newly conquered territories. Few
citizens qualified as such: only the rich, those discharging high public
offices, well-known military leaders, and members of the famous
ordines, whether senators, equestrians or decurions. As a product of
the legislative genius of this sui generis Empire, Roman Law sought to
justify the validity of this coercive structure with clearly defined duties
(posts) and rights. Differences in status were thereby guaranteed,
legitimizing the power exercised by the honestiores (a minority) over
the humiliores (the immense majority). To be a slave, servus sine
dominio, meant quite simply not to be subject to rights: unable to
marry, unable to have a family or goods; unable to serve as a creditor,
debtor, or to prosecute a trial. The possessor of the slave could sell it,
to give it as a gift, to punish it, or to kill it, and female slaves suffered
even more indignity, humiliation, exploitation, and violence.**
It was from the perspective of this massive suffering by the carnal,
living subjectivities of the Imperial multitudes that the Pauline
Epistles were written, directed toward “ethical communities” (as Kant
would call them*”) so that they might gain a critical intersubjective
consciousness and act accordingly (a theoretical proposal in
function of a liberatory, critical, and transformative praxis). Paul sets
out from a Semitic anthropological understanding completely
distinct from the Greco-Roman view. The human being is not a
divine soul (psykhé), which is singular, ingenerate, and inmortal,
fallen into a body (soma).” For Paul, as for the Semites and
Egyptians (and also for the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John),
the human was categorized as a “flesh” (in Greek: sdrka) or as a
“psychic or mental body” (soma psykhikés).** This was an
intersubjective anthropological category showing the situation of the
human “outside the Alliance”:
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 Thereby the resurrection (andstasis) of the dead (nekr6n) [...]
is planted in a psychic body and reborn in a spiritual body
(soma pneumatikén) [...] It is written: the first man, Adam,
was a living soul (psykhikon zdan); the last Adam is a vivifying
spirit (pnetima zoopoioun) [...] | affirm, brothers, flesh (sdrx)
and blood (haima) cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (I Co-
rinthians 15, 42-50).**

Here we have two anthropologies - the Greco-Roman and the

Semitic-Egyptian - standing in contradiction to one another. The
philosophically implicit categories are clear. For the Greco-Roman
rational symbolic narrative (a. in Figure 1) and its corresponding
philosophies (b.2), matter or the body functions as the principle of
determination and of evil; the soul is immortal.443 For Semites and
Egyptians, the human is unitary, it is flesh (basar or séma psikhikés)
and it dies. There is a first death (that of the first Adam) that leaves
flesh with (psychic) “life? but without salvation, isolated, with no
choices, no hope, no community, no salvation. That flesh enters
intersubjectively into an alliance, a contract, a testament (in Hebrew:
brit), from which a first rebirth (resurrection) can take place: this
is the “spiritual body” (s6ma pneumatikds).* We will soon see the
meaning, by contradiction, of the two orders, eones* between the
“Law” and the “spirit” in the Paul of the Epistle to the Romans.
We are dealing, then, with two orders, two levels, two worlds: the
“kingdom of this world” (with its “prince? its “dominators; and its
“angels”) and the “Kingdom of God” (which similarly has its “apostles”
or “envoys” to militantly fulfill a historic-political action). We are
therefore confronting two categories that we can construct in an
explicitly philosophical manner: one, a) which indicates the “order of
the flesh,” or the prevailing Totality,446 insofar as it claims to be a
closed, self-referential Totality and constitutes, moreover, the given;
another, b) that of the “order of the spirit; that we could call, with E.
Levinas (while modifying his meaning) the trans-ontological sphere,
Exteriority or the meta-physical, but which is situated as a concrete
community of Others beyond the prevailing, coercive Totality (the

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soma pneumatikés). Now, we are dealing with philosophical categories
in sensu stricto, which will allow us to interpret the Epistle to the
Romans in a very different manner from what tends to be the-case in
contemporary European and U.S. political philosophy.
In effect, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans represents a critical culmination
of Semitic, Jewish thought in the Roman Empire. It is no less than a
rational symbolic narrative launched against the Empire in its very
essence: it shakes the very foundation upon which the legitimation of
the Roman State in its totality rested. But, at the same time, this was
also a critique of other groups within the Jewish tradition from which
the new “messianic”447 community was slowly differentiating itself.
In the third place, the document opposed a certain form of legalism of
“Judaizing” groups of the primitive messianic (“Christian”) community
that failed to grasp the novelty of the new position of the founding
group. This does not contradict the fact that for J. Taubes and an entire
contemporary Jewish tradition Paul is incorporated within a strictly
Jewish horizon. Indeed, what we want to indicate here is that, being
in all aspects Jewish, Paul (on the basis of the “event” of Jeshua ben
Josef and his apostles, without any rupture, but with complementary
differences: a true “subsumption”: katargéin) is the creative genius of
the formulation - for the new “messianic” community - ofa diagnostic
and a political strategy that this community would follow within the
conjunctural “situation” of the Empire and against various Jewish
groups, giving the expansive “messianic” community overwhelming
results, the fruit ofa political decision, a singular practical judgment.
This represented, politically, a continuation of the critical tradition of
the Semites, the Jews, but also entailed the opening of an untraveled
path, something not clearly indicated among contemporary political
philosophers. This is why there has been a failure to sufficiently value
its current impact in the context of a civilizational crisis similar to
that which Paul himself confronted, but which today appears ever
more immense in the so-called globalization that marks the end of
the Modernity we are suffering.
The Epistle to the “messianic” community of the Imperial
headquarters essentially tackles the question of the insufficient
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legitimacy of the praxis and institutions of the Empire and diasporic
Judaism, with their unitary criteria of Roman Law (lex) or the
torah of the Jewish people, which had in the post-Babylonian-exile
diaspora become the foundation of rabbinical communities due to the
remoteness, and the later destruction, of the sacerdotal institution of
the Temple of Jerusalem. This Law had become fetishized.
The Epistle, according to the philosophicalinterpretation we propose,
deals with six fundamental themes (all of which revolve around the
fourth): 1) the meaning of the justification or the final criterion of
the historical legitimation of praxis, the agent, and institutions; 2) the
very concept of Law as foundation of the first prevailing order (eén);
3) the collapse of the Law due to its insufficiency, its fetishization;
4) the new justificatory criterion; 5) the messianic community that
bursts in at the time of liberatory praxis (“messianic Now-Time”);
thereby 6) creating a new order beyond the Law. Here we have a
sketch of the themes, the diachronic moments - of the two ednes,
with their temporalities and the passage (Ubergehen) from one to
the other - and the essential categories which will be mobilized by
a Politics of Liberation, which remains impossible for the merely
ontological tradition of Greco-Roman philosophy or Modernity from
Hobbes onward to recognize. Contrary to what Taubes claims, this is
a profoundly dialectical narrativethat we feel has not been seriously
taken into account, perhaps as a result of the social-democratic
orientation of many European philosophers, or perhaps since they
lack the solvent of political creativity that has been experienced in
Latin America since the end of the 20th century.
In the first place, the Epistle speaks at the outset of justification (Rm
1,17), a concept that will need to be clarified. The word “justification”
(dikaiosiine) comes from “justice” (from the Greek: dike, and the
Hebrew: tsadik).“” “To justify,’ or to declare that an actor or the praxis
for which she is agent is just, requires various moments: 1) obviously
an actor that is producing an act, which 2) according to some criterion
or foundation, 3) is judged by a court or observer, which 4) assigns to
the actor or her act the character of “just” or “righteous” (and thereby
worthy of reward), or on the contrary the character of “unjust” (and
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thereby guilty and deserving punishment). The justification is, properly
speaking, the fourth moment, that of the subsumption of the concrete
(the actor or the praxis) to the universal (the criterion according to
which the evaluative judgement is based). This subject refers us to the
myth of Osiris, of the final Judgement of the Maat in Egypt - which is
repeated in the Jewish and Christian traditions - in which the dead are
judged for their works, according to which they have either fulfilled
divine mandate (the Law) or not. Salvation or resurrection of the dead
in Egypt is the effect of a positive justification; that is, the judged has
avoided the obstacle posed by the judgment in being characterized as
just. He or she has been justified. “It is not enough to know the Law to
be just (dikaioi) before God, one must act on the Law to be justified
(diaiothésontai)” (Rm 2, 13).
In the second place, the Epistle deals with the meaning of the Law,
The Law is the criterion held as valid for all, for “justification” (of
the agent and her praxis). From the ancient Egyptian goddess Maat
to the nédmos physikén of the Greeks, to Roman Law or the Jewish
torah, the Law operates as a fundamental imperative. This is why “the
function of the Law is to give consciousness (epignosis)*” of sin” (Rm
3, 20). Or, alternatively, the Law determines a limit or framework (as
Rosa Luxemburg would say) for the will, as a criterion to be able to
judge by differentiating what is just (and fulfills the Law) from what is
perverse (because it violates the Law). Without this framework good
cannot be discerned from evil, and as a result there exists no moral
consciousness of one or the other (that is, of moral error).
On the other hand, the Law presupposes: a) a time prior to its
dictation, a time of chaos beginning with the “sin of the first Adam”
(which is also metaphorically the time of Egyptian slavery); b)
another time of hope, corresponding to Abraham (the time of the
Jirst Alliance); and c) the time properly speaking of the the first Law,
pronounced by Moses out of Egypt and in the desert, that of the order
which still prevailed in Paul’s time. It is with Moses that we have what
A. Badiou might call an “event” in reference to the ontological order,
but beyond Badiou we must consider this moment as the “first event)
the foundational event.**! Notice that we must begin to engage ina
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diachronic description of two events, in the dialectic of two times,
which has frequently gone unnoticed for many interpreters of the text
we are analyzing. There is a before and an after which are essential for
the Politics of Liberation. The Law plays its function in a first moment
that must be overcome, without which everything loses its meaning.
To summarize what we have accomplished up to this point, we could
say that, in effect, the Law is the criterion or foundation for the
justification of the praxis carried out in any given, prevailing order.
In the third place, the legitimacy of the Law collapses. This is a first
dramatic, critical, and novel moment in the Epistle to the Romans,
the negative moment, one which could be interpreted as anarchist (or
certainly one which leads toward anarchy), thereby constituting the
political moment par excellence which will permeate all later critical
traditions (and leftist traditions since the 18" century). While the
Law is the criterion of justification for actors and praxis within the
prevailing order, it can nevertheless become fetishized and corrupted,
falling into contradiction with even itself, and thereby producing its
own collapse. How does Paul explain this negativity? From what sort
of situations can the very foundations of the system be called into
question?
In order to be able to negate the Law, this Law would first need
to have the pretension of functioning as the absolute reference for
justification. This is what we mean by the fetishism of the Law, and it
appears when this Law is affirmed as the single and ultimate foundation
of said justification: it becomes absolutized, self-referential. This
occurs when the Law is situated above Life itself. Franz Hinkelammert,
writing with reference to the Gospel of John** in his book The Cry of
the Subject,*** describes how Jeshtia ben Josef healed a blind man on
Saturday (a day on which, according to the Law, no work should be
done), for which he was reprimanded by the observers of the Law:
Jesus transgressed the law. He does this to cure a sick man.
The law should not impede human life. Those who oppose
him, do so in name of obeying the law. Jesus reproaches those
demanding the fulfillment of the law for the sin of not helping

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 one’s fellow man.

For the founder of Christianity, the new criterion*” is Life, which in

turn provides the ultimate foundation for the Law. Life is the content
of the Law; its inversion is what Jeshua and Paul of Tarsus criticize.
Paul argues in various ways that the Law is ambiguous, showing firstly
the impossibility of its perfect fulfillment:
I did not know what desire was until the Law told me: Thou
shalt not desire’; at which point sin, taking this command-
ment as its basis, provoked in me all sorts of desires (Rm 7,
7-8).
These passages have been commented upon by J. Lacan*” and S,
Zizek, but they must be situated within the effort to prove that the
Law cannot serve as the final criterion for justification because, in this
case, no one could possibly be deemed righteous. “The Law is holy
and the commandment holy, just, and good, but although good in
itselfit became death for me” (7, 12). Perfect fulfillment of the Law is
impossible, such that everyone is left definitively without any possible
justification. Not only this, but moreover, the Law in its fetishized state
demands such a degree of application that it can even produce death.
In effect, Paul knew very well the repressive power of the Law, since
he had heard Stephen’s speech in Jerusalem before he was killed:
“They killed those who announced the coming of the Righ-
teous, [Stephen exclaimed,] and you have now betrayed and
murdered him. You, who received the Law by mediation of
the envoys and have not observed it.” ... The witnesses, leaving
their hats at the feet of a man named Saul, set to stoning Step-
hen... Saul approved the execution. ( Acts of the Apostles 7,
52-8, 1)

This all coincides with the passage in the Gospel of Luke 24, 26:
“Did not the meshiakh have to suffer all this to demonstrate his
glory?” Here, déxa indicates precisely the “glory” of the meshiakh in
its full revelation, in the manifest presence that would dismiss any
pretension of the Law as ultimate foundation. If the Law killed the
Righteous, this revealed to the new messianic community in the very
act of the murder on the cross the corruption, the fetishism of the
Law, and with this the community was liberated from the Law and
denied it the power of serving as the basis for justification.** How
could human beings be deemed just or unjust if the law itself had
become unjust? As Hinkelammert says of the act according to which
the death of Jeshua ben Josef was justified:
Now Jesus attacks head-on: “If you [the members of the tribu-
nal, the Law] were the children of Abraham, you would fulfill
the work of Abraham. But you are trying to kill me, who has
told you the truth I heard from God. Abraham did not do
this. You do the same as your father [...] You have Satan as
your father and want to carry out the desires of your father”
(John 8, 40-44).*°

In effect, Abraham, against the Law of the Semitic people

who sacrificed their firstborn sons, did not sacrifice his son Isaac
(thereby constituting an anti-Oedipal situation). To be descended
from Abraham is to know that there are occasions in which it is not
necessary to obey the Law when Life is at risk. The prevailing orders
(be they those of the Romans, Jews, or legalist Christians) could not
call the Law into question as the single criterion for justification. Paul,
alongside Jeshua ben Josef, placed Life and emundh above the Law.
Now I believe that the decisive moment of the Pauline argument can
be grasped, and it is to be found in reference to the question of the new
justificatory criterion. Therefore, and fourthly, Paul clearly states: “This
is our thesis: the human being is justified by emundh [in Greek pistis],
independent of the work of the Law” (Rm 3, 28). This statement is the
origin of all transformative - and even revolutionary - imperatives, one
which radically transmutes the categorical framework of all political
philosophy of the past twenty centuries (something impossible for the
Greeks and Romans), This is the focus of the Epistle to the Romans,
which deals in the last instance not with the question of the Law, but
with the problem of the new justificatory criterion (which, in turn, is
131]
to be understood according to the subsumption [katargéin]* of the
old Law to the new Law“).
To respect the Law as the ultimate foundation for justification is
like “putting oneself at the disposition of someone, obeying them like
a slave; [and in fact in this obedience] one is a slave” (Rm 6, 16). One is
an enslaved member of the Totality of the prevailing coercive system.
A. Gramsci would say that, under the hegemony of the Law, it is the
dominated who grant consensus to the ruling class . On the other
hand, their critical dissensus destroys the possibility of constructing a
legitimate hegemonic project: it attacks the foundation.
Only now can we tackle the concept of emundh. To simply say
“faith” - and considering the interpretive superpositions of the last
twenty centuries, which have ended up burying the term’s meaning
- is to commit a serious error. Moreover, applying the hermeneutical
method which passes from the metaphor, or the rational symbolic
account, to its categorical content, this question demands sufficient
creativity to discover new semantic layers. As we have repeated
many times, the traditional justificatory method was the Law. Now,
the messianic community, the remainder, discovers a new source
of legitimation. We propose that this be understood - for political
philosophy, transferring the symbol - as the new critical consensus of
a messianic community confronted with the collapse of the Law. The
messianic community, the people, confronting the immense power of
the (Roman) Empire, the temple (of Israel), and tradition (maintained
by new Christians unable to overcome their ancient rites, customs,
sacrifices, etc.), nevertheless dared to confront these powers from the
certainty of possessing a conviction that can transform reality in its
totality. That certainty - that critical consensus of the community itself
- is what is called emundh in Hebrew or pistis in Paul’s Greek, and
which could be described as the enthusiastic certainty of the critical
community (whose source is to be found in the people itself), and
which could be translated as a mutual confidence that is continuous
through time as the intersubjective fidelity of the members of such
a community, convinced of their responsibility to create a new
agreement, contract, Alliance, or Testament. This new agreement
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would legitimize or justify (“judge as just”) the fearless praxis of the
extreme danger of “messianic time” (of W. Benjamin‘*) as a source
for the legitimation of the future system. (And here we part ways with
Agamben, as we will see below.) I believe that this is how political
philosophy should understand “justification by faith?
In a political speech, Fidel Castro once exclaimed the following:
“By people, we mean [...] when [a group] believes in something and
someone, above all when it believes sufficiently in itself” - in other words,
when it believes itself capable of being the collective actor responsible
for creating a new and more just political system." This belief, this
faith, this confidence, this intersubjective fidelity is a new source of
justification, and it is self-referential. This is no longer the justification
according to the Law which has ceased to be valid (for example, the
Laws of the Kingdoms of the Indies of 1681 for New Spain in the process
of independence), but rather a new justification according to the faith
“of” the people “in” that same people, which is self-affirmed as an agent
of historical transformation. (Or even revolutionary transformation
were this necessary, as for example the creative event giving rise to the
future and new legality of the 1814 Constitution of Chilpancingo for
independent Mexico.)
Yet there remains a symbol whose meaning should be clarified.
Paul writes:
Now,*® on the other hand, by dying to what had bound us we
were free before the Law and we can serve (douléuein*) in
virtue ofa new ruakh in Hebrew; pnéuma in Greek], and not
an old code (Rm 7, 6).

That “spirit” indicates the beginning of the second edn, beyond

the Totality of the Law. This is once again the enthusiasm, the mutual
solidarity*” of the “rescued,” the “redeemed,” those “liberated”"* from
the oppressive slavery of the Law.
But we still need to attempt to clarify a concept disputed by
C. Schmitt and J. Taubes. We refer to the historical category of the
katékhon, with which Paul expresses the force which holds back the
full realization of “anomia,’ the moment in which the legal system
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- reaching its self-referential or fetishistic culmination - kills the
righteous (or the innocent) in the name of legality. This is the moment
in which the contradiction of the Law is revealed, which is to say that
it marks the end of the self-justification of the prevailing system. In
order to avoid reaching this moment, it is necessary to “reform” all
that is reformable to give more life,“* more time, as a prolongation
of the prevailing system so that it does not become clearly repressive
in its own eyes. When what “holds it back” is annihilated, the system
plunges, revealed in all its evil” It is the moment of anomia in the
time of the Law (the Jegal killing of innocents in Iraq or extra-legal
torture in Guantanamo, which nevertheless appears ad intra a cynical
legalism), which unleashes the second anomia, that of the meshiakh,
which in no longer being able to respect the Law, rises up in rebellion,
overthrowing it. ‘This irruption of “Now-Time” begins the agonic task
seeking to found a just system, passing in extreme cases to even the
complete destruction of the unjust order (as in the case of social and
political revolutions).
In the fifth place, and faced with the anomia or the moment of the
final repression of the repressive system, we see the emergence of those
who decide to live in freedom: “Now, by dying to what had bound us
we were free before the Law” (Rm 7, 6). Who are those who are freed
from the old system’s Law? This is where the entire question of the
meshiakh - and the messianic people (which is nearly redundant, since
the people is messianic or it isn't a people at all) - emerges.
Those who confront the Law - a law which has collapsed in the
eyes of the “messianic” community - are whose who abandon the
mere “everyday time of the Law” (khronos) and burst into another
world, another edn, from the Exteriority of the Law, from those held
to be nothing. This explosive, creative entry from the nothingness of
the system, gives rise to a different kind of time (kairdés). Now the
messianic moment manifests itself, “in the Now-Time” (to kairés)"!
of the “second event” - with respect to what is now relegated as a first
ontological “event” in A. Badiou’s terms - messianic time, the time of
danger, the time in which all of the functions that were carried out
under the old Legal order (of the repressive system) are carried out
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as if they weren't the same,” because now their meaning has radically
changed. Before they reinforced the system and were legitimized by
it. Now they become critical of the system (even if they represent the
same praxis: eating, being married, being a soldier), because that
praxis is oriented toward [se endereza a] another project (that of the
collapse of the system, as negativity, toward the construction ofa future
and more just system, as positivity). In this time of danger, Miguel
Hidalgo y Portilla, a Mexican-born European and integrated member
of the clergy, and the whole people, would become the liberators of
Mexico. This is the time of G. Washington, of Mao Zedong, and of Evo
Morales. This is the moment at which M. Hidalgo sounded the bell of
his church, not to announce the customary liturgical celebration (the
colonial khronos), but rather to convene an army to battle against the
Spanish oppressors, abandoning his everyday life in that Now-Time
(kairés) and transcending himself toward a different horizon. This is
the very same messianic time (theorized in a secular manner by W.
Benjamin), around which the most original categories of a critical and
liberatory politics must be constructed.
Those responding to the call of the anointed (the meshiakh: Miguel
Hidalgo, for example) now constitute a community which “splits off”
from Israel as a whole, which for political philosophy refers to the
mere “political community” in general as a Totality. In the symbolic
categories of the Pauline (and Jewish) narrative, this is the “remainder”
(leimma in Greek; she ‘ar in Hebrew):
In the Now-Time there is left a remainder, chosen by grace.
And if this is gratuitous, then the works [of the old system]
are no longer of value, because that which is free would cease
to be so. What follows? That Israel’ did not achieve what
it sought; the chosen [the new, messianic community] did,
while the rest have been blinded, as was written: God blinded
their spirit, he gave them eyes not to see and ears not to hear
(Rm 11, 5-8).

The “scission” (aforismdés), consequently, divides a Part from

the Whole, a Part which is also itself partly outside the Whole, an
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oppressed Part at the heart of the political community now gains a
creative presence such that it maintains a degree of exteriority: the
plebs. This plebs constitutes, moreover, the origin of a future populus
suggested by E. Laclau, and that populus represents the community
within a new order as a Whole, expressed in the symbolic narrative asa
struggle to arrive at the Promised Land, “where milk and honey flows”
as the Sandinista hymn goes). G. Agamben rightly emphasizes:
At a decisive instant, the elected people, every people," will ne-
cessarily situate itselfas a remnant, as not-all |...) The remnant
is the figure, or the substantiality assumed by a people in a de-
cisive moment, and as such is the only real political subject.”
Those who remain within the old system (colonial New Spain
for Hidalgo) do so as fetishists (eyes that do not see, ears that do not
hear), unable to understand the new creative event. This is no longer
a founding event (that of Hernan Cortés who organized New Spain
as a colony), but the birth of a new system (independent Mexico),
The original community (all of Israel) has divided. Some remain
faithful to the old truth of the Law, slaves to it (the Spanish realists
and their collaborators); others form a “remainder” in the danger
of the “remaining time” (J Corinthians 7, 29). The ruling class, as
Gramsci would say, becomes a coercive and repressive class, the Law
kills the just that rise up in rejection of the established consensus,
The prevailing hegemony, the “kingdom of this world” in all its rigor
disintegrates. The “called” (from which we get “church,” ecclesia, from
klao) and the “chosen” are now a splintered part of the nation as a
whole. In this way, a “people” is born (/aos in Greek; ham): “I will call
them my people, those who are not my people” (Rm 9, 25).* Hence
the entire categorical problem of the people in political philosophy
can be found within the symbolism of Pauline messianism: the central
collective act in the historical creation of the new.
‘This praxis of those who throw themselves into the struggle for the
new is seen, by “the wisdom of the world,’ by the law, as “madness”
A critical political philosophy, then, understands that it will be
paradoxical and incomprehensible for the system that it leaves behind
156
(the colony of New Spain seen from the metropolitan monarchy):
We put forward a knowledge [sophian in Greek; a new episte-
mology], but not the knowledge of this world [the Law] and
nor of the rulers who follow from the present time [...]; this
no ruler in present history has come to understand (J Corin-
thians 2, 6-8). For this reason God was kind enough to rescue
[to redeem, to liberate] those who believe (pistei ontas) in the
madness that we preach ({bid., 1, 22).

The wisdom of the messianic proposal (of M. Hidalgo or Evo

Morales) to confront the Power of Imperial Law is madness for the old
system (which draws its legitimacy from the Laws of the Kingdoms of
the Indies, or the recommendations of the World Bank), but not for
the messianic people, or indeed any people (Mexican or Bolivian).
Paul can therefore be found underlying certain essential critical
categories which would later be employed (and frequently inverted)
by the political philosophies of Byzantine and Latin Christendoms,
of the Islamic world, of Modern Europe (including Marxism) and
of contemporary political theories. He would be the dwarf moving
the pieces on the chessboard of these cultures, just as W. Benjamin
believed (according to G. Agamben’s suggestive interpretation, which
we will discuss below).

2. The political categories of Paul of Tarsus as interpreted

by M. Heidegger, A. Badiou, S. Zizek, W. Benjamin, J.
Taubes, G. Agamben, and F. Hinkelammert
Let us approach the subject through some existing interpretations
of Paul's symbolic narrative from the perspective of political
philosophy.
a) It is well-known that the young Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
dedicated the years of 1920-1921 to University Lectures on Paul of
Tarsus, which would prove determinant for the category of facticity
on which his Being and Time (1927) would be based, and while this
is not strictly a work of political philosophy, it can serve as a useful

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introduction to our subject. Here we can see clearly the Heideggerian
methodological intention - correct, as far as I am concerned - and
which is of interest for our exposition:
It is necessary to determine the meaning of words of the lec-
ture’s announcement preliminarily. This necessity is grounded
in the peculiarity of philosophical concepts.*” [....] In the fol-
lowing, we do not intend to give a dogmatic or theological-
exegetical interpretation, nor a historical study or a religious
meditation, but only guidance for phenomenological under-
standing.”

Which is to say that Heidegger would extract the implicit

philosophical concepts (or categories, level b.2 in Figure 1) from the
factical-everyday narrative of Paul’s texts (level a) for his own ends.
He would interpret phenomenologically the “factical experience of
everyday life,” which constitutes the existential horizon according to
which the Epistles are written, with the latter thereby being considered
as rational, symbolically-based narratives. And on this level Heidegger
distances himself from Martin Luther (in the insistence that “we need
to liberate ourselves from Luther's point of view”*”), by advancing an
existential approach to Paul from Paul himself, while attempting to
prevent this interpretation from objectifying modern experience.
Heidegger engaged in some methodological clarifications that
gesture toward Being and Time - which A. Badiou also takes advantage
of - such as the concept of “factical life experience” as an ontological
departure-point. This “experience” is differentiated from other
possible positions within the world, such as for example philosophical
thought or scientific explanation.” Diverging from Troeltsch, Dilthey,
Windelband, Rickert, Scheler and others, he describes the “historical”
being in which we find “Concern of Factical Dasein |Being-there]?”
He defines the “situation” as “something that belongs to understanding
in the manner of enactment, [and] does not designate anything in the
manner of an order. [...] We cannot project a situation into a particular
field of being, nor into consciousness.**? Once equipped with some
methodological and categorical advances, Heidegger goes on to interpret
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“Paul’s experience.’ This is an existential-philosophical reflection,
not political philosophy; moreover, while it is eschatological, it does
not discover the subject of “messianism” (which W. Benjamin along
with G. Scholem glimpsed in the work of Rosenzweig). Furthermore,
Paul's “world” is simply an independent ontological sphere, and not
woven as the antithesis of the “world of the Law” as the horizon to
be abolished and assumed (subsumed). What it lacks, then, is the
dialectic character of the interpretation we are seeking.
It seems strange to us that Heidegger begins his interpretation
with the Epistle to the Thessalonians, a text loaded with eschatological
tension, with its temporality stretching tautly toward the future (Sein-
kénnen).*’ The question is: “How is the world shared with others given
to him in the situation of epistolary redaction?” The response can
only be partial, because “we do not know the world around him” in a
perfect sense.*** In any case, the effort is to “put oneself” into his world
with the best possible information in order to discover the meaning of
what confronted him every day. It is interesting to note that Heidegger,
as he tends to do, begins to “work the words” in their capacity of
signifiers, passing to their etymological origin and relating them to
one another. Upon reaching Thessalonians 5, 1, he comes across the
expression: “About time [everyday: khrénos] and the time |messianic:
kairds] [...] of the Day of the Lord |heméra Kyriou] will arrive like a
thief in the night. But for Heidegger this lacks any special messianic
meaning. He refers back to this subject later, when he says that: “To
the Christian only his to niin [the Now] of the complex of enactment
in which he really stands is to be decisive, but not the anticipation ofa
special event that is futurally situated in temporality.”*°
We similarly read that
from this complex of enactment with God arises something
like temporality to begin with. II. Thess. 2:6-7: ‘kai niin to ka-
tékhon’ [and you know what is now restraining him] [...] The-
odoret, Augustine, and others see in katékhon the precipitous
order of the Roman Empire, which suppresses persecution of
Christians by Jews."

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 It is therefore worth indicating that the future philosopher
of Freiburg was also preoccupied with Paul from a philosophical
perspective, but one which was largely phenomenological - rather
than leading toward any kind of political philosophy. Furthermore,
his reflections do not constitute a messianic interpretation, which is
visible in the non-tension between the world of everyday life under
the Law and the new world that originates in its critique.
b) Let us now touch on some points in Alain Badiou’s (1937-)
discussion of the subject, recalling that we have already dedicated
some pages to the subject previously.* We will take into account
what we said there, touching now only on a reading of Saint Paul: The
Foundation of Universalism”
For Badiou, the case of Paul is a “pretext,” that is, it is an example
to help better understand his own theory of the “subject” on the
basis of the “event” (which constitutes a response to the crisis of the
“historical subject as the proletariat” essentialized in certain standard
Marxisms). The space for the articulation of the two terms (subject/
event) - on which we agree - is “militancy” as an epistemological
location,” a singular experience from which a universalism is opened
up*! (with which we disagree). Badiou has been building slowly on
this theme during the course of nearly forty years,*” but this remains a
“politics of emancipation” which is very different from our “politics of
liberation,’ It is necessary from the being to clarify two methodological
presuppositions. The first, with regard to the relationship between
philosophy and the Pauline text itself. The second, the absence of
categories which transcend a monadic ontology (i.e., the lack of the
third dialectical moment of the political process, which was explained
perfectly by Paul but unrecognized by Badiou).
With regard to the first point, Badiou tirelessly affirms that his is
not the same sort of access to the text that a “religious believer” could
have, but rather an exclusively philosophical one (which I believe to be
correct). But this does not mean that we can objectify Paul’s position
as an “anti-philosophical” one (Badiou attempts to demonstrate this,
for example, with his failure at the Areopagus””). But this is because he
understands his philosophical task as one of desacralization, and as the
160
negation of religion as such (failing to distinguish desacralization from
de-fetishization, as we will see). If we bear in mind the distinctions we
have already formulated, we can clarify these confusions. Paul’ text
is a symbolically-based rational narrative (not irrational, as Badiou
believes, seemingly aligning rationality with modern or Greco-
Roman ontological experience). Since Badiou rejects hermeneutics, it
is impossible for him to clarify the “double” meaning of the symbol in
Paul’s everyday text in order to thereby decant its implicit categories.
Ithink, on the contrary, that the task is to enable the symbol to pass
(level a of Figure 1) to the level of a strictly conceptual philosophical
discourse (2.0).
The second, and more serious point, is that Badiou moves solely
on the ontological level, that of the Totality which is given or called
into question (from the perspective of an abstract, singular, idealist
subject, with no relation to the situation, to memory, to history,
or to the socio-economic and political conditions of the Roman
Empire and the rabbinical Judaism of the diaspora). Paul is a good
pretext to demonstrate the “conversion” as the “exception” which
emerges from nothingness and has as a project the “vacuum” which
is progressively filled in “fidelity” to a purely subjective “truth?**
For us, on the other hand, Paul is materially inserted into a world of
slaves and deep structures of imperial domination, against the unjust
legalism in fulfillment of the Law, in order to irrupt communitarily
(asa “remainder”) into the Empire, into rabbinical Judaism, and into
“messianic” groups, against those like Peter, who want to obey both
an already subjectively-abolished Law and the new law of the critical
consensus of the same community, the people, established by emundh
(which has nothing to do with “faith” as Badiou explains it, in its
inverted and fetishized contemporary meaning). Badiou finds himself
with no dialectical “exit” to overcome the trap of the prevailing Totality
(and even less so if it is thought from the perspective of the ontology
of “mathémata”) through an empirical, historic, conditioned militant
community that “rises up” (is raised from the dead).** The community
thus materially affirms the negated life of the slaves, the oppressed, the
excluded, etc. (that is, agreeing with Marx’s position), and formally
16]
as a new “justification” or legitimacy, and which has “hope” (éAnic)
in a more just future. “To leave” the system (“this world”) and “rise
up” (rise from the dead) was the “messianic” act of irrupting from a
concrete situation into empirical history as a precise, collective act: the
“Now-Time” that reverses the reversal. Without this “third term’ - the
“spirit,” the new, future Totality, the postulate based in the pardoning
of sin’® - nothing in Paul can be understood. And Badiou does not
have a third dialectical term (exteriority or the ethical, metaphysical
transcendence suggested by E. Levinas, although it is impossible to
derive political conclusions from the latter).
It is correct to say, in this case, that “the subject does not pre-exist
the event,” but not that “truth is entirely subjective?’ The messianic
act (to speak like W. Benjamin) emerges as an “event,” but not as the
“first” (which is the only one that Badiou considers), but rather as the
second “event.” The first event, during the first edn - from the sin of
Adam to hope and the first Alliance with Abraham - culminates in
the Law promulgated by Moses in the Sinai. It consitutes the given,
prevailing Totality, explained in the “Architectonics” of the Politics
of Liberation. The second event (which we now propose through
Badiou, beyond Badiou) is the pardon of the sins of the second Adam
and the new Alliance, both achieved by Jeshtia ben Josef. After the
messianic act, the old “privilege” of the chosen People of Israel loses
its exceptionality, since the old Law becomes more of a burden than
an advantage. The new choice is not a privilege, but a responsibility.
But it is no longer particular to the single chosen people, but is also
available to the “goim”,*” to all nations. It is not singularity that attains
universality, as Badiou would argue.™” It is a concrete and historical
messianic community that breaks down the walls of the ontological
horizon of the Being of the world (of the Empire, of the temple, of
the Law, etc.) and launches a “truth-process, yes, but one witha
completely different density than the “truth” of the modern subject
that Badiou still hopes to recover.
Truth is played out in time as a “process,” as “fidelity,’*”' not as
freedom attained, but as liberation, that is, as a process. But this
process cannot be “indifferent to the state of the situation,” but rather
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must be precisely linked to and rooted in that situation. The subject
Badiou is proposing for us - one “unconditioned” by “conversion” - is
frankly anti-Pauline (and furthermore, anti-Marxist). The relativity
of determination is one thing, but the total indeterminacy of the
irrational origin of the “convert” (as Badiou explains), is another. In
the Second and Third Theses on Feuerbach, Marx reminds us:
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to
human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical
question.*” [...] The [naive] materialist doctrine that men are
products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, there-
fore, changed men are products of other circumstances and
changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change cir-
cumstances [...]. The coincidence of the changing [verdn-
derte] of circumstances [Badiou’s state of the situation?] and
the transformation of human beings themselves [“messianic”
action?] can be conceived and rationally understood only as
transformative practice |umwéilzende Praxis].°™

But that “transformation” (on the economic, political, pedagogical,

religious, or aesthetic levels, etc.) is neither singular, nor unconditioned,
nor solely subjective. It is a “truth-process” as “fidelity; but one which
is real and objective. Paul demonstrated this objectivity without
detaching it from “messianic” subjectivity (which istransformative,
and not merely reformist).°°
c) For his part, Slavoj Zizek, in The Puppet and the Dwarf: The
Perverse Core of Christianity, advances (in his customarily suggestive
but unsystematic manner, making precise understanding difficult)
a Lacanian interpretation with a Hegelian and Marxist horizon. His
existential location, on the geographic periphery of Europe (his native
Slovenia), partially explains his return to Eurocentric positions, evident
among other things in arguments that reflect his recent transition
to radical Christian orthodoxy. This can be seen in his use of the
text Orthodoxy, written by the subtle, intelligent, and paradoxical
conservative Catholic G. K. Chesteron.*”
J. Lacan alluded to our subject in a session of his Seminar on The
163
Ethics of Psychoanalysis, and felt the need to make use, as one might
suppose, of Chapter 7 of the Epistle to the Romans, confronting the
psychoanalytic paradox Paul presents:
Is the Law the Thing [Ding]? Certainly not [Lacan exclaims].
Yet I can only know of the Thing by means of the Law. [...]
But even without the Law, I was once alive. But when the
commandment appeared, the Thing flared up, returned once
again, I met my death. [...] some of you at least will have be-
gun to suspect that it is no longer I who have been speaking.
In fact, [...] this is the speech of Saint Paul on the subject of
the relations between the law and sin in the Epistle to the Ro-
mans, Chapter 7, paragraph 7. Whatever some may think in
certain [Jacobin} milieux, you would be wrong to think that
the religious authors aren't a good read. [...] The dialectical
relationship between desire and the Law causes our desire to
flare up only in relation to the Law, through which it becomes
the desire for death”

This chapter of the Pauline text refers to the impossibility of fulfilling

the Law due to the very tendencies of human finitude. By this Paul
seeks to suggest that those who justify the rectitude of their action
according to the Law will always be condemned in the end, because it
cannot be obeyed perfectly. Death is sin, the death of the worthiness
of promised happiness. The way to avoid the death of desire is to
situate this desire in another place: as desire and “messianic” hope, in
a different time and field. This is no longer the (contradictory) field
of the “works of the Law,” but the “messianic” field of emundh, where
“justification” does not refer to the perfect fulfillment of a Law but
instead to the “faithful” (again, emundh) compromise to a responsibility
in the agony of the deconstruction of the order of the Law (which
produces the death of those opposing it: like “the righteous crucified’)
and the construction as a people (the “remainder”) of a new, future
order, the “new Jerusalem” of the book of Apocalypse (also adequately
translated as Revelation). In this case, we have taken Paul out of the
realm of psychoanalysis, which can fall into a certain psychologizing
164
 subjectivism in its interpretations, in order to move him into the more
objective realm of politics. (This is not to deny, however, the possibility
of epistemologically keeping him at the level of psychoanalysis.)
Zizek is like a fish in water in the discourse of Lacanian subjectivity,
which is partly compensated by the objectivity of his Marxist-
Hegelianism.*” Within philosophy
of religion (which can be therapeutic
like Chesterton's or critical like Paul’s) his thesis of the coincidence
of materialism and Christianity has already been explicitly argued by
Ernst Bloch.5"° But Zizek rightly offers a “materialist” element (which
Tunderstand as a final reference to the factical, concrete human Life
of those who “are hungry”) for the Pauline question we are dealing
with that we need to incorporate into the debate: “to become a
true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian
experience,”*'' whose central “kernel” is “subversive,” but which at the
same time has a “perverse” aspect consisting in the need for treason:
that of Judas. (And here Zizek comes very close to the position of the
Gnostic Gospel of Judas.) As a result of this treason, the meshiakh can
manifest his glory and “rescue the multitude?*” As Isaiah sings in the
fourth “Poem of the Servant of Yahveh”:
Through the suffering of his entire being, he will see the light
and will be satisfied; in his pain my righteous servant, he will
justify the multitude [...]. He has borne the shortcomings of
the multitude (53, 11).

The “servant” (hébed, in Hebrew) “rescues” (“redeems”) the slaves,

the people, from the slavery of the Legal system: “In this way he will
astonish the multitude of the goim” (52, 15). Zizek rightly opposes
alegalist view of the meaning of the death of Khristés,*' but he only
partially outlines the alternative view (thereby maintaining the thesis
ofthe “perverse kernel”). In this case, everyone would have participated
in his death at the hands of the Law and would therefore be free. But it
would seem that this “participation” is something metaphysical (in the
sense of some Hellenized Church Fathers). What is lost is the meaning
of the empirical death - of “Christ’s death as such”®'® - which seems to
have no importance for Zizek. If on the other hand we understand the
165
empirical death of the righteous man, according to his own peoples
eyes (those of the “messianic community,’ the “remainder”), as a
critical consensus on the need to overthrow the Law (as emundh), this
materialistically destroys the apparent justice of the Law - the first,
prevailing Totality - since it is understood that this death also kills the
Law. In the messianic community and messianic time all have been
sinners and all have been pardoned, and there is now no difference
between Jews and goim (the non-Jewish nations): all are in debt to
grace (recovered innocence), but all are chosen in the responsibility
of the militant compromise to the new task beyond the horizon of
the Law (the new, future Totality). Zizek does not have access to
this possibility, because he dialectically lacks the second Totality, the
Alterity which maintains Exteriority vis-a-vis the Legal system. He
lacks the creative political reconstruction of ethical institutions of E.
Levinas, although he continuously touches on the subject.
Judas was not necessary, and nor was his treason. The death of
the meshiakh was not necessary, since those in charge of the Law
had received the Light of the message.*'* But having closed the doors
leading out of the system, those in charge of this system murdered the
righteous innocent. This is the divine moment when human being can
face God as an Other, God, to complete his work and demonstrate his
perfection, can shout against Gnostics and Leibniz: “Evil exists!, ergo
it is possible for the perfect Being who has engendered so much glory
to exist as well!’ The first Totality fell in the adikia (the final time
of repression and death against those who cease to grant consensus
to domination), and as a result, the system (the flesh) does not allow
power to “accumulate” at the base. It eliminates the “teacher” (rabi,
as they called them), in an effort to eliminate criticism, but in so
doing the Law decrees its own collapse. Therefore, the death of the
meshiakh could not be desired, much less decreed by the Father. This
was the deed of the Law, of its fetishized power, of the “princes of
this world” (Mark 10, 42) at the beginning of its end. The disciples
and the “messianic” community were born in the contemplation of
that death of the righteous innocent at the hands of the Law which
thereby lost its “foundation.” The Law, as a justificatory system, grants
166
 legitimation, which is to say that it is based on the consensus populi (as
Bartolomé de las Casas would define it), Upon losing that consensus
the Law collapses, and Paul describes this in a precise manner: “Being
of a divine nature [like all human beings...] alienated himself and
came to be a servant, one of many [...] being faithful until death, and
even death on the cross. [For this reason he was praised as] Jeshua, the
meshiakh” (Philippians 2, 6-11). This a materialist interpretation of
the meaning of the death of the meshiakh “as such, and his death has
acentral meaning for the message, but not within a psychologized,
intimate hermeneutic which might think that mere pain can lead to
one’ salvation. This is masochism (by the believer) or sadism (by such
a God). Perhaps there is no “perverse kernel of Christianity.” Perhaps
there is instead a central kernel in Christianity that is woven around
the paradigm of the Exodus.’'*
Zizek speaks of “love” in Paul's Epistles.°!? However, he does not
distinguish clearly between éros (desire) and philia (Greco-Roman
friendship) on the one hand, both within the order of the Law, and
agape (ayartn in Greek) on the other, which is proper to the “messianic”
community. Agdpe is a love for the Other as other, a love based on
responsibility for the full realization of the Other, a love of service and
availability which surpasses mere fraternity (as the friendship of the
community under the Law). It represents solidarity with “the widow,
the orphan, the poor, the foreigner” since the times of Hammurabi;
solidarity with the weak, the oppressed, and the exploited. Greco-
Roman ethics under the Law had no understanding of this ethical-
trans-ontological affectivity, that along with E. Levinas we could term
metaphysical desire (désir metaphysique).”° This is love, which in effect
is not “internal,” but rather intersubjective, historical, and politically
subversive, and solidifies the messianic “remainder,” giving it the
necessary courage to confront the danger: “We the strong must bear
the weaknesses of the weak and not seek that which pleases us. Let us
achieve the satisfaction of the Other for their good, looking toward the
constructive. Nor did the meshiakh seek his own satisfaction” (Rm 15,
1-2).
d) Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) allows us to see certain traces of
167
his interest in Paul, as he specifically derives from the latter his concept
of messianic time. This concept must be linked with the following
enigmatic expression: “The authentic conception of historic time rests
entirely on the image of redemption (Erldsung)}*! which can provide
for us the key to his complex and difficult thought. Michael Léwy
writes:
Utopia, anarchism, revolution and messianism combine al-
chemically and join with a neo-romantic cultural critique of
‘progress’ and purely scientific/technical knowledge. The past
(monastic communities) and the future (anarchist utopia)
are directly associated in typically romantic/revolutionary
terms.*”

Benjamin belongs to a generation of young assimilated Jews which

emerges around the so-called First World War, thanks to a movement
which is launched by, among others, the old Hermann Cohen (1842-
1918), who had retired in 1912 from the neo-Kantian University
of Marburg, dedicating himself to rethinking the experience of his
Jewish community in Berlin. Franz Rosenzweig himself (1886-1929)
attended Cohen's Lehranstalt, and his work The Star of Redemption™
is certainly inspired by Cohen's book Religion of Reason Out of the
Sources of Judaism. Cohen theorizes Judaism through a neo-Kantian
philosophical lens; Rozenzweig would do so through the Hegelian
tradition, which would later be more comprehensible for Marxists
like Benjamin or Heideggerians (like E. Levinas). The “world” (Welt)
or Totality would be Rosenzweig’s meta-category that would need to
be overcome.
In effect, this foundational text by Cohen attempts to think, from
the perspective of neo-Kantian philosophical culture, the generative
kernel of the Jewish experience. It is interesting to observe that Cohen’
exposition is very similar to the framework that Rosenzweig would
develop in his work, which was written after having read Cohens
still unpublished text in Berlin. We can say that its essential structure
consists of four central categories. Cohen begins with a) idolatry™;
“from which” the possibility of surpassing this experience emerges as
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the task proper to Judaism. This overcoming has a dialectic; it passes
b) from the creation,*** c) to revelation (where he lingers for several
long paragraphs),””’ in order to culminate d) in reconciliation through
redemption”’* (at which point he describes the content of Jewish life
in great detail until the end of the book). This constitutes a reflection
by a believer with significant philosophical education, such that he
poses the questions at the heights of the most demanding of academic
cultures. He says little of Paul, and what little he does say is generally
negative:
Distrust of the value of the law was aroused principally by
Paul, and it has been kept alive through his criticism and po-
lemics |...]. To begin with, Paul’s own example reveals how
difficult it is to leave the moral law undamaged [... For him]
moral law would be not only superfluous but, even more, da-
maging. Paul’s intention is to disparage the law [...] because
he wants to establish faith in salvation [redemption] [...] as
the only basis for human morality.””
At this point his interpretation is a traditional one. Cohen refers
to the meshiakh,” but it is not a fundamental category within his
argument. However, it is necessary to note that Cohen has a special
sensitivity for the economic-material level (and this attitude will not
appear with the same vehemence later). He writes, for example:
The Messiah [...] is the representative of suffering [...]. Po-
verty is the moral defect of previous history. [...] The Messiah
is seized by the distress of mankind in its entirety [...] He is
diseased and weak [...] riding upon an ass.™™
The principle of “justice” (in Hebrew tsadakah) refers fundamentally
tothe slave and her liberation (on payment ofa ransom or redemption),
to the worker and her just wage, to property what must be dissolved
and returned to the community every seven years; etc. Therefore, “the
entire Torah is a remembrance of the liberation from Egyptian slavery,
which, as the cradle of the Jewish people, is not deplored, let alone
condemned, but celebrated in gratitude.”*’ A Politics of Liberation sets

169
out from precisely this type of critical category.
Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) recommended to Benjamin that
he read Rosenzweig’s book, which had just appeared in 1920.8
Benjamin was part of the Jewish “youth movements” in 1913 when he
met Scholem.*** Both were assimilated Jews who did not practice their
religion, and the speech which the young (21 year old) Benjamin gave
shows his attitude: his argument was criticized by the most resolute
among the Zionists. Benjamin was an assimilated Jew but never a
Zionist, which led to him not seriously studying Hebrew (perhaps
out of an enlightened philosophical resistance) nor leaving for Israel
as his close friend Scholem did. He understood messianism but not
explicitly as a believer, because he decided to remain within European
intellectual circles (even if these comprised an unrecognized and
strange spectrum). Though not an atheist he was a decided Marxist,
at least during the second part of his life; this would not make him
trustworthy for party-members, whom he considered joining. In
the end, however, and for the same reasons that he did not travel to
Israel, he did not want to be an unconditional militant. He was a neo-
romantic as were so many studied by M. Lowy,**° with no intention
of operating in concrete, day-to-day politics. On this past point he
followed the reflections of H. Cohen:
The universalism of messianism is the consequence of the
anomaly between state and people in the history of Israel.
[...] Another riddle is explained through this contradiction.
The state had to perish; the people, however, had to remain.*”

This Jewish anarchism would enter into crisis with the Zionist
appearance of the State of Israel, and much more with the outbreak of
the infernal hunting of Palestinians, a genocide similar to the Warsaw
Ghetto (which we are still living today, January 4" 2009, with the
destruction of the 5,000-year-old community of Gaza).**
Benjamin says little explicitly about Paul of Tarsus, but if we
follow the lead of G. Agamben’s well-founded suspicions, we can
nevertheless say that Paul’s explicit absence does not mean that he is
not a fundamental presence.*” All signs point us toward the enigmatic
170
passage at the outset of his On the Concept of History, in which he
describes the presence of a dwarf hidden under the chessboard, who
moves the pieces but remains unseen. He concludes:
One can envision a corresponding object to this apparatus
in philosophy. The puppet called “historical materialism” is
always supposed to win. It can do this with no further ado
against any opponent, so long as it employs the services of
theology, which as everyone knows is small and ugly and must
be kept out of sight."
Agamben asks himelf unexpectedly: “Who is this hunchback
theologian, so well hidden by the author in his theses that not a single
person yet has identified him?”™ And I ask myself: Why is it that this
dwarf and indeed theology itself, “must be kept out of sight”? And
furthermore: Why appeal to a theology that is considered “small and
ugly” by the Jacobin Enlightenment, which removed such texts from
the Faculties of Philosophy, as we mentioned above? Benjamin, an
unorthodox neo-romantic who is equally unorthodox in his Marxism
and materialism, does not want to deny his Jewish origin, but rather
interprets his people as a culture - which is enough for him as a
philosopher and art critic - more than as a religion or a secularized
religion, as Scholem affirmed. Therefore, in the intellectual circles in
which he hopes to gain influence he hides these sources, presenting
them instead as enigmas to be resolved. Agamben, I believe, is
correct.
This subtle argument is based on indirect insinuations. At the end
of the second thesis, we read:
For it has been given us to know, just like every generation be-
fore us, a weak messianic power (eine schwache messianische
Kraft),*” on which the past has a claim. This claim is not to be
settled lightly. The historical materialist knows why.*"

Agamben suggests that Paul dealt with this question in IJ Corinthians

12, 9-10, when in Luther's German translation the following is
written: “power (Kraft) is fulfilled in weakness (Schwache).” Moreover,

171
following J. Taubes, Agamben indicates that in the Political- Theological
Fragment Benjamin is referring to the Epistle to the Romans, because of
its content (however inverted) and the presence of the concept of the
“fleeting, the “ephemeral” (Vergédnglichkeit), used on three occasions
at the end of the text in question.“
Also, the concept of “image” (Bild) that Benjamin employs refers
to Paul as well. Agamben shows that the “typological relation”™’ (of
a past event that announces and is taken up in messianic Now-Time)
was expressed in Luther’s German with the term “Bild” (image), and
is especially present in Thesis V:
The true picture (Bild) of the past whizzes by (huscht). Only
as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of
its recognizability, is the past to be held fast. [...] For it is an
irretrievable picture of the past, which threatens to disappear
with every present, which does not recognize itself as meant
in it?”

Moreover, as we read, it “passes suddenly,’ rapidly; this is another

reference to I Cor 7, 29-31: “Time has become shorter [...] and so the
figure of this world passes.”
The entire Pauline influence is synthesized in the discovery of
“Now-Time” (Jetzt-Zeit), which is a literal translation of the Greek
expression that we have already transcribed above; ho niin kairés,
frequently found in the Epistle to the Romans, and which Benjamin
expresses in Thesis XIV: “History is the object of a construction whose
place is formed not in homogenous and empty time,** but in that
which is fulfilled by Now-Time.*° For Robespierre, Roman antiquity
was a past charged with this Now-Time, which he exploded out of
the continuum of history." This is the messianic time that we have
been discussing in all the authors considered above. It is from this
messianic time of the now, the present, that we have the capacity to
read moments in the past which had the same messianic density. It is
from the danger of the messianic compromise that we can understand
and recover those moments in the past fulfilled according to the same
attitude. Agamben closes his discussion with a passage by Benjamin:

172
 The read image, that is, the image in the now of recognizabi-
lity (Erkennbarkeit), bears to a high degree the marks of this
critical and dangerous (gefiéhrlichen) moment which is disco-
vered beneath all reading.*”!

When, in Now-Time, someone like Evo Morales reads the sacred

texts of the consecration of ancestral Aymara authorities at the “Sun
Gate” in Tihawanaku, these ancient texts are “recognizable” to him (in
all their significance) from the danger of the now of challenging the
white criollo and ladino customs which have predominated for five
centuries. The past, which lies hidden, which can disappear without
a trace, and which soon passes, is re-called, revived in the messianic
now of the Bolivian cultural revolution.
Benjamin wrote, as we have quoted, that “the authentic conception
of historic time rests entirely on the image of redemption (Erldsung)?
What could such a proposition mean? We have already seen the
importance of redemption in H. Cohen and F. Rosenzweig, and Paul
uses the term frequently. In its original Greek form, “redemption”
refers to the manumission of the slave, the paying of a ransom in
exchange for the slave's freedom. Redemption refers, therefore, to
the “liberation of the slaves.’ As a result, critical politics, a politics of
liberation (or redemption) sets out from the moment in which a part
of the political community (the “remainder,” the “people” as plebs) has
been “rescued,” or in Paul’s language: they are not held responsible for
errors (amartia) or the guilt of having committed them. Pardon opens
up a regime of gratitude. The “people” finds itself freed, rescued from
the “slavery of sin,” from the Law. This state of recovered innocence is
the effect of “redemption,” of the “ransom,” The Egyptian slave stands
up and sets out on a path. Paul speaks repeatedly of the doAdtpwots
(in Greek, apolytrosis; “redemption, “liberation”) which comes from
Ntpov (lytron in Greek; in Hebrew: KX, the rescuer, the liberator).
Now we will see how this category will be used in critical political
philosophy.
e) Jacob Taubes (1923 -1987) is in a completely different situation
from those discussed up to this point. At the end of the 20" century,

173
Taubes has lived through the experience of the Holocaust and the
foundation of the state of Israel. What E. Levinas believed would signify
the end of the crisis of Jewish assimilation through the creation of a
state ended up producing an inevitable crisis. Jews were now living the
same contradiction that Christians had suffered in the 4" century. The
Davidic state, founded by Zionism, was no panacea. Judaism needed
to ask itself once again about its own meaning. Taubes, moreover, is a
political philosopher who maintained a respectful friendship with C.
Schmitt in post-war Germany (which seems incomprehensible). His
1987 Heidelberg seminar on Paul of Tarsus is especially significant.
Taubes describes Paul, a diasporic Jew, as one who acts and thinks
from a strict Jewish tradition without, however, sparing the critique
he would make (in spite of himself) of the sin of the Jewish people.
In so doing - as a Jew showing his own people how they had fallen
into the desertion of their God so often predicted by their prophets
- he situated himself within the best tradition of Israel. This is a Paul
who is Jewish, perfectly Jewish, but who supports a new messianism,
and this is the basis of his “Christianity” (a term what he never used
in its current sense). Taubes is not interested in the figure of Jeshta
ben Josef, as he calls him (a name we have adopted), and in this the
position of F. Hinkelammert isvery much the opposite (as with others
who have dealt with the subject in Latin America).
As a student of G. Scholem, Taubes has a special relationship
with Benjamin (whom he nevertheless criticizes), and he even joins
in a creative and respectful dialogue with the right-wing Catholic
Schmitt. Taubes’ first-hand knowledge of the academic atmosphere
of Germany, the United States, and Israel, does not prevent him from
ironically critiquing their institutions. The work we will discuss here
is a passionate one.” Its intuitions, based on extensive research, are
the most original existing on the subject, including those we have
considereded already. However, from the beginning we would like
to mention a suspicion that allows us to enunciate a position that
could be called “with Taubes, beyond Taubes.” Referring to Bloch and
Benjamin, he writes the following:
 I dort like the mystical tone of their Marxism [...], within
which, in my opinion, there remains no space for religious
experience. [...] Of course, I understand what Ernst Bloch
and Walter Benjamin hope to do: [en planos de] trivializa-
tion, it is being repeated on the Catholic and Protestant left
and it is echoed in the Christianity of the popular church in
Latin America. But despite the spiritual effort that Bloch and
Benjamin make on the terrain of the concept and the image,
there remains a hiatus [hiato] that can not be overcome in a
Marxist fashion.**
This is a passing phrase, but we are grateful to him for making it
explicit, because it allows us to see his Eurocentrism, his disdain for and
neglect of Latin American thought - he would benefit from reading
the work of Michael Lowy, at least - and his inability to understand
Benjamin's discussion of “materialism.” (Coming from someone like
FE Hinkelammert, this discussion gains a degree of authority that
Benjamin, like Taubes, would never have managed to achieve, because
he lacked a precise, in-depth reconstructively-oriented study of Marx’s
entire body of work, as we ourselves have undertaken to do.) Let us
return to the subject at hand.
In the first place, since Paul had never been to Rome, the Epistle is
senttoan unknown “messianic” (Christian) community, the majority of
whom were proselytes.** But at the same time it would seem as though
Paul needed to justify himself to members of the community who
demanded proof of his authority, since he was not among the “twelve.”
Asa result the Epistle is exceedingly argumentative, setting out from
the ancient traditions of the Jewish people. He needed to attract the
community's attention through his knowledge of the Law. But at the
same time, he also needed to use weapons of argumentation, because
the Epistle is a formidable indictment of the prevailing Power, insofar
as it aims to give the messianic community a strategy to use within the
very heart of the immense Empire founded on (justified by) the Lex
Romana. Politically, Paul showed that the law had ceased to serve as
4
the criterion of “justification.” This attack is aimed, as we have already

175
said, against Roman Law, against the Jewish Torah, and against the
orthodox formalism of the ambiguities of some Judaizing members
of the “messianic” (Christian) community. Taubes’s Paul is wholly
Jewish, and so needs to prove to the Jews why, despite having been
chosen - and without God denying that choice - they can nevertheless
lose the privileges of the Alliance due to the sin committed by Israel.
Being chosen was not a privilege but a responsibility. Due to their
betrayal, God now chooses the gofm. But at the same time God is
counting on the people of Israel, because it is from among their ranks
that a faithful remainder will be chosen, and from them, all of them
Jews, that there will be an opening to the non-Jewish nations: a new
people that is transformed from the remainder of a people and a “non-
people” into “my people.” The choice of nations occupies chapters 2-7
of the Epistle. But Taubes is especially interested by chapters 9-12,
and this is the subject of his discussion with Carl Schmitt in 1970. A
central point is the following:
I have reserved for myself seven thousand men who have not
knelt before Baal.°*° And the same in the Now-Time, there re-
mains a freely chosen residue. And if it is free (khariti) it is
not based on works (érgon), otherwise the free (khdris) would
cease to be such. What follows? That although Israel did not
achieve what it sought, the [newly] chosen achieved it (Rm 8,
4-8).

Taubes demonstrates that the possibility of God rejecting the

people and breaking the Alliance has always been present for Israel.
An original element of his interpretation lies in situating the rite
as his explanatory moment (so prevalent today in the indigenous
communities of revolutionary Bolivia, in Zapatista Chiapas, or in the
Jewish tradition). The text of the Epistle to the Romans was written with
the purpose of explaining the situation celebrated in a Jewish festival,
the “Days of Awe” of Yom Kippur: for centuries Jews have implored
God to pardon their sins, and thus prevented him breaking the pact,
the Alliance, because of their inevitable infidelities. Paul’s responds:
“Enough!” The measure has been fulfilled; the line has been crossed:
176
he who preached “metanoia” (conversion) has been murdered. The
death of the Righteous, the meshiakh, under the Law, has destroyed
that Law’s very meaning.
Thus three legal instances collapse: the Roman Empire, the temple
and the synagogue, and the norms that the Judaizing Christians
attempted to impose on the new messianic community. Now as
always, “justification” refers to the emundh. The promise was made to
Abraham because he had emundh, before the Law even existed. This
attitude (emundh) only bursts forth in history, in Now-Time, when
the “remainder” appears as a messianic actor, constituting itself as a
community receiving the “spirit” (pneuma). Here Taubes reviews the
meaning of the concept of “spirit” from Aristotle to Hegel,°®* in order
to say - synthesizing his position, almost in passing - that “pneuma
[is] a force that transforms a people.”*’ Once the people, arising from
this “spirit” (which I will philosophically call a “critical intersubjective
consensus,” and which in a precise manner constitutes a people as
people, the “remainder” - the plebs - in rupture with the divided
political community), begins its historic-messianic task, it will bear the
events of the world of the first edn, under the Law (the Roman Empire,
Israel, etc.) “as if they did not” now have the capacity to give existence
meaning: “So, from now on, [...] let those who suffer [do so] as if
they did not, and those who enjoy, as if they did not” (I Corinthians 7,
29-31). This would constitute, in Taubes’ interpretation, the meaning
of Benjamin's nihilism. In Latin America, someone like Evo Morales,
for example, dresses like a campesino despite being president, because
he lives as though he were not president of the traditional bourgeois
system, since in messianic time, the time of the continued danger of
being murdered by the oligarchy (and the intelligence service of the
United States: this is not metaphorical!), the president is a servant of
the people in the delegated exercise of obediential power (as he himself
has called it).
The interpretations that Taubes puts forth of the positions taken
toward Paul of Tarsus by C. Schmitt, Hans Blumenberg, and even
Freud and Nietzche are of great interest to us. (In this last case the
metaphysician of the “eternal return” must have believed himself the
177
“Anti-Paul,” since he thought Jeshua was a vulgar idiot, meaning that
it would not have been worth it to be the “Anti-Christ”.)
The richness of Taubes’ book is inexhaustible, and we will bear it
in mind throughout our Critique of Bourgeois Political Philosophy,
as Marx would have called it, had he written a treatise on politics
rather than critical economics. Our final thesis can be synthesized in
two extreme positions proposed by the editors of this valuable book
(alongside a third, which I believe remains necessary):
But while Taubes (and Paul®) derive from this the conclu-
sion that there are no legitimate political orders whatsoever
(but only legal orders) - this point of view regards itself as
“negative political theology” - Schmitt retains the postulate of
the representative political order, which draws its legitimacy
from the divine sovereignty which it has made manifest. Only
the truth that has been revealed as God’s will is capable of
founding an authority that demands obedience.*"

The first position (a) sounds like anarchy and approximates E.

Levinas’ interpretation of politics. The second, on the other hand, (b) is
better understood as a traditionally right-wing position, holding that
all power comes from God and is delegated to authorities. By contrast,
I follow Paul and think (c) that the doctrine of “justification by emundh”
opens the door to power emerging from the people itself receiving the
“spirit”; a “spirit” which represents the messianic consciousness of the
community of the New Alliance and receives a new promise insofar
as it faithfully reconstructs the Kingdom of God, where justification
sets out from the consensus of the people as “children of God” and
not as “slaves” under the Law. In this context, Paul employs a strange
concept: “they received a spirit which transforms them into children
(vio8ecia) and they can shout: ;Abba! jFather!” (Rm 8, 15); “because
all those who allow themselves to be carried by the spirit of God are
God’ children” (Rm 8, 14). In the middle of the Empire, the slaves in
their quarters and those oppressed under the Law, heard a message that
came from below, from the poor and weak, the humbled and suffering:
“We are all God’s children!”; “God is our father; who forgives us and
178
 calls us to responsibility to Others. The meshiakh is each and every
one, those who risk themselves beyond the Law to walk on the water
of obedience to the law as a “Law of love.” We will see the significance
that these phrases take on in F Hinkelammert’s discussion of the topic
through Karl Marx,in a way that might scandalize Taubes.
f) Giorgio Agamben’s book The Time that Remains: A Commentary
on the Letter to the Romans*® is the fruit of what is perhaps the
most specialized investigation of our subject, and is therefore full of
suggestiveness and relevance for the present. Agamben achieves a
great deal of precision and clarity regarding some elements of Paul’s
thought debated in philosophical circles in the United States and
Europe. His book consists of six great “days; which we will consider
one by one.
The first “day” travels through a demonstration of the “messianic”
significance of Paul’s Epistle. In the second, the central theme is the
Greek word klet6s: the “calling” or “vocation” from which ekklesia (those
messianically “called together”) is derived. The “calling together” to
form part of the messianic community overcomes, absorbs, absolves,
subsumes the function previously fulfilled within the order of the Law.
This is where the “as if not” begins to function: to be a slave as if one
was no longer a slave. That is, the slave of a Roman lord begins to live
the experience of being free, like unknown “children of God” “The
messianic vocation is the revocation of every vocation?” In the case of
someone like Evo Morales, his previous “vocation” or “occupation” as
ashepherd or a coca farmer gives way to a new and total responsibility,
and he confronts the danger (more than just the threat of assassination)
of being president: but he is president (under the Law as head of state
with many privileges and benefits) as if he were not, in his simplicity,
poverty, humility, and horizontal commitment to the indigenous
peoples, etc. What Benjamin describes as every event's reference to
redemption also attests to this new world opened up by the messianic
“calling” which is related to the act of paying the ransom which frees
the subject from her prior function under the Law. In this new state,
members of the messianic community make “use” (from the Greek
khrésis) of the goods at their disposal, but purely as mediations in
179
view of the messianic responsibility of service to indigenous peoples
that have been oppressed for centuries. In this sense the proletariat -
in its original, pre-Marx meaning - indicates that summoned totality.
(In German, this would be the Stédnde, that is, all the popular strata
as a whole, which must be distinguished from a specific social “class.”
even the working class).*™
In the third “day,” Agamben occupies himself to the concept of
aphorisménos (in Greek dgwptopévoc, in Hebrew parush)**: that
which is separated, set aside, split, divided. Paul knew that the Law
separated Jews from non-Jews (the goim). But from the convocation
to the formation of part of the messianic community - the new people
- another type of division occurred. The old “wall” dividing Jews/goim
was overcome, but a new division appeared between Law/Spirit or
Law/emundh.

Diagram 9: The New Messianic Scission and the New Alliance

Under the law | In the emunéh

Jew Jews
of the flesh ofthe spirit: the “remainder”

old (First Alliance} New

7 |
Scissian Alliance

Non-Jews Non-Jews
of the flesh people by “calling”

New Scission

180
 What is interesting about this new scission is that it divides the
Jewish community into two moments: those who remain faithful to
the Law as the ultimate justificatory criterion (according to the flesh),
and those who now adhere to the new criterion. This is emundh, no
longer the “flesh” (of the old Alliance), but rather the “spirit” (in
Hebrew ruakh), Israel’s “remainder, the root of the new people. As
Agamben writes:
A fundamental chapter in the semantic history of the term
“people” thus begins here and should be traced up to the con-
temporary usage...*” [....] At a decisive instant, the elected
people, every people, will necessarily situate itself as a remnant,
as not-all.>"*

Here it would seem that Agamben loses his footing. In regard to the
“whole/part” question that so interests J. Taubes, Agamben claims that
the people is “neither the all, nor a part of the all, but the impossibility
for the part and the all to coincide with themselves or with each
other”** It would seem he has lost his compass by not understanding
that the “all? all of Israel (which is for us the “political community”
of the Architectonic of a Politics of Liberation) splits, shedding a “part,”
the “remainder” (or the originating kernel of the new messianic
community or “my-people”), which in turn is not “yet” an “all”: the
new future order. So that calling this original messianic community
(“part” of Israel) the plebs (as Agamben argues M. Foucault suggests)
- which will in the future become the community of the New Alliance
(the “all” of the “called? ekklesia: the populus) - does not entail any
difficulty if situated diachronically. But this is precisely what Agamben
opposes: “the [Pauline] remnant no longer consists in a concept turned
toward the future, as with the prophets.” Without looking toward
the future we can understand nothing.
The fourth “day” is perhaps the most interesting, dealing as it does
with the whole problem of various “times” and their qualifications.
There exist two types of “time? and there are likewise two levels
(eones) of each, the second being inaugurated by “messianic time?”
For Agamben (see Figure 3) the two times are: A) everyday “time”
181
(like that of W. Benjamin) and B) messianic time, which inaugurates
C) “eschatological” time or that which opens upon eternity.*” It
seems as though Agamben has lost the historical-political meaning of
messianic time. He is correct to say that what is decisive here is “that
the pléréma of kairoi is understood as the relation of each instant to
the Messiah.” But this does not mean that it is an individual, discrete,
chaotic experience that exists outside historical time. The messianic
“event” is communal, pertaining as it does to a messianic community,
within historical time (the everyday time of khrénos), bursting in as
an other time (like kairés), and not merely in the present or the past: it
certainly recalls all that “Now-Time” has announced (the “images’),
and it saves, within that memory - which situated the new moment
within messianic history - the victims of the past. It is the redeeming
act, that which pays the ransom, not only of the past (by memory)
and the present (by putting the messianic community into action, as
real collective actors) but also in view of the future (“all” Israel, the
populus). It is in that messianic enthusiasm (with the “spirit”) that
the meshiakh manifests, who can be a “teacher” or “every one” of the
members of the community.
In this case the “everyday time” of the Law (A) receives the impact
of the messianic community in the “Now-Time’” (B) that establishes
an other time (which will in the end be a khrénos) (C), which will be
“held back” by the katégon (D) up to the final moment (E). Agamben
opposes this “traditional” view. But it is not traditional and furthermore
recovers the future (utopia, political postulates, concrete projects, and
gives way to hegemony).

182
 Diagram 10: The Two Times and Two Eons

For. Agamben: A Be

(A; the creation; B: the messianic event; C: the eskhatdn)

For us: A 8 o

(A: khrénos; ascending ar-ow B; messianic event (kairds}; C’: esknatdn;

O: katékhon;E: the End: parousia}

ithe first of ese recreates Agemben’s formation (2003, p. 63)—Tr

The messianic event subsumes (in the concept of katargéin)*” the

Law (A), negates it with its time and its edn, but surpasses it (ascending
arrow B’) and establishes it on another level (C’), but this is no longer
the same history (ABC is not the same as AB’C’, since they do not
pertain to the same level or horizon; a qualitative leap has taken
place).
But the suspension of the Law in the messianic event is not a “state
of exception,’ because the latter is in the final instance a reference
to the Law, since in lifting the “state of exception” the “rule of law”
returns; rather, the messianic suspension of the Law constitutes an
authentic “state of rebellion” with no return. This “state of rebellion” is
followed by a new edn (C’), a new time, with the dictation of an- other,
alternative and more just law (one which completes the old Law). This
is not a mere inversion or restoration, but the “redemption” which
establishes a new order, one which would not, however, represent
the Eschatological Kingdom (the postulate of a classless, stateless,
propertyless society, etc.) but instead a time (Paul could still not
imagine the many times of future empires, but could only think of the
Roman empire and a parousia in the near future) in which the Law
(often) will become “ineffective” (katargéin) and the anomias (when
each Legal system becomes coercive and terminally repressive) will
be “held back” (the katégéon) until unleashed again (killing the future

183
meshiakh, all the mesias in history). These final reflections are clearly
no longer those of Agamben, but rather our own, and we therefore see
the possibility of thinking a politics which begins from Paul.
The sixth “day” deals with the whole question of the emundh (or
faith) and in connection the subject of the new “brit”. The pardoning
of sins by the mesfakh is foregrounded rather than the sin of Adam.
The new Alliance with the messianic community - with the “non-
people” now “my-people” - confronts the Alliance with Abraham.
And the Law of Moses, which kills when fetishized, is surpassed by
the new law of freedom, of life, of faith, of love, of the new eon, one
which rescues and redeems. The process of a politics of redemption
(or liberation) progressively appears in the transition, the Ubergang,
from Architectonic to Critique, from the Totality to the Exteriority
(and the new, future Totality). “Liberation” is critique, is redemption,
is recreation of a new praxis and of new political systems based on
critical consensus, on community “faith,” on the collective actor of the
new politics: the people. In the “Now-Time’ of the political process
developing at the outset of the 21" century in Latin America, a Politics
of Liberation recalls past messianic acts (volume I), analyzing the
structure (as Paul Ricoeur’s “long route”) of politics in everyday and
abstract time (volume ID), in order to make a “tiger’s leap” to the present
and the profound revolution underway (in this, volume III).*“
g) Now we will finally touch on an author who is different from
all those discussed above: Franz Hinkelammert (1931-).°”° He has the
advantage,with respect to those thinkers discussed previously,of being
an excellent economist and unparalleled in his knowledge of Marx,
being philosophically educated and for many years surrounded bya
group of liberation theologians (having begun his education in the
latter discipline with the Lutheran Marxist professor H. Gollwitzer
in Berlin). His enunciative location is the peripheral, post-colonial,
Latin American world, and he has been committed to the most
advanced of popular movements since the 1960s. None of the authors
discussed above brings together such a breadth of qualities. And to
distinguish him still more, instead of dealing exclusively with Paul
of Tarsus, Hinkelammert takes as his reference the Gospel of John
184
and Revelation, thereby invalidating von Harnack’s hypothesis of the
distance separating Jeshua ben Josef from Saint Paul (a view to which
Taubes and many others also subscribe). In The Cry of the Subject,
Hinkelammert indicates methodologically an aspect to which we
have already referred:
I take the Gospel of John as a text which speaks about a reality
[...] The text is not [only] theological, but instead interprets
reality in light of a tradition, for which the theological repre-
sents an integral part [...] However, for the reflection of our
present in its history, it its genesis, texts like the Gospel of John
have been immunized by being declared theological texts [...]
In declaring our founding texts to be theological, we surround
them with an impenetrable taboo. The fact that these are our
founding texts transforms them in our central taboo and our
history becomes a great enigma [...] In this sense I would like
to deal with the text of the Gospel of John as a founding text of
our culture.°”*

The theses arising from Hinkelammert’s reading of these texts is

much different from all those carried out by the previous authors.
What he proposes is the following:
I would like to demonstrate that the Gospel of John is a text
which has been inverted as a meaningful whole throughout
the course of later history [...], the same has occurred with
Paul's central works.”
For Hinkelammert*® the central moment of the Gospel of John
plays out in the trial of Jesus between John 18, 12 and 19, 22. The rest
is either preparatory or corollary. The pivotal moment is the death
sentence itself: “You are children of Abraham [Jesus proclaims before
the judges], complete the works of Abraham. But you are trying to
kill me [...]. Abraham did not kill [Isaac]” (John 8, 39-40). Abraham
loved his son’s life, but Semitic law at the time ordered him to kill his
first-born. For the love of life, Abraham did not obey the law. Jesus,
too, cured the sick on a Saturday, when the law prohibited work.

185
Interpreted in this way, the Abrahamic myth was an “anti-Oedipus”
more radical than any that psychoanalysis was ever able to analyze.
Hinkelammert comments:
Jesus seems to interpret this [Abrahamic] myth differently
and in this way recovers the original meaning of the text.
Abraham freed himself from the law; he realized that the law
required a murder and discovers a God whose law is the law
of life. Abraham converts and is liberated. He does not kill,
because he realized that freedom is given to not kill, not his
son, nor others. Abraham, free thanks to the law, liberated
himself in order to become an Abraham free before the law,
with his refusal to kill as the root of his liberty. In this sense
we can understand what Jesus says: You are trying to kill me.
Abraham did not kill.” [....] Jesus always makes judgements
on the basis of liberation and toward the recovery of the living
subject before the law.* [....] Jesus universalizes in the living
subject a needy subject who rebels against obedience to the
law [as the only justificatory criterion], insofar as that law de-
stroys life. This subject and her demand can appear insofar as
the law has been transformed into law as [fetishized] norma-
tive obedience [...] In the presence of this tautologization of
the law a universal subject appears, not merely any concrete
subject. Jesus vindicates this subject.*!
Up to this point we are more or less in agreement with the
philosophers discussed above, although with severely different
nuances. But now Hinkelammert follows his argument, and shows
the inversion of the inversion of the law produced by Jesus and his
follower Paul. The sin, the single and fundamental one, is not concrete
and differential disobedience of some aspect of the law, but rather
the judgment of sin in the final instance solely and exclusively as
“transgression of the law.’ For Jesus, when the law denies life one must
know how to deny the law. But this principle - subversive toward the
Empire and the formalism of those in power in Israel - will be subverted
over time, a subject which Hinkelammert deals with in his fourth
186
chapter: “The Christianization of the Empire and the Imperialization
of Christianity.’ Greco-Roman thought cannot reverse itself, since it
is and has always involved grounding power vis-a-vis slaves, women,
barbarians, etc. in a despotic manner. Christianity, on the other hand,
gives voice to the Other, to the oppressed, to the poor, to slaves. But
since the 4" century, there emerges in “Christendom” the “Law
of Christ” as that which governs the Church and the Empire; a new
fetishization has occurred (in moment C’ of Figure 3), a new historical
order of the law, a theoretical “Platonization” of Christianity:
The basis for the opposition is the relationship of the reason
for his death by the law. Jesus, according to John, is condemned
by the law, and fulfills the law in his death. As a result his enti-
re death turns on the scandal of the law. The innocent dies for
a law [...] and in his death fulfills the law. The interpretation
of the death of Socrates is the opposite. The judges distort the
law, it is not the law that condemns him, but instead the bad
judges who abuse the law. The death of Socrates confirms the
law; the death of Jesus creates the scandal of the law.

In the new imperial order, that of Byzantine and Latin Christendom,

this critical demand was unacceptable, unbearable. Christian law and
order needed to be imposed as the foundation for all justification.
Hinkelammert cites a text by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching
the crusades:
And the soldiers of Christ fight confidently in God’s battles,
without any fear of putting themselves at risk of death and kil-
ling the enemy. For them, to die or to kill for Christ does not
imply any criminality at all and carries with it great glory.

The enemies are now those who oppose the Sacro Roman Empire
organized by the Franks. The poor who rise up in peasant wars (also
condemned by Luther and Calvin), the feminists who were massacred
in the persecution of movements of “witches,” the heresiarchs who
criticize church injustices, those who take up the banners that the
Christians had hoisted against the Roman Empire now become the

187
persecuted, the burned, the tortured, those murdered in the name of
the Law of Christ. And these would later be the Jews, freethinkers, and
communists, etc. Christ himself, whose name was for many centuries
Lucifer (he who bears light), is sent to hell.
In Hinkelammert’s sixth chapter, “Cynical Capitalism and its
Critique: Ideology Critique and the Critique of Nihilism)’ he
surpasses by far W. Benjamin’s “intuitions” regarding the “materialism”
of messianism. Here Hinkelammert, with a strict understanding of
Marx’s thinking, dismantles the cynicism of capitalism through the
inversion of the Christianity of Jesus and Paul, when he writes:
The neoliberal transformation of liberal (and neo-classical)
economic theory leads to a theory which no longer speaks of
reality. It speaks only of the institution of the market, without
the slightest reference to concrete reality [...]. Seen from the
perspective of neoliberal theory, human beings do not have
needs [...]. At root, they are walking wallets with a computer
for a compass to calculate profit maximization [...]. This is
an angel who has been seduced by the splendors of this world
and who groans for a return to his pure state. This is homo
economicus.***

This is the perfect fetishism of the legality of the market, of the law,
of the system as a Totality, Paul’s séma psykhikds, the “sin of the flesh”
as the absolutization of the law (in this case, the “law of the market”),
The formalism of legality undermines the materiality of human life.
Debts must be paid, even if the debtor dies impoverished.
In his most recent work, Hacia una critica de la razon mitica. El
laberinto de la Modernidad,*” Hinkelammert critiques the final
horizon of the fetishization of the law (but equally of the episteme,
of politics, of Modernity). He finds inspiration in a passage by Marx
from the 1844 “Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Right”:
The critique of religion leads to the doctrine of the human
being as the supreme essence for the human being, and conse-
quently to the categorical imperative to undermine all rela-
188
 tions in which the human being is a humiliated, subjugated,
abandoned, and worthless being.”
Paul's “critique of the law” is a moment of the “critique of religion”
begun by Jesus, as a critic of the temple of Jerusalem for its corruption
and sacrificial doctrine, for its law that had fallen into fetishized
formalism, for interpreting Israel’s chosen status as a privilege while
forgetting its injustices, and most importantly for not having exercised
this chosen status as a responsibility to the poorest, widows, orphans,
and other peoples. If anyone began a critique of fetishized religion it was
Jesus and his follower Paul. Hinkelammert explains that at the base of
this fetishization lie certain myths, which survive in all cultures as well
as in Modernity. Marx confronts and critiques these. Hinkelammert
shows us how Jesus began this de-mythologization by proposing new
foundational myths. Human rationality always needs such myths, and
not only is it the case that they are not opposed to empirical science,
but the latter always inevitably presupposes such myths (and we must
not forget that the project running throughout Hinkelammert’s work
is one of epistemological critique™'). As we are unable to deal with the
subject exhaustively here, we will merely suggest some elements of the
argument to conclude this aside.
Lying beneath and serving as the foundation for the rebellion of
the oppressed and slaves who constituted the messianic community
that dismissed the law as a final justificatory criterion, we find the
self-affirmation of the excluded and oppressed as possible creators
] of such daring: rebellion against the Empire, the temple, the
Law. Hinkelammert discusses this subject in the two texts we are
discussing:
At the origins of Christianity lies this subject,’ Jesus, who
in the Gospel of John says: I have said: You are gods (John 10,
33). [...] he awakens a subject, which before was sleeping or
buried. Paul comes to the same conclusion. According to him
there is no longer Jew nor Greek; neither slave nor free; neither
man nor woman (Galatians 3, 28). The fact that we are dea-
ling with a needy and bodily subject is expressed through
189
 faith in resurrection, first of Jesus and later of everyone. [...]
It is through this subject that we can understand the phrase
of Ireneo of Lyon [frequently repeated by Mons. Romero,
murdered in 1980 by the military in El Salvador]: Gloria Dei,
vivens homo.** God himself becomes a collaborator and ac-
complice of this project of the subject, a co-conspirator. It is in
this that the rupture consists.°*

When the oppressed and excluded mythically affirm themselves

as “children of God” (or as Marx formulates it: “the human being is
the supreme essence for the human being”) they can rebel against
the emperor himself, whose exclusive title was that of “child of the
gods.” This self-affirmation from the horizon of the myth is the
very emergence of the subject as collective author of a new history.
Confronting the abstract and destructive myth of Modernity, of linear
and quantitative progress, and knowing that “myths create categorical
frameworks for thought faced with the contingency of the world,” the
philosophical-political categories that can be made explicit (from the
symbolic level of mythical narratives) from what Paul proposes enjoy
a great deal of currency in the critique of the myths and discourses
which justify coercive institutions, unjust social laws, and the order
organized according to the logic of capital which is imposed as the
prevailing Law on the basis of fetishized Power:
The God of Power becomes Satan [...] This is God in a state of
exception.°*® This is the God of Reagan, of Bush, even of Hitler
[...] This is the Power into which all constituent power, as con-
stituted power, can fall. This is what Saint Paul refers to when
he says that the sin acts behind the law’s back. [...] This is a
God present in Power, and as a result, a God whose presence
is inverted, in this false, deceptive, and even idolatrous sense.
[... In contrast,] on the basis of the human being as subject a
different God appears. This is the God of human redemption,
of complicity. The God who is an accomplice to human libe-
ration. This is an absent God, whose absence is present. This
is a God who is not to be seen in a mirror, and as a result, not
190
 to be seen inverted,*”

Before concluding, we would like to recall a messianic event which

bears all the characteristics noted by Agamben and Hinkelammert. In
a passage we can read the following:
He was given a scroll [...] where it is written: “The spirit®* of
the Lord is over me and has anointed me*” to give the good
news to the poor. He has sent me‘ to announce freedom™'
for the oppressed, and sight to the blind,“ to proclaim the
redemption™ of the captive.’ He rolled up the scroll [...] and
told them: “Today, in presence,™ this passage has been fulfil-
led” (Gospel of Luke 4, 17-20).
We are dealing with full awareness of the messianic moment par
excellence to which Paul does not cease to constantly refer, however
indirectly. This was the explosion of the singularity of the subject that
begins the movement - this is the function of leadership - and moves
the remainder, the initial kernel, to summon a new people (plebs) that
will send the Roman Empire and Israel into upheaval. Beginning
with Badiou, Benjamin or Taubes, this subject has been put forth as a
foundational figure of a critical political philosophy.

19
5. Five Theses on “Populism’«: F

The following pages take up the topic of phenomenon of “populism”

through five theses. This phenomenon has become a current issue
given the existence of Latin American governments that, with the
exception of Mexico and Colombia, have elected presidents from
the center-left in the latest elections since the year 2000. A certain
weariness of the neo-liberal models applied by the elite, as well as
the verification by the popular masses of the negative effects of the
“Washington Consensus, have promoted movements and decisions
judged as “populist” by conservative groups or interests from within
Latin America or from without - that is, from the United States or
Europe.

Thesis 1. The historic “populism” of yesterday. An

adequate categorization of a legitimate process“,
The Latin American juncture between the two so called ‘world
wars’ (1914-1945), and blatantly since the economic crisis of 1929,
produced a geopolitical change of great impact in Latin America. The
British hegemony (1818-1914) is challenged by the North American
economic and military power, a power that would replace the United
Kingdom from 1945 on as a hegemonic power. The ‘world wars
amounted, with immense costs never seen before in world history,
to more than forty millions deaths for the sake of the capitalist
hegemony.
The so called “Latin American Populism” (whose classical epoch
must be situated since the Mexican Revolution in 1910 or since the
popular elections movement lead by H. Irigoyen in 1918 in Argentina,
until the coup against J. Arbenz in 1954 - a little more than forty years),
which was mistaken by a theoretical dogmatism for an European
“Bonapartism”®”’, is the result of this concrete geopolitical situation.
Since the beginning of the so called first world war (which was nota
‘world’ war, given that a great part of Asia, Africa and Latin America
192
did not intervene) the domination by the center of the colonial or
post-colonial periphery (of Latin America) had to diminish its
exploitation, since the:center found itself engaged in a brutal battle
for hegemony. This became the opportunity for the slow and frail
origin and growth of a certain industrial bourgeoisie and of a working
class, which was the product of a nascent and always dependent late
coming industrial revolution. In certain more urbanized countries in
Latin America (around Buenos Aires or Cordoba, Sao Paulo or Rio,
Mexico or Guadalajara, etc.) industrial enterprises were born which
produced goods that were difficult to import given the war among the
northern countries. G. Vargas, L. Cardenas, J.D. Peron among others,
were the leaders of these processes of “social contract,’ where a weak
national bourgeoisie grew simultaneously to a working class and to
the organization (in Mexico, for example) of the peasants. General
confederations of businessmen, of workers and of peasants, revealed
the organized irruption of a new political, economic, social and
cultural constellation, which was named “populism.”
This categorization was not negative. Rather, it attempted to
show the fact of a hegemonic political project (insofar as it met
the requirements of the majority of the population, including the
bourgeois industrial elite). With the support of a state that had relative
autonomy from the dominant classes, this project affirmed a certain
nationalism that protected the national market. The weak, nascent
capitalism had then certain protected limits with respect to the use
of energy (hence the nationalization of oil, gas, mines, electricity,
etc.) and customs advantages within the national market. This was
the stage of the greatest economic growth in Latin America in the
20" century. It was also the era in which governments were effectively
elected by the massive presence of the people in clean elections, Even
the social block of the oppressed made itself present on the basis of a
democratic stance, a phenomenon that would have no comparison in
the whole of the 20" century (with the exception of the revolutionary
processes which we will mention later). For this reason, names like
L. Cardenas or J. D. Peron, although ambiguous, are difficult to erase
from popular memory.
193
 This same phenomenon was also happening in other regions
of the world’s periphery. Kemal Ata-Turk in Turkey, the nationalist
movement of Abdel Nasser in Egypt, the Congress Party in India or
the Sukarno Party in Indonesia, showed analogous circumstances.

‘Thesis 2. The “pseudo populism” of today. Pejorative

epithet as a conservative political critique without
epistemic validity.
The historical “populism” of the 20% century is in no way
comparable to what today certain conservative and dominant groups
denominate “populism” or “radical populism.” With the latter, these
groups pejoratively try to deny legitimacy to certain social-political
phenomena in the contemporary juncture of the beginning of the 21"
century.
Indeed, the United States, since the beginning of the so called “Cold
War,” needed a little less than ten years to organize its hegemony over
the “free” world against the Soviet Union (an unforeseen effect of the
intra-bourgeois wars). In the West, its old enemy in Europe, Germany,
was strengthened through the “Marshall Plan” against the new
enemy: the Soviet Union. In the East, the old enemy, Japan, was re-
organized against the new enemy: China. Having finished the task of
organizing its hegemony over the North, the United States noted that
in the South regimes swarmed with nationalist aspirations, regimes
that, although being capitalists, confronted the United States in the
competition within the capitalist world market where the bourgeoisie
of the North battles that of the South. As it was to be expected, the
North, without compassion, violently obliterated these peripheric
“bourgeoisies” that attempted to have a place in the world market.
The North American bourgeoisie, through the Pentagon, launched a
war** of competition (the “competition” within the market where one
bourgeoisie dominates and extracts surplus value from the other).
This war was manifest first of all in Guatemala, in 1954, against Jacobo
Arbenz’s capitalist project of national emancipation, a project that
attempted to give greater income to the workers of the United Fruit
194
Company as a way to strengthen the Guatemalan internal market, in
order to allow for a nascent industrial revolution - this project was
not at all socialist’. But in the war of the competition between the
northern bourgeoisie with the southern one, the Latin American one,
there was no proportionality in the power of the contenders. One after
the other the projects of the historical “populism” of the 20" century
were destroyed. In this way the governments of J. Arbenz, G. Vargas,
J. D. Peron, Rojas Pinilla, Perez Jimenez, etc. were destroyed. Regimes
categorized as “developing” were established instead (since 1954).
The “Dependency Theory” formulated these events showing that
the transference of the surplus value of the peripheral capitalism’s
global capitalism to the global capitalism of the center (the main
mechanism of this transference, since the decade of the 1980’s, is
the payment of an inflated external debt, which was to a large extent
conceived anti-democratically and hidden from the Latin American
people)*’ must be covered up ideologically through an economic
theory built ad hoc by the United States and Europe. This economic
theory (denominated by CEPAL the “Developmental Doctrine”)
suggested, since the end of the 1950's, the “opening of borders” to
the most advanced technology and to the capital from the center in
order to substitute imports. This produced the phenomenon of what
later would be known as “Transnational Corporations.” The truth is
that the “developmentalism’” failed because it was only the “mask” of
the expansion of the capital from the center, of the domination of the
Northern bourgeoisie over the periphery; of the center that destroyed
and absorbed national capital and that weakened the peripheral
bourgeoisie. This task was brought to fulfillment by the dictatorships
for national security (from the coup directed by Golbery in Brasil in
1964 to the first formally democratic presidential elections in Brasil or
Argentina in 1983), when the masses, which had in some ways tasted
the fruit of the economic-political development of “populism,” were
once again oppressed on the basis of a discipline made necessary by
the logic of the “development” of capital. These dictatorships made
possible a new era for the existence of a peripheral capitalism that
augmented the transference of surplus value to the center.
195
 The implementation of formal democracies after the dictatorships
(1983-2000) signified a political “opening” of public life that was not
terrorized by military repression. ‘This constituted an atmosphere of
apparent freedom, which enabled the consolidation of the conscience
to pay back the large external debt. This debt, which was initiated by
the military governments, would be inherited by the “democratic”
governments. Such governments, as “democratic,” justified to the
popular conscience the duty to pay the debt while the military
dictatorships were losing credibility. In other words, the debt had
been legitimized. These formally “democratic” governments would
slowly turn orthodoxically neoliberal (the prototypical examples
of these are the governments that privatize the public goods; such
governments as that of Carlos Menem and Carlos Salinas de Gortari).
In this way the “great narrative” (ignored by post-modern philosophy)
of the neo-liberal theory was put into practice. This is expressed in
the “Washington Consensus,’ which presses for a total opening of the
markets in the face of a supposedly unavoidable economic, cultural
and political globalization - the articulation of this is formulated in
the left by A. Negri and M. Hardt."
By this moment, the category of “populism” had completely
changed its meaning. A semantic slippage had taken effect - a political
and strategic re-definition of the term. Now “populism” means any
social or political measure or movement that opposes itself to the
tendency for globalization as it is described by the basic theory of
the “Washington Consensus.” ‘This theory justifies the privatization
of the public goods in peripheral states, the opening of markets to
the products of capital from the center, and denies the prioritization
of the requirements and needs of the majority of the population; a
population impoverished by the political measures adopted by the
military dictatorships (until 1984 approximately) and whose condition
has worsened lately by decisions about structural reforms dictated on
the basis of the criteria of a neoliberal economy - which would be in
force until 2008 in Mexico, constituting a shameful anachronism, if
not a suicidal one. In the middle of this “Night of History” in Latin
America, the uprising in Chiapas in January 1994 signified a beam of
196
dawn amidst darkness.
In other words, all the political and popular movements since 1999
(taking as a point of reference the promulgation of the ‘Constitucion
Bolivariana’ in Venezuela) that oppose the neo-liberal project would
be marked as “populist.” In this sense, the proper social sciences should
reject the use of this term, because it does not fulfill the semantic
clarity of being a denomination that has an epistemically precise
content. This term is simply an insult, a masquerading ideological
enunciation, utilized to sophistically confuse an opponent. It is clear
that its use happens almost unanimously in the media that serves the
peripheral and central capital as well as theories built ad hoc. This
term is continuously used by politically dominant groups, groups that
oppose the popular movements which battle against the theory and
practice of the “Washington Consensus.” Today critical popular and
political movements are judged negatively as “populist”, just as in the
past the historical “populism” of the 30’s was criticized as military
“dictatorships” (such as the ones of G. Vargas, L. Cardenas or J. D.
Peron).
The meritorious work by Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason*”, as
well as all the theoretical work of this author, attempts to rescue the
positive sense of the denomination “populist” on the basis of a theory
of hegemony through which he vindicates political reason insofar as
it either is “populist” - that is, it responds to the requirements of the
consensus of the majority - or it is not properly political reason. That is
to say, political reason is always populist reason and nothing else.
It is here that a new problematic begins, and we are on our way to
the third thesis of this contribution.

Thesis 3. Re-signification of the political category

“people”: the “popular” is not the “populist” (neither
yesterday nor today).
The strict question of contemporary Latin American political
philosophy consists in asking whether one could distinguish between
the “populist” and the “popular;” between “populism” and “people”
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Everything begins with the question: What is denominated by
“people”?, or, more simply “What is “people”?, the other questions
depend on the clarification of the latter. On my behalf, I have tried
to distinguish both words (“populism” and “people”) since the end of
the 60’s. With respect to this issue, we have maintained a polemic that
for the most part has not been noted by the Social Sciences. I will try
again to distinguish these ambiguous terms, since they have a “double
meaning.” Both “populism” (even when it was adequately used in the
historical “populism” since the 30’s) and the political category (central
to a politics of liberation) “pueblo” must be clarified. This would allow,
as a corollary, to distinguish between the “populist” and the “popular”
- a distinction that E. Laclau is wary to propose. This would be a
thematic that could be denominated as “the popular question” - in
the traditional sense of the great “questions” that have been tackled by
historical Marxism.*?
Effectively, the prior question, then, is to ask about the meaning
of the political category, in its everyday use denominated “people;
and to construct it precisely and explicitly as a theoretic-political,
philosophical “category. The “category, which is a hermeneutic
instrument, always has a “content” (we could say a “concept,” following
Marx). This classical thinker clearly tells us:
“Every economist [we could say at this point, applying this text to
our topic: political philosophers] falls into the same mistake: instead
of considering the surplus purely as it is [we could say: the category
pueblo], they consider it through the particular forms of gain [we
could say: they use it in its derived forms of populism and popular]?
It is a matter, then, of not falling into the “confusion” (that is, to use
many terms with the same meaning) of identifying the content of the
words “populist” with “popular; and “popular” with “pueblo.” Just as
Marx needed two different words (which were confused in the prior
political economy: profit and surplus value) to express “two” different
meanings (while before both terms shared “one” meaning), we will
now use “three” words two distinguish three different concepts, which
were previously confused.
Let’s begin with the philosophic-political category “people.” Ina
198
recent work, we have tried to synthesize the question.** The “people”
cannot be confused with the mere “political community’, as an
undifferentiated whole of the population or of the citizens of a state
(the potestas as an institutional structure in a given territory)’, as an
intersubjective reference to a current political and historical order.
The concept “people” - in the sense that we are trying to bestow upon
it - originates in the critical moment in which the political community
splits, when the “historical bloc in power” - for example, the nascent
national bourgeoisie of the Latin American historical populism after
the 30’s - does not constitute a leading class anymore (or a group of
classes or of sectors of a class). Antonio Gramsci would say:
“If the dominant class has lost consensus (consenso), it is no longer
a leading (dirigente) class, it is only a dominant class, holding only a
coercive force (forza coercitiva), which indicates that the large masses
have departed from the traditional ideology, not believing anymore in
what they used to believe”*”.
Applying the Gramscian categories to the case of historical
populism, and also to the dictatorships of national security (since
1964), we could say that in the decades after the 30’s the governments
of G. Vargas, L. Cardenas or J. D. Peron controlled the “historical bloc
of power” exercising its power as a “leading class” through its nascent
industrial bourgeoisie. They had the consensus of the majority of
the population (the other components of this collective agent being
the working class, the peasants, the small nationalist bourgeoisie
that managed the state bureaucracy, the army when it has a popular
origin, sectors of the church, etc.) because they had a hegemonic
project. Once the fall of these governments was accomplished through
military coups orchestrated in Washington, the transnational nascent
bourgeoisie, the developmentalist bloc and, even more, the military
men of the dictatorships, or of the authoritarian or conservative
governments without military dictatorships (like the Colombian,
Mexican, Venezuelan, etc. governments), stopped being a leading
class and transformed themselves into dominant classes or sectors. In
other words, when the consensus was lost (through which the power
of the “historical populisms” had been hegemonized, obtaining a
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sustainable obedience) the people had to be repressed, a people that
had begun to be conscious of itself (consciousness of being people) in
the prior populist stage (amidst all the ambiguities that this implies,
as we will see). The repressive bloc transformed itself into a “dominant
class” without consensus, falling into a growing “crisis of legitimacy’,
since hegemony had been lost.**
The concept of “people” appears phenomenally (that is, it makes
itself “present” or “appears” to the political conscience of the public-
ontological sphere of the same oppressed collective actors) in such
a double crisis of legitimacy and hegemony. When A. Gramsci
describes the people as the “social bloc of the oppressed” (opposed
to the “historical bloc in power”), he is describing the question in
a precise and unexpected way. In a presentation to the Movement
Without Land of Brasil (in the school Florestan Fernandes) we
heatedly discussed the issue in 2007. The political category “people”
cannot be confused with the economic category “class” (not even with
the working “class”). The working class is the group of the subjects of
the “economic field” that are subsumed by capital transforming them
into wage laborers that actually produce (materially and formally) the
surplus value of the goods. The “political field” has to be distinguished
from the “economic field” - the confusion of both fields is one of the
deficiencies of a certain extreme, economicist, left. The categories
of a “field” should not be attributed to, nor lightly and superficially
used in, another field, even if they always determine (in their own
way, materially and economically or politically and formally) those of
the other field. The “working class” is an essential economic category
of capital, a category that, when it enters the political field, could
or could not come to play a function of little or large importance,
depending on the economic or political development of the juncture
in the analyzed case. In this way, J. C. Maridtegui showed in the 1920's
in Peru that the political popular collective agent that could attain
a hegemonic project was the indigenous population (economically
being unessential to abstract capital), rather than the nonexistent
working class (not even the peasant class in its strict meaning), since
industrial capitalism practically did not exist in Peru. On the contrary,
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the originary indigenous “pueblo” was the hegemonic reference of the
Peruvian politics of the moment. Maridtegui was labeled as “populist”
by the orthodox Marxists that founded the Peruvian Communist
Party (just as Marx was labeled as “populist” by Vera Zasulich or
Plejanov, since Marx sided with Danielson and his friends in Russia
on the issue of the obshina)*’. Moreover, these orthodox Peruvians
confused the populism of the periphery of the capitalism between the
wars with the bonapartism of the 19" century and with the European
Fascisms of the 20" century - a double theoretical mistake caused by
the lack of a strict determination of the category of “populism” in the
Latin American peripherical postcolonial capitalism posterior to the
30’s, an issue that Marx suspected in his theory of the transference
of surplus value between nations, but one that he could never tackle
adequately”.
Certain contemporary extreme orthodox marxisms continue to
designate the “working class” as the ultimate historical subject of all
transformative (rather than reformist)@'! or revolutionary political
process. “In the abstract” and in the strict “economic camp” (which
is the level in which Marx situates himself epistemologically in his
published work Capital), the working class is, conjoined with the
bourgeois class, the essential constitutive component of capital, and
its intervention (for example, in an uninterrupted strike) would be
definitive for the destruction of capital. In other words, it would be
the ultimate instance of the economic social praxis. However, in some
historical junctures, in a “concrete” level and in the “political field} the
working class cannot be this last instance, not even an essential point
of reference. In the revolution as Maridtegui conceived of it in Peru,
in the Chinese or Sandinist Revolution, in the Bolivian revolution led
by Evo Morales in Bolivia, etc., the working class did not play the
tole of a “historical subject” in these historical junctures. The truth
is that the “people” was always, concretely, historically and politically,
the collective agent “(not necessarily directed by a working class, or a
peasant class as in China, or by an elite of the small bourgoisie in the
peasant class, as in the Sandinist Revolution, etc.).
The political category of “pueblo” constitutes, then, a new theoretical
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object in the Latin American political philosophy. For its construction
one could count on categorical distinctions that are applied to other
topics. For example, if one would speak of “class in itself” or “class
for itself”, or “consciousness of the working class,’ one could envision
what could be meant by “people in itself” or “people for itself? as
much as a “consciousness of the people” from the “historical, popular
memory” that transcends the capitalist system (since the memory of
the working class cannot transcend the 16" century or even a little
earlier, because before that there was no capitalism nor working
class). For example, the working class in France could appear since
the 16" century or a little earlier, but the French “people” was already
Gallic against the Roman Empire, it was the servant of the medieval
feuds, it is the peasant or working class in modern capitalism. Fidel
Castro, undoubtedly a socialist, can speak of J. Marti as a hero of the
“Cuban people” - without having been Marxist, nor socialist, nor
working class. The heroes of a “people” politically cross through the
“economic” modes of production, although they certainly receive the
corresponding material determinations, in the long span of “political”
history.
The people, the social bloc of the oppressed and excluded, can transit
for centuries within a “state of rights” of passive obedience, in the face of
an apparent legitimacy (since the three types of legitimacy described
by Max Weber are only apparent), of a consensus that the political
community lends to the historical bloc in power as the leading class.
When this “people” (the aforesaid bloc of the oppressed) becomes a
“people for itself? or takes on the conscience of being a “people”, it
abandons the passivity of the obedience that is the accomplice of the
concealed domination of an hegemony that in truth does not meet
its needs, and enters into a state of rebellion - a slow process that can
last decades if not centuries. The dissent of the “people’, the result of
taking on conscience of unfulfilled material needs, begins to organize
itself. The so called “new social movements” are popular groups that
manifest in the political (ontological) field the presence of not only
unfulfilled material needs, but also of the same needs formulated
explicitly and linguistically as demands - an aspect well described by
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E. Laclau. Demanding is not the same as need: there is no demand
without need. A demand is the political questioning of a social need in
the economic field. Need is the material content of the political protest.
The social movement is, moreover, the first social “institutionality,
which could cross the threshold of the civil society (the expanded
state for Gramsci) and also the threshold of the political society (the
state in a restricted sense). All social movements manifest some living
corporeal determination of the intersubjective human subject that is
negated in its fulfillment as a particular need. Feminism tells us about
domination (negativity) in the determination of gender as machismo,
and about its overcoming. The demanding movement of the non-white
races fights against racial discrimination. The movement of the elderly
tise against the “adult-cracy” as the productive criterion of capital, the
same as the youth and the children. Indigenous people demand their
originary culture - as an economic, political, religious, linguistic, etc.,
system. The working and peasant class equally affirm their right to full
participation in the economic production, overcoming the system set
up on the extraction of surplus value. Etc. etc.
All social movements, the Difference, do not add up to the
population that constitutes the people. The people is much more, but
these movements are the “people-for-itself”, they are the “conscience
of the people” in transformative political action (in some exceptional
cases, revolutionary). Anyway, they are the active interstitial fabric
that unifies and allows for presenting itself as a collective agent in the
political field to the “social bloc of the oppressed and excluded,’ which
is always the majority of the population.
This irruption, as a “state of rebellion” (which puts into question
the Schmittian™ “State of Exception’, like when the Argentinian
pueblo “leaves in the air” the “state of exception” dictated by F. de la
Rua and impeaches him as president on December 21%, 2001) , is the
volcanic manifestation in the political field of the “people as people”
- J. J. Rousseau would say, as potentia®. This reminds us that the only
site of political power is the very political community. But when this
“community” gives way to the “people” - which E. Laclau suggestively
denominates as plebs - it opposes itself to the “anti-people’, that is,
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to the minority that exercises fetichized power”. “People” would be
then the collective act that manifests itself in history in the processes
of crisis of hegemony (in this sense, also of legitimacy), where the
material conditions of the population reach unbearable limits, which
demands the emergence of social movements that serve as catalysts
for the unity of the whole of the oppressed population, the plebs, a
unity that is constructed around an analogic-hegemonic project
which progressively includes all of the political demands articulated
on the basis of economic material needs. All of the theoretic discussion
is focused today on how this hegemonic project is constructed or,
even better, an anti-domination project that would impose itself as
hegemonic, when the pueblo (the plebs) is able to exercise power as a
new historical bloc in institutional power (the potestas).
We propose an equidistant and complex solution in response to (i)
the position that one demand would turn equivalential (of E. Laclau)
- having been in its origin one differential demand of a movement,
filling progressively the “significant vacuum” (which concretely would
be represented in some way by a leader) - assuming as well in its
process the remaining differential demands of the other movements
(through which the vacuum would again be emptied), and to (ii) the
sheer need of the translation of the diverse differential demands by
an uninterrupted dialogue between the movements, a need which,
however, is endangered by the hegemonic universal of Laclau in
the face of which the critical postmodernism of de Boaventura de
Souza leaves us without strategic unity. In the former, one falls into
an equivalential univocity with the advantage of the proposal of a
necessary strategic unity (Laclau); in the latter, one falls into a skeptical
equivocity, although respectful of the Difference (B. de Souza). In our
solution, the hegemonic project which assumes the demands of the
Different social movements, which are particular (and should be so),
must effectively enter into a process of dialogue and translation. In
this way, the feminist understands that women, who are affirmed by
this movement, are at the same time the most discriminated against
(the women of color), the most exploited economically (the working
women), the most socially excluded (the marginalized single mother),
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etc. In the same way, the one who demands the equality among races
discovers that the workers of color are the most unfairly treated, that
racism crosses through all of the remaining social movements. A
transversal comprehension begins to construct a hegemonic project
where all the movements include their demands. But such an inclusion
is not based on the supremacy of one movement over the others (not
even the demands of the capitalist working class), a temptation in
Laclau’s proposal; nor is it the impossibility of a unifying project, a
temptation in de Souza’s proposal. The project would be analogical:
assuming moments of similitude (not of a universal univocal identity,
as in Laclau) and allowing for analogical distinctions particular to
each movement (against the impossibility of unity as in de Souza).
This is a question of analogic logic (which we have denominated the
analectic method proper to a Philosophy of Liberation, about which
we cannot expand here but which I hope to take on extensively in the
near future’).
In this sense the “people’, being a “part”, represents the whole, since
“the people is (...) the central protagonist of politics, and politics is
what impedes the crystallization of the social in a full society” writes
Laclau referring to the position of J. Ranciere™, and criticizing those
of S. Zizek and A. Negri - the latter discards the concept of “people”
for that of the “multitude; issues that we cannot take up here.
In this way the “popular’ is what is proper to the “people” as plebs,
as collective agent (not as a substance that moves through history
metaphysically as a “a historical subject”, omnipotent and infallible
demiourge, of certain cuasi-anarchist orthodoxies of the extreme
left).
While the “populist”, in the valid sense of the “historical populism”
of the decades posterior to the 30’s, is the confusion between the
proper of the “people” as we have started to define it (“social bloc of
the oppressed”) and the sheer “political community” as a totality. All
of the Cuban, Argentinian or Mexican community is considered as
the Cuban, Argentinian and Mexican “people” by populism, including
classes, sectors of classes and groups that constituted the historical
bloc of power which was necessary to depose. The ‘people’ is confused
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in this way with the ‘nation’ (all of the population born in a territory
and organized under the institutional political structure of the state, a
political community).
The “popular” and the “people”, on the other hand, are not the
totality of the political community, but are a sector of the population
that Agamben denominates as “the rest” in his suggestive work The
Time that Remains. The “people” would rescue, redeem the whole
community (confused and divided), it would save the ‘patria, the
populus as a futural project (in the symbolic level of J. Lacan), even
against the wish of the masters.

‘Thesis 4. The power of the people, institutions of

participation and democracy.
The question can be formulated in a few words. The organization
of political communities of millions of people by means of direct
democracy being impossible, there was a need since millennia - at
least since the large cities in the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia
around 3000 b.c. - of instituting structures of representation. The
potentia or the political power in itself of the political community is
the institutions (the potestas) which allow for the delegated exercise of
an indicated power. The delegation of power creates its own proper set
of problems, the most serious: the slow distancing of the representant
from the represented and its subsequent fetichizing. The one who
exerts the power as delegate affirms itself as the very self-referential
site of political power, defining it as a legitimate domination that
gains the obedience of the citizens - in Max Weber’s description. The
political community as the originary site of power is transformed into
the passive object of a consensus as obedience to the authority of the
one to which power had been invested originarily through delegate
representation. The delegate becomes the one who exercises the
monopoly of power and the represented ones have lost all of their
attributes.
For sure, the community of citizens creates the representative
institutions, from the municipality or the county, to the province

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or regional state, to the national territorial State or to international
organisms. These representative institutions, managed by political
parties, can turn into organisms for the domination of the citizens,
which express their will only every four to six years confirming
through universal vote the candidates which the political parties (and
actual powers) have previously elected in an elitist manner, without the
democratic participation of the community. In this way we reach the
circle in which Latin American politics finds itself, after the democratic
“opening” posterior to the fall of the military dictatorships since 1984,
where the political parties monopolize the political life falling into a
profound corruption - the first being to unconsciously situate the site
of power in its governing will, forgetting that the ontological site of
power is the people.
Hannah Arendt remembers that Thomas Jefferson, way before
the Paris Commune, was obsessed with an issue: “the division of
counties [municipalities] into districts”*’. Jefferson thought that
the “elemental republics” should allow for the citizens in the every
day world to habitually gather in the districts (which would be the
soviets of the October Revolution and which today we would call
the neighborhood, the town, the base community, the “cabildos” of
the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999 in Venezuela, every organization
under the municipalities), just like A. Toqueville had described within
the utopic communities of the Pilgrims or of the founding fathers.
These are self-managing communities, of direct democracy, which
would assume everyday responsibilities:
“Jeferson knew very well that what he proposed as the salvation
of the Republic signified effectively the salvation of the revolutionary
spirit in the republic” - comments Arendt. All of his explanations of
the revolutionary system begun with the reminder of the role carried
out by the small republics with the ‘energy which animated our
revolution in its origin [...] On this basis, he would trust on districts
[communities under the counties or municipalities] as the instrument
to attain that the citizens continue doing what they had shown to be
able to do during the years of the revolution, that is, to act responsibly
and to participate in political matters”.
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 Jefferson is referring to the problematic that we have sketched in
this work. That is to say, to the revolutionary moment of the colonial
political community, which had remained unified under the directive
of the historical English metropolitan bloc in power exercising
authority with the consensus of the colonizers, and which separated
itself through the emergence ofa North American people that generated
a new hegemonic project that unified the revolutionary will, and from
its dissent took on a fight of liberation against the British Crown. This
intervention of the people, which situated as its enemies the colonizing
English and the colonial collaborators, as the surge of a politically
active plebs, could, as the independent Republic was institutionalized,
lose its politically creative, permanent, responsible, conscience. The
people as plebs fell asleep as a new populus, as a political community
that turned passive, obedient to the new historical bloc in power: the
nascent industrial bourgeoisie, in the North, and the slaving oligarchy,
in the South. Jefferson tried to maintain, in front of the institutions
of representation, the presence of the originary experience of the
participative democracy. He failed.
In the same way Lenin, in the beginning, gave “all the power to the
soviets,’ to the communes, to direct popular democracy. It was total
chaos. It moved from one extreme to the other. The NEP was “all the
power to the institutions directed by the Bolshevik party.’
The issue is, then, how to articulate the representative institutions
(always in a process of transformation or perfection) around political
parties and around the three already existing powers (executive,
judicial, legislative) through new participative institutions that allow,
beyond parties and from the very base, for a real actualization, with
direct democracy in the small communities of the people, of the
hyperpotentia™ or of the permanent exercise through time (without
having to wait the punctual intervention every four or six years
through the confirmation ofa representative already elected by others)
of the popular will. The “cabildos,’ the districts, the neighborhood
communities, the towns, etc., would be organizations under the
municipalities (adding to a few thousand citizens) gathered in even
weekly meetings, where the citizens would assume responsibility, with
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assigned resources and being judicially founded in the Constitution
and the corresponding laws, for issues such as the security of the
community, the distribution of water and sewage, the education of
the youth, the embellishment of places, the responsibility for health,
the cooperatives of consumption and even production, etc. That is to
say, the effective exercise of political power would descend from the
municipality to the community at the very base.
From these millions of organisms where direct democracy would
be carried out, as through polling stations (for example, in Mexico
there are 130 thousand within the national electoral register), the
participative political life would be transformed into the everyday
activity of the citizens. Moreover, they would be coordinated in
webs within the municipalities, within the provinces, until reaching
presence in the national state. This web of webs would constitute
the Power of citizenship“, which would oversee the other powers
(executive, judicial, legislative). The participation would be in this
sense permanently guaranteed in the political community of an active
and critical consensus, which would oversee the representation of
professional politicians organized in political parties.
If new transformations were to be added to these participative
institutions, such as revoking referendums, the possibility that the
citizens (in certain proportion) could present projects of law, etc.,
would take away from representation its stiff burocratism and would
speed up the participation of citizens. Of course one would always
have to consider governability and stability in the exercise of power
delegated to representation, but one would have to choose a fair mean
between the revocation of mandates and governable stability.
Without representation, participation falls into an ungovernable
chaos: “All the power to the soviets!” Without participation
representation turns stiff, it is fetichized, corrupted: “All the power to
the monopoly of political parties!”
It is necessary to invent a new articulation between open
representation, revocable, overseen by a real democracy, and the direct
participation of citizens - permanent, responsible and constitutional -
as the exercise of power of the people.
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 Thesis 5. Democratic demands for the exercise of
leadership. ‘
Now we will situate ourselves decidedly at the level of political
praxis, in the sphere of strategic action as such. Politics can be
described as having three levels: the level of normative principles (C),
of institutions (B) and of political action as an agonic activity, but
distinct to war (A)*”’. In this sense Fidel Castro expressed himself in
the following way:
“We understand as people, when we speak of fight, the great irredentist
mass [...], the one that wishes great and wise transformations in
all orders and which is decided to achieve them, when it believes
in something or someone, above all when it believes sufficiently in
itself.”
The reflection is strategic political, because it situates itself at the
level of fight. In this agonic level, it is not only theory is necessary
but also faith, the belief as subjective conviction that allows itself to
be opposed to the unjust “state of rights.” One must believe in the
postulates (the kingdom of freedom, the dissolution of the state, the
society without classes, etc.), but also in someone. The people can
be convinced rationally of a political plan, but subjectively it must
objectify someone, in her honesty, integrity, courage, wisdom, in
order to give her the mandate of taking charge of the responsibility
of a shared attainment of the strategic goal agreed upon. A pact of
mutual collaboration is established in a people that sufficiently believes
in itself. And this is because in the fight, in war, instantaneous, difficult
and complex decisions must be made frequently. Karl von Clausewitz
describes this as follows:
“If we observe in ample form the four components of the atmosphere
in which a war develops - danger, physical effort, incertitude and
chance - it would be easy to comprehend that a great moral and
mental force is necessary for its advance with security and success
in this disconcerting element, a force that historians and chronicle
writers of military successes describe as energy, firmness, constancy,
strength of spirit and character”*’.
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 In other words, and in Gramsci’s words:
“Marx and Machiavelli. This argument can give way to a double
task: a study of the relations between them, as theoreticians of militant
praxis and of action”.
This task situated in a strategic level, without theoretic intention,
is interested in giving birth to a political party “that strives to found a
State”! The “organic intellectual,’ who cannot be without charisma,
is conceived in the complex encounter of: a) the party militant, b) the
organizer as a political leader, and c) the one who has the capacity to
formulate theoretically and organizationally the strategic steps in the
short term (the tactical) and, above all, in the long term (the properly
strategic).
In general, Latin American political philosophy, which comments
on European or North American authors, has as a reference the
political orders established with a “State of Rights.” It is not a matter
of the organization of new movements, of the responsibility of
establishing profoundly transformed political systems. For this reason,
there is no reflection on the theme that the very N. Machiavelli clearly
proposed:
“Moreover, to turn to those who by their own virtu, and not by
chance, have become princes, I say that the most notable ones are
Moses, Ciro, Romulus, Theseus and other similar ones”.
It was not a matter of giving counsel to an established prince, who
had inherited traditional power. On the contrary, it was a revolutionary
situation, where a new order had to be established. Machiavelli does
not situate himself in the institutional level (B) (for this purpose, he
dedicated his work: Discourse on the first decade of Titus Livius), but
in the strategic level (A), and in the beginning moment of the creation
of something without precedent. In this moment of fight - and the
Latin American people situates itself in a fight against the effective
powers of the center, neo-liberal capitalism, and against the intrinsic
oligarchies - a dialogue is established of double complicity between
leadership and the people:
“the people [...], seeing that it cannot resist the great ones, increase
the reputation of one of them, and makes her a prince in order to be,
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under her authority, protected [...] She attains the principality with
popular favor, finds herself alone and has around her very few or no
one that are not ready to obey. Moreover, one cannot with honesty
satisfy the great ones without injuring the others, but one could satisfy
the people because the end of the people is more honest than that of
the great, since the latter wants to oppress and the former to not be
oppressed”,
Taking away from this text everything that is paternalistic and
aristocratic, it is understood that leadership is invested of authority
by the same people that need certain direction. But, at the same time,
it imposes conditions of fidelity (in the sense of what we have called
“obediential power”*“) on the fights of the people. The people create
the myth of leadership, it needs it, it supports it, it directs it, and it can
suffer a great disillusionment.
The strategic postulate should strive for the dissolution of all
leadership, of all avant-gardism. A people that fully exercises a
horizontal, self-referential,autonomous,self-determining, participative
democracy, does not need but a weak leadership. However, in the
moments of great transformation, more so in revolutionary processes,
the mutually enriched dialectic of leadership and people for itself is
necessary, a dialectic that grows in the slow exercise of the symmetric
participation of all of its members: democracy as the foundation of
legitimacy - above the “state of rights.”
This issue of the existence of leadership in popular political
movements would have to be described first as a syllogism. A) The
universality would be present in the undivided political community
still in the time of consensus, in the classic exercise of power of the
historical bloc of political parties. B) The particularity would consist
in the people in the transformative act (even revolutionary), in the
social movement or in the base political community (that would be
the messianic moment of W. Benjamin). C) The singularity exercised
by the leadership (the Moses of Machiavelli), in dialectic function
with the other moments. These moments mutually determine each
other and complement one another, each playing necessary political
functions.
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 Effectively, in history, peoples were never without leadership (since
the indicated and mythical figure of Moses in the exalted narrative
of Erns Bloch in The Principle of Hope). There has been no historic
revolution without leadership: S. Bolivar, J. de San Martin or M.
Hidalgo in the first Latin American emancipation of the 19" century;
Lenin in the Russian revolution in October, Mao Tse Tung in China,
Fidel Castro in Cuba, L. Cardenas in Mexico, the Sub Marcos in
Chiapas, Evo Morales in Bolivia, etc. However, little or nothing has
been meditated theoretically about this unavoidable practical-political
function. I think it is necessary to reflect on this topic.
The dangers to avoid are the extremes. A) The avant-garde
leadership in the right (authoritarian, as Hitler and Mussolini) or in
the left (as the Central Committee: the “democratic centralism” and
the dictatorship of the proletariat”), or B) the spontaneous populism
criticized by F. Fanon (now with a disparaging denomination) which
attributes to the people a strange omniscience on the basis of which
it cannot make political mistakes. This is the question of the relation
between theory and praxis, between the masses and the “organic
intellectuals” (such as Gramsci enunciated it), a question of great
importance in the actuality of Latin America in the beginnings of the
21° century, since the progressive center-left emerging governments
(although not revolutionary in the classical sense, anti-neoliberalists
but not anti-capitalists), always have a visible leadership in the persons
of N. Kirchner, Tabare Vasquez, Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva, Hugo
Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Daniel Ortega, Colom and many
others.
Leadership is necessary in certain political junctures. In Chinese
political philosophy, Huang Tsung-si (1610-1695) wrote a strategic
work under the title: Awaiting for the Dawn (Ming- i tai-fang lu)*°.
It would be like Machiavelli's Prince but in a completely different
situation. In this case, the Chinese political philosopher equally awaits
a strong leadership that could re-orient a corrupt empire, which has
over 150 million inhabitants. The works of the European philosophers
of the same age would look like provincial reflections of peripheric
thinkers. Nevertheless, this leadership would not find support in the
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critical consensus of the people, democratically, but it would descend
from top to bottom, re-organizing society like in the time of the
originary “Three Dynasties”:
“Tn ancient times everybody who is under the sky were considered;
the lords and princes were like servants. The prince spent her life
working for anybody who was under the sky. Now the prince is the
master, and all of those under the sky are her servants”.
This articulates precisely the sense of an “obedential power” as it
is postulated in the case of the just prince, and of its corruption in
the posterior tradition. In every sense, the exercise of leadership was
authoritarian, oligarchic, paternalistic. There were no, as it can be
supposed, possible democratic demands.
On the contrary, it is a matter of correctly defining the importance
and necessity of leadership in situations of profound political change,
in certain cases revolutionary change. In these situations the social
movements and the popular masses could symbolically invest an aura
on certain leaders, an aura built by the very people for its protection,
demanding obedience from the consensus of movements and of the
people, a consensus expressed in their democratic organizations
upon which leadership is to be articulated. If the leadership becomes
autonomous and pretends to identify its own will with the site of
political power, one falls into profound corruption. If the leader
remains faithful to the service of the people providing unity, creativity,
trust, patience, her function becomes necessary.
May be no virtue - in Machiavelli's sense - is more laudable in
leadership than the “firmness [as] the will’s capacity of resisting the
blow; [than the] constancy of resistance with respect to duration”,
Lula was defeated many times as candidate to the presidency; Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador visits one by one the 2500 municipalities after
the fraud suffered in 2006; for decades the Sub Marcos resists in the
Chapaneca jungle the persecution on the part of the oligarchy and the
military. These are leaderships that show - democratically articulated,
in suffering - strategic intelligence and disciplined obedience, the
fulfillment of the material requirements of the collective agent in an
ultimate situation: the people in a “state of rebellion.”
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 Conclusion
“Populism” as a term that means the phenomena of the regimes that
originate since the Mexican Revolution in 1910, and which expand
themselves since 1930 in Latin America, is a valid denomination.
(Thesis 1).
On the contrary, the pejorative epithet “populism” - an epithet
used to disparage those who oppose the “Washington consensus,
neo-liberalism, and which refers to popular neo-nationalist Latin
American governments that protect the national wealth, governments
which have taken place since the end of the 20" century - must be
ignored in the social sciences (Thesis 2).
On the other hand, one must distinguish clearly “populism” (in the
sense of Thesis 1), from the “popular” and from the “people”, categories
that must be constructed more fully, but not abandoned as complex
(Thesis 3).
Articulated next to the question of the “people” one finds the
question of the exercise of “popular power, as a political system that
creates new participative institutions at all levels of political structures,
in Civil Society and in the politics of the state, and constitutionally.
The real democracy is linked to the effective organization of politico-
popular participation (Thesis 4).
Finally, one must reflect, and theoretically integrate, the question
of leadership - in order to avoid the traditional avant-gardism or the
charismatic dictatorship, as much as certain populist spontaneity
(now in its negative sense but with a different use than that of Thesis
2) - showing its importance and necessity, and explaining at the same
time the democratic demands of its exercise (Thesis 5).
I have presented these five theses for discussion, with pretense of
the truth (that is to say, with conscience of its fallibility), but knowing
that only through debate they could attain the sufficient pretension of
validity.
6. The “Philosophy Of Liberation,”
The Postmodern Debate, and Latin
American Studies

The operative theoretical framework that was constructed in the

late 90s, as much within Latin America as by Latin American scholars
in the United States (philosophers, literary critics and anthropologists,
as well as historians, sociologists, etc.), has diversified and acquired
such complexity that it has become necessary to map a topography
of these positions in order to deepen the debate. In other words, the
perspectives, the categories, the planes of "localization" of subjects
within theoretical and interpretative discourse have changed so much
that it has become difficult to continue the Latin American debate
without a preliminary understanding of its theoretical and conceptual
basis. The old Latin Americanism ("Latin Americanism 1") seems to
have become a museum-object rather than an obligatory point of
reference in any discussion. In this chapter we will briefly look at the
said topography on the debate, knowing that it is only "one" possible
interpretation of the field. This is just a point of departure to illustrate
the terms of the debate.

1. "Latin American Thought": From the End of the Second

European-North American War
In the mid 1940s, towards the end of the second European-North
American War, a group of young philosophers (such as Leopoldo Zea
in Mexico, Arturo Ardao in Uruguay, Francisco Romero in Argentina
... etc.) went back to the problematic debate of "our (Latin) America"
("Nuestra América"), which had begun in the nineteenth century with
Alberdi, Bello or Marti or in the early part of the twentieth century
with Mariategui, Vasconcelos, and Samuel Ramos among many others.
In response to North American "Panamericanism" there emerged

216
an interpretation of Latin America that was distinct and not to be
confused with the "Ibero-Americanism" of Franco's Spain.
The members of the "institutionalized"” academic philosophy - in
the pre-war era - according to periodization proposed by Francisco
Romero, had begun to forge contacts throughout the Latin American
continent. They sought to understand the “history” of Latin American
thought, that was forgotten thanks to all of the focus placed upon
Europe and the United States. Leopoldo Zea's America en la Historia
(1957) is an example of the ideas of this era. The theoretical framework
of this generation was influenced by philosophers such as Husserl,
Heidegger, Ortega y Gasset, Sartre, or historians such as Toynbee.
They revisited the heroes of the emancipation from the beginning of
the nineteenth century (so as not to recover the colonial era), in order
to rethink its ideal of freedom with respect to the United States, which
had established its hegemony in the West since 1945, at the beginning
of the Cold War. Contemporaneously in Africa, P. Tempels published
La philosophie bantouein (1949). In Asia and India, M. Ghandi was
rediscovering “Hindu thought" as an emancipatory catalyst of the
British ex-colony. The era culminates around 1968, a time of great
political uprising for students and intellectuals (marked by the 1966
Cultural Revolution in China, which is echoed in the "May Movement"
of 1968, in the Vietnam War demonstrations in the United States, in
Mexico's Tlatelolco and in the 1969 “Cordobazo" in Argentina).

2. Modernity/Postmodernity in Europe and the United

States
In the 70s the “atmosphere” of European philosophy begins to
change. The student uprisings have exhausted a portion of the left
(which has in part abandoned the Marxist tradition), while others have
become bureaucratized (constituting "standard" Marxism, including
Althusserian "classism"). The gradual emergence of a critique of
universalism and dogmatism from non-traditional positions begins.
Michel Foucault, who was a protagonist of movements that took
place in Nanaterre in 1968, posits a critique of the metaphysical

217
and ahistorical positions of standard Marxism (the proletariat as a
"Messianic subject”, the idea of history as a necessary progression, the
concept of macrostructural power as the only existent power, etc.). In
France, Gilles Deleuze™, Jacques Derrida® or Jean Francois Lyotard,
Gianni Vattimo*"' in Italy, (all of them with very different viewpoints),
rose up against "modern reason", a concept that Emmanuel Levinas
approaches through the category of "Totality" (in Totalidad e Infinito,
published in the phenomenological collection by Nijhoff, Nimega).
The work of J. E Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (1979), reads like
a manifesto. In the third line of the "Introductién" he states that "The
word is in current use on the American continent among sociologists
and critics", and indicates that: “It designates the state of our culture
following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth
century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the
arts. The present study will place these transformations in the context
of the crisis of narratives.” (Lyotard 1984, xxiii)*?
From Heidegger, with his critique of the subjectivity of the subject,
and even more from Nietzche, with his critique of the subject, of
current values, truth, and metaphysics, the "postmodern" movement
is not only opposed to standard Marxism, but also demonstrates that
universalism has the same connotations of epistemological violence
that we find, on a larger scale, in modern rationality (Dussel 1974).
In contrast to the unicity of the dominant being, the concepts of
"Différance”, multiplicity, plurality, fragmentation, as well as the
process of deconstruction of all macro-narratives, start to develop.
In the United States, Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism or the
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) outlines a new stage in this
process. As for Richard Rorty, he is, in my opinion, a more anti-
foundationalist and skeptic intellectual, who only collaterally could
be considered part of the "postmodern" tradition.
In Latin America, the reception of the postmodern movement
emerges in the late 1980s. The edition of H. Herlinghaus and Walter,
Postmodernidad en la periferia: enfoques latinoamericanos de la nueva
teoria (1997)*, and the articles compiled by John Beverley and José
Oviedo, The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America(1993)™ include
218
a wide rage of contributions to this topic, the earliest dating from the
mid 1980s.
In general they give evidence of a generation that is experiencing
a certain "disenchantment" at the close of an era in Latin America
(not only with populism, but also with all of the promise stirred
by the Cuban Revolution since 1959, confronted by the fall of
Socialism in 1989). This generation makes the attempt to confront the
cultural hybridity of a peripheral modernity that no longer believes
in utopian change. They seek to evade the simplification of the
dualities of center-periphery, progress-underdevelopment, tradition-
modernity, domination-liberation, and they operate, instead, within
the heterogeneous plurality and the fragmentary and differential
conditions that characterize urban, trans-national cultures. Now it
is the social anthropologists (particularly Garcia Canclini's Culturas
Hibridas, 1989) and the literary critics that are producing a new
interpretation of Latin America (see Follari 1991, Arriaran 1997, and
Maliandi's critique 1993).
[believe that the work of Santiago Castro-Gémez is of great interest
since it represents a good example of a postmodern philosophy
produced from Latin America.*° His criticism is geared against
progressive Latin American thought, in contrast to Adolfo Sanchez
Vazquez, Franz Hinkelammert, Pablo Guadarrama, Arturo Roig,
Leopoldo Zea, Augusto Salazar-Bondy, etc.°* In all of these cases,
including my own, the argument is always as follows: according to
Castro-Gémez, these philosophers, under the pretense of criticizing
modernity, in not being conscious of the “localization” of their
own discourse, and for not having had the Foucauldian tools to
undertake an epistemic archaeology, which would have permitted a
reconstruction of the modern theoretical framework, have in one way
or another fallen back into modernity (if they had strayed from it). To
speak of the subject, of history, of domination, of external dependence,
of the oppression of social classes, using categories such as totality,
exteriority, liberation, hope, is to fall back into a moment that does
not take seriously the "political disenchantment" that has impacted
current culture so deeply. To speak in terms of macro-institutions such
219
as the state, the nation, the city, or about epic heroic narratives, results
in the loss of meaning of micro, heterogeneous, plural, hybrid and
complex realities. According to Castro-Gémez: “The other of totality is
the poor, the oppressed, the one who, by being located outside the system,
becomes the only source of spiritual renewal. There, in the exterior of the
system, in the ethos of oppressed societies, people have values that are
very different from those that prevail in the center. .. With this, Dussel
creates a second reduction: that of converting the poor in some kind of
transcendent subject, through which Latin American history will find
its meaning. This is the opposite side of postmodernity, because Dussel
attempts not to de-centralize the Enlightened subject, but to replace it by
another absolute subject." (1996, 39-40)°?
What Castro-Gémez does not state is that Foucault criticizes certain
forms of the subject but re-legitimizes others; he criticizes certain forms
of making history departing from a priori and necessary laws, but re-
emphasizes a genetic-epistemological history. Often Castro-Gomez is
seduced by the fetishism of formulaic thought, and he does not take
into consideration that a certain criticism of the subject is necessary
in order to reconstruct a deeper vision of it: one must recognize
that it is necessary to criticize the external causes of Latin American
underdevelopment in order to integrate it into a more comprehensive
interpretation, that it is necessary to not dismiss micro-institutions
(forgotten by the descriptions of the macro) in order to connect them
to these macro-institutions, that Power is mutually and relationally
constituted between social subjects, but that, in any case, the Power
of the State or the Power of a hegemonic Nation (such as the United
States) continues to exist. When one criticizes one unilaterality with
another, one falls into that which is being criticized. From a panoptical
postmodern criticism some critics return to the claim of universalism
that was characteristic of modernity. According to Eduardo Mendieta,
“Postmodernity perpetuates the hegemonic intention of modernity and
Christianity, by denying other peoples the possibility to name their own
history and to articulate their own self-reflexive discourse." (in Castro-
Gémez and Mendieta 1998, 159)
In Europe, on the other hand, a certain universalist rationalism
220
such as that of Karl-Otto Apel or Jiirgen Habermas, which distrusts
fascist irrationalism (of the German Nazi era), posits that the objective
is to "complete the task of modernity" as a critical/discursive and
democratic form of rationality. The intent is to defend the significance
of reason against the opinion of skeptic intellectuals, such as Richard
Rorty. To sum up, in the North the debate was established between the
pretense of universal rationality, and, on the other hand, the affirmation
of difference, that is, the negation of the subject, the deconstruction of
history, progress, values, metaphysics, etc.

3. The Emergence of Critical Thought in the Post-Colonial

Periphery: The Philosophy of Liberation
In 1970 Ranajit Guha®* initiated a theoretical transformation that
would later serve as the foundation of "Subaltern Studies". Through a
"situated" reading of Foucault, and coming from a previous position
of standard Marxism, Guha begins to deviate from the trodden paths
of the past toward the study of mass popular culture and the culture
of groups or subaltern classes in India. This movement is, later on,
enriched with the participation of intellectuals such as Gayatri Spivak
(1987, 1988a, 1993), Homi Bhabha (1994)**, Gyan Prakash, Dipesh
Chakrabarty and many others. All of them are informed by the
epistemologies of Foucault and Lacan, without abandoning Marxism.
Now equipped with new instruments of critical analysis, they could
engage in issues of gender, culture, politics and critiques of racism
(racismo)
In Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (1978) Edward
Said posits a critical analysis of European studies on Asia. With respect
to Africa, Tempels' position is criticized three decades after his work
is published, in P Hountondji's Sur la philosophie africaine: critique de
I'ethnophilosophie (1977). I would like to suggest that throughout the
periphery (Africa, Asia and Latin America) there began to emerge
critical movements that utilized their own regional reality as a point
of departure, and in some cases a revitalized Marxism as a point of
theoretical reference.
 I estimate that the Philosophy of Liberation in Latin America™,
which also emerged around 1970 (at roughly the same time that the first
works of Guha emerged in India), and which was likewise influenced
by a French philosopher, in this case Emmanuel Levinas, is framed by
the same sorts of discoveries. Nevertheless, these discoveries may be
misinterpreted if the originary situation is not taken into account and,
consequently, the theoretical perspective is distorted. The Philosophy
of Liberation was never simply a mode of "Latin American thought’,
nor a historiography of such. It was a critical philosophy self-critically
localized in the periphery, within subaltern groups. In addition, for
more than twenty years (since 1976 in some cases) it has been said
that the Philosophy of Liberation has been exhausted. Yet it seems
that the opposite is true, since it was not until the late 1990s that it
was actually discovered and further delved into in order to provide a
South-South -and in the future a North-South- dialogue.
The originary intuition for the Philosophy of Liberation = a
philosophical tradition that (in contrast to other movements in the
fields of anthropology, history, and literary criticism) was influenced
by the events of 1968 - emerged from a critique of modern reason -
the Cartesian subject on Heidegger's ontological criticism - which
in part permitted it to sustain a radical critical position. It was
also inspired by the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, and
especially H. Marcuse's Unidimensional Man), which illuminated the
political meaning of said ontology, allowing it to be more thoroughly
understood (including the Heideggerean position in its relation to
Nazism). In Para una de-struccién de la historia de la ética [1969]
(1974), I quoted the following text from Heidegger: 'What do we
mean by world when we talk about the darkening of the world? The
worldly darkening implies the weakening of spirit itself, its dissolution,
consumption, and false interpretation. The dominant dimension is that
of extension and numbers [...] All of this is later on intensified in America
and Russia.” (Heidegger 1966, 34-35). And I concluded by stating that
it is necessary to say, "No to the modern world whose cycle is done, and
yes to the New Man that today lives in the time of his conversion and
transformation (Kehre)." (DusseI1974, 126, n. 170).
222
 But at the same time it was through works such as those of Franz
Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth that we became positioned on the
horizon of the struggles for liberation in the 1960s. In Argentina at that
time the masses battled against the military dictatorships of Ongania,
Levingston and Lanusse. As philosophers and scholars, we assumed
critical and theoretical responsibility in that process (Dussel 1994c). We
endured bomb threats, expulsion from our universities, our countries,
and some (like Mauricio Lopez) were tortured and assassinated.
Theoretical and practical processes were highly articulated. Critical
categories began to emerge in response to modern subjectivity.
Historical access was fundamental for the destruction of Modernity.
The genealogy of modern categories was being undertaken from a
global perspective (metropolis/colony). In situating our discourse
from within the World-System (which neither Foucault, Derrida,
Vattimo, nor Levinas could really access) we discovered that the "I"
used by the Emperor King of Spain to sign his documents in 1519
was the same "1" used by Hernan Cortés when he said "I conquer" in
1521, long before Descartes produced his "Ego Cogito" in Amsterdam
in 1637. It was not merely a matter of exploring the epistemologies of
France's "Classical Age”, but rather of considering how Modernity has
developed in the world for the past 500 years.
The "myth of Modernity” (Dussel 1992), that is, the idea of
European superiority over the other cultures of the world, began to be
sketched out five hundred years ago. Ginés de Septilveda was certainly
one of the first great ideologists of “Occidentalism" (the eurocentrism
of Modernity) and Bartolomé de las Casas the creator of the first
“counter-discourse” of Modernity, established from a global, center-
periphery perspective.
The "excluded", the individual "being watched" in the madhouses
and "classical" French panoptical prisons, had long before been
anticipated by Indians who were "watched" in the "reservations"
(reducciones) and "excluded" from the Latin American towns and
doctrines since the sixteenth century. The blacks, who were watched
in the "sensala" next to the "casa grande," already existed in Santo
Domingo by 1520, when the exploitation of gold in the rivers had
223
ended and the production of sugar began. Levinas "Other" - which,
in my 1973 works, having carefully read Jacques Derrida, I termed
“distinto" (because "di-fference" was defined as the counterpart of "id-
entity”) - is, in general or in abstract terms, what Foucault calls the
"excluded" and the one "being watched" when making reference to the
insane who is kept in the madhouse or to the criminal who is kept in
prison. To see in "exteriority" merely a modern category is to distort the
meaning of this Levinasian critical category, which in the Philosophy
of Liberation is "reconstructed" - though not without the opposition
of Levinas himself, who was only thinking of Europe, without even
noticing, and of the pure ethical "responsibility" for the Other. The
Philosophy of Liberation soon deviates from Levinas, because it ought
to consider, from a critical standpoint, its responsibility regarding the
vulnerability of the Other in the process of constructing a new order
(with all of the ambiguities that implies). The philosopher of liberation
neither represents anybody nor speaks on behalf of others (as if this
were his sole vested political purpose), nor does he undertake a
concrete task in order to overcome or negate some petit-bourgeois
sense of guilt. The Latin American critical philosopher, as conceived
by the Philosophy of Liberation, assumes the responsibility of fighting
for the Other, the victim, the woman oppressed by patriarchy, and for
the future generation which will inherit a ravished Earth, etc. (that is,
it assumes responsibility for all possible sorts of alterity). And it does
so with an ethical, "situated" consciousness; that of any human being
with an ethical "sensibility" and the capacity to become outraged when
recognizing the injustice imposed upon the Other.
To "localize" (in the sense of Homi Bhaba) its discourse has always
been the intent of the Philosophy of Liberation. It sought to situate
itself on the periphery of the World-System from the perspective of
dominated races, from the point of view of women in a patriarchal
system, from the standpoint of disadvantaged children living in
misery.® It is clear that the theoretical tools ought to be perfected, and
for that, the postmodern approach needs to be taken into consideration.
But the Philosophy of Liberation also assumed the categories of Marx,
Freud, the hermeneutics of Ricoeur, the ideas of Discursive Ethics,
224
and all of the other movements that could contribute categories that
are useful but not alone sufficient for formulating a discourse that
could contribute to a justification of the praxis of liberation.
If it is true that there is a Hegelian story, an all encompassing
and Eurocentric "master narrative," it is not true that the victims
only need fragmentary micro-stories to represent them (see Dussel
1992, chapter 1). On the contrary, Rigoberta Menchi, the Zapatistas,
black Americans, Hispanics living in the United States, feminists, the
marginalized, the working class of global transnational capitalism, etc.
need a historical narrative to reconstruct their memories and make
sense of their struggle. A "struggle for recognition" of new rights (as
Axel Honneth would put it) needs organization, hope, and an epic
narrative to yield new horizons. Despair makes sense for a while, but
the hope of humanity, its production, reproduction, and development
is a “Will to Live" - which Shopenhauer - though not Nietzche - was
opposed too
The simplistic dualisms of center-periphery, development-
underdevelopment, dependence-liberation, exploiters-exploited, all
levels of gender, class, race that function in the bipolarity dominator
-dominated, civilization-barbarism, universal principles-incertitude,
totality-exteriority, should be overcome, if they are used in a superficial
or reductive manner. But to overcome does not imply “to decree" its
inexistence or its epistemic uselessness. On the contrary, Derridian
"deconstruction" proposes that a text could be read from a totality
of possible current-meanings, from the exteriority of the Other
(the latter is what permits deconstruction). These dual dialectical
categories should be placed on concrete levels of greater complexity
and articulated with other mediating categories on a micro-level.
Nonetheless, to assume that there are no dominators and dominated,
no center and periphery, etc. is to lapse into dangerously utopian or
reactionary thought. The time has come in Latin America to move on
to positions of greater complexity, without the fetishism, or linguistic
terrorism that, without any particular validation, characterize as
"antiquated" or "obsolete," positions that are expressed in a language
that the speaker does not like. Class struggle will never be overcome,
225
but it is not the only struggle, it is one among many others (those
of women, environmentalists, ethnic minorities, dependent nations,
etc.) and in certain conjunctures other struggles might become more
urgent, and of greater political significance. If the "proletariat" is not
a “metaphysical subject" for al! eternity, this does not mean that it is
not a collective or inter-subjective subject any more, one that might
appear and disappear in certain historical periods. Forgetting its
existence would be a grave error.

4, Latin American Studies in the United States

Over the past three decades, in part due to the Latin American
diaspora in the United States that resulted from military dictatorships,
and in part due to the poverty in Latin America as a result of the
exploitation of transnational capitalism, many Latin American
intellectuals (as well as many already integrated as "Hispanics" in the
U.S.) have completely renewed the interpretive theoretical framework
in the field of "Latin American Studies” (LASA was founded in 1963),
particularly within the field of literary criticism, which assumed the
study of "Latin American thought," which had been, in previous
decades, the terrain of philosophers. This is partially due to the fact that
much of the Marxist left, expelled from its positions in Departments
of Philosophy, migrated towards Departments of literary criticism,
comparative literature, or Romance Languages (French in particular),
a phenomenon that contributed to a theoretical sophistication never
seen before, neither in the US nor in Europe. The preponderant use of
French philosophers (Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard,
etc.) is also explained by the fact that this theoretical movement was
born in French departments (and not in the usually more traditional
and conservative departments of English).**
If we then add "Cultural Studies", particularly in the United
Kingdom, which also benefit from the contributions of the Latin
American diaspora (take for example Stuart Hall, of Jamaican origin,
and also the case of Ernesto Laclau), we can see that the panorama has
indeed broadened a great deal.

226
 The field of "Subaltern Studies," coming from India as well as from
the Afro-American and AfroCaribbean "thought" and "philosophy"
which currently are in a process of expansion, allowed for a productive
discussion of the innovative hypothesis of post-colonial reason,**
which emerged in Asia and Africa following the emancipation of
many of the nations on these continents after World War II. But then
it becomes evident that "Latin American thought’ and the Philosophy
of Liberation had already raised many of the questions that comprise
the current debate in Asia and Africa. A "Subaltern Latin American
Study" returns to many of the topics previously addressed in the Latin
American philosophical tradition of the '60s, which has apparently
been forgotten (in part because the specialists in literary criticism were
not the protagonists in the philosophical discussions of that era).
For this reason, Alberto Moreiras explains the necessity ofa critique
of the first Latin Americanism (as much of "Latin American Studies"
in the United States as of “Latin American thought" on the continent
itself), as well as of a Neo-Latin Americanism. The task of the 2nd
Latin Americanism would be "to produce itself as an anti-conceptual,
anti-representational apparatus, whose main function would be to
disturb the tendency of epistemic representation to advance towards
its total cancellation”.
In response to the interpretation of Said's "Orientalism," a certain
"Occidentalism" is also discovered (the modern self-recognition of
Europe itself) and consequently a "Post-Occidentalism," theorized
by Roberto Fernandez Retamar and Fernando Coronil. According
to Coronil, "Occidentalism is thus the expression of a constitutive
relationship between Western representations of cultural difference
and worldwide Western dominance. Challenging Occidentalism
requires that it be unsettled as a mode of representation that produces
polarized and hierarchical conceptions of the West and its Others"
(1997, 14-15). Coronil's "Post-Colonialism" is thus the sort of trans-
modernity that we are proposing in other works. The "Postmodern"
is still European, Western. The Post-Occidental or trans-modern goes
beyond modernity (and postmodernity) and is more closely related
to the Latin American situation, whose “Westernization" is greater
227
than that experienced in Africa and Asia. Latin America’s distant
emancipation makes the term "Post-Colonialism" less than adequate
to describe its particular condition (Mignolo 1998b).

5. Final Reflections
In the same manner, the group of anti-foundationalist thinkers
opposes universal principles, the incertitude or fallibility that are
natural to human finitude, which seems to open a struggle for an a
priori un-resolvable hegemony.” The Philosophy of Liberation can
assess the incertitude of the goodness claim (or justice) of human acts,
knowing the unavoidable fallibility of practice, while at the same time
being able to describe the universal conditions or the ethical principles
of said ethical or political action. Universality and incertitude permit
precisely the discovery of the inevitability of victims and it is from
here that critical liberating thought originates.
Thus I believe that the Philosophy of Liberation has the theoretical
resources to face present challenges, and in this manner to incorporate
the tradition of the "Latin American thought" of the 1940s and 1950s
within the evolution that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, which
prepared it to enter into new vital and creative dialogues in the critical
process of the following decades. Along with Imre Lakatos we could
say that a program of research (such as the Philosophy of Liberation)
is progressive as long as it is capable of incorporating old and new
challenges. The "hard nucleus" of the Philosophy of Liberation, its
Ethics of Liberation, has been partially criticized (by H. Cerutti, O.
Schutte, K.O. Apel, and others), but, in my opinion, it has responded
creatively as a totality, thus far.
In fact, we face urgent tasks in the twenty-first century. For over more
than twenty years H. Cerutti and other colleagues (some since 1976)
have been announcing the exhaustion of the Philosophy of Liberation.
Yet the contrary seems to be true. Since the year 2000, new perspectives
in the South-South dialogue have begun to emerge, in preparation for
a North-South dialogue which includes Africa, Asia, Latin America,
Eastern Europe, and all the minorities from the "center". In addition,

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we have the "transversal" dialogue of "Difference": the possibility of
relating to one another the critical thinking of feminist movements;
environmentalists; anti-discriminatory movements focused on
different races, peoples or indigenous ethnicities; movements
concerned with marginalized social sectors; immigrants coming
from impoverished countries; the elderly; children; the working class
and migrant workers; the countries that belong to what used to be
called Third World; the impoverished nations on the periphery; the
"victims" (using Walter Benjamin's term) of Modernity, Colonization,
transnational and late capitalism. The Philosophy of Liberation seeks
to analyze and define the philosophical meta-language of all of these
movements.
All of the above mentioned was in part intuited by the Philosophy of
Liberation since its inception, and if not it can at least be gleaned from,
incorporated into and reconstructed from its discourse. Nevertheless,
and with respect to new epistemic proposals, the Philosophy of
Liberation continues to hold its own position, as much in the centers
of study in Latin America as in the United States and Europe. In the
first place, it is a "philosophy" that can enter into a dialogue with
literary criticism and assimilate itself to it (and to all of the above-
mentioned movements: Postmodernism, Subaltern Studies, Cultural
Studies, Post Colonial Reason, meta-criticism of Latin Americanism
such as Moreiras'’, etc.), As a critical philosophy, the Philosophy of
Liberation has a very specific role: it should study the more abstract,
general, philosophical, theoretical framework of "testimonial
literature (I prefer to refer to it as an "epic" narrative, as a creative
expression related to new social movements that impact civil society).
In the second place it should analyze and set the basis for a method,
for general categories, and for the very theoretical discourse of all of
these critical movements which, having been inspired by Foucault,
Lyotard, Baudrillard, Derrida, etc., should be "reconstructed" from a
global perspective (since they, for the most part speak in aEurocentric
manner). In this process of reconstruction, the need to articulate an
intercultural dialogue (if there were one) within the parameters of a
globalizing system should be taken into consideration. The dualism
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globalization-exclusion (the new aporia that ought not be reduced to
a fetishistic simplification) frames the problem presented by the other
dimensions.
It would still be possible to reflect upon anti-foundationalism, of the
Rortyian sort for example, which is accepted by many Postmodernists.
It is not merely a defense of reason for reason itself. It is about
defending the victims of the present system, defending human life
in danger of collective suicide. The critique of “modern reason" does
not allow Philosophy of Liberation to confuse it with a critique of
reason as such, or with particular types or practices of rationality.
On the contrary, the critique of modern reason is made in the name
of a differential rationality (the reason used by feminist movements,
environmentalists, cultural and ethnic movements, the working class,
peripheral nations ... etc.) and a universal rationality (a practical-
material, discursive, strategic, instrumental, critical form of reason)
(See Dussel 1998b). The affirmation and emancipation of Difference
is constructing a novel and future universality. The question is not
Difference or Universality but rather Universality in Difference and
Difference in Universality.
I believe that the Philosophy of Liberation was born in this critical
"environment" and as a result it has, from the beginning, taken these
problems into account with the resources it had and within the limits
of its time and historical "location". Meta-categories such as "totality"
and "exteriority" continue to be valid as abstract and global references
that should be mediated by the microstructures of Power, which are
disseminated at every level and for which everybody is responsible.
Towards the end of the 1960s, the Philosophy of Liberation was
already a postmodern philosophy emerging from the global periphery.
It overcame the limitations of the ontology (the Uberwindung)
inspired by the misery in Latin America and by the Levinasian concept
of alterity. It was criticized by standard Marxism, by irrationalist
populism, by liberalism and conservatism, by repetitive philosophies
(analytical, hermeneutical, academic, etc.), and today by young
(Eurocentric?) postmodern Latin Americans, who perhaps have
not yet discovered that the Philosophy of Liberation is itself a post-
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modern movement avant la lettre, a truly transmodern movement that
appreciates postmodern criticism but is able to deconstruct it from a
global peripheral perspective in order to reconstruct it according to
the concrete political demands of subaltern groups.

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7. A New Age in the History of
Philosophy: The World Dialogue
between Philosophical Traditions

This chapter explores a theme that I believe should occupy us fora

significant portion of the 21st century: Our recognition and acceptance
of the meaning, value, and history of all regional philosophical
traditions on the planet (European, North American, Chinese, Indian,
Arab, African, Latin American, etc.).
This will be the first time in the history of philosophy that these
diverse traditions will be open to an authentic and symmetrical
dialogue - a dialogue that will enable us to understand many aspects
unknown to us, aspects that may be better developed in some traditions
than in others. This dialogue will play a key role in unlocking the
contents of the daily life of humanity in other cultures, thanks to the
enormous machinery of mass media that makes it possible for us to
receive news instantaneously of cultures about which we lack first
hand knowledge, and will also imply an ethical positioning grounded
in the equal recognition of all philosophical communities with equal
rights of argumentation. This will make it possible for us to transcend
the eurocentrism of Modernity, so prevalent today, which impedes
creativity and often obscures the great discoveries achieved by other
traditions.

1. Universal Core Problems

When I refer to “universal core problems” I mean_ those
fundamental questions (of an ontological character) that homo sapiens
posed upon attaining a certain level of maturity. Once their level of
cerebral development allowed for consciousness, self-consciousness,
linguistic, ethical and social development (that is, responsibility for
their own acts), human beings confronted the totality of the real in

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order to manage things in such a way as to achieve the reproduction
and development of human life in community. Human bewilderment
in the face of the possible causes of natural phenomena was further
compounded by the unpredictability of their own impulses and
behaviors, leading to questions regarding “core problems” such as:
What are real things in their totality and how do they behave? Such
questions encompass phenomena ranging from the astronomical to
the simple falling of a stone or the artificial production of fire. They
also encompass the mystery of their own human subjectivity, the
ego, interiority, spontaneity, as well as the nature of freedom and the
creation of the social and ethical world. In the end, they arrive at the
question of how we interpret the ultimate foundation of everything
that is real, and the universe itself? Which in turn leads to the classic
ontological question: “Why being and not nothingness?” These basic
“core problems” have inevitably been faced by all human communities
since the remotest period of the Paleolithic age; they are among the
many possible variations of the universal “whys, and are present in
every culture and tradition.
The content and the way of responding to these “core problems”
unleashes, impels, and disperses diverse trajectories of rational
narratives, if by rationality we understand simply that reasons have
been provided in support of assertions, and that these assertions are
intended to interpret or explain phenomena that have “appeared” at
the initial level of each of these “core problems.’

2. The Rational Development of Mythical Narratives

Throughout all of its stages of development, humanity has always
and inevitably given linguistic expression to rational responses
(understood here to mean those that are proffered with some kind
of underlying foundation, regardless of its specific character, at least
until it is refuted) to core problems such as those described above.
This has occurred as the result of a process involving the “production
of myths” (mytho-poiésis).
The production of myths was the first rational form of

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interpretation or explanation of reality (of the world, subjectivity, the
ethical practical horizon, and the ultimate reference of reality that is
described symbolically). From this perspective myths are symbolic
narratives that are not irrational and that do not refer exclusively to
singular phenomena. They are symbolic enunciations, and therefore
have a “double meaning” that can only be fully elucidated through
a hermeneutical process that uncovers the layers of reasoning behind
them. It is in this sense that they are rational, and that they must be
grasped in terms of the extent to which their content has a universal
significance, given their reference to circumstances that are susceptible
to repetition, and constructed upon the basis of concepts (cerebral
categorizations or cerebral maps that involve millions of neurons and
imply the convergence in meaning of multiple and singular empirical
phenomena that human beings must confront).
Numerous myths are organized according to their relationship to
the core problems that I have just highlighted, and have been preserved
in the collective memory of communities throughout the world. This
was first done through oral tradition, and in written form since 3000
B.C., when they begin to be collected, remembered, and interpreted
by communities of sages who had a sense of admiration in the face
of reality, in the spirit of Aristotle’s affirmation™: “but he who finds
no explanation (in what he sees, and turns instead to admiration)
[...] thereby recognizes his ignorance. This is why he who loves myth
(philémythos) is akin to he who loves wisdom (phildésophos)”. This is
how mythical “traditions” emerge to provide peoples throughout the
world with rational explanations related to the questions that have
always been most pressing for humanity, and which I have defined
here as “core problems”. These include peoples as poor and as “simple”
in their material culture as the Tupinamba indigenous people of
Brazil, who according to Claude Levi-Strauss studies, carried out the
responsibilities inherent in their daily lives in ways embedded in the
complex web of meaning provided by their vast number of myths.
According to Paul Ricoeur, each culture has an “ethical and
mythical core”, or “vision of the world” (Weltanschauung) that
provides a framework of interpretation and ethical guidance for the
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most significant moments in human existence. On the other hand,
certain cultures (such as those of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt,
the Aztec or Mexica, the Arabs, the Hellenic world, Rome, Russia, etc.,)
as a result of their political, economic, and military hegemony, were
able to consolidate geopolitical dominance. These processes endowed
them a degree of universality that included the imposition of their
mythical structures over those of subaltern cultures. Such patterns
of cultural domination are evident throughout multiple periods of
historical development.
As a result of these cultural clashes, certain myths will endure
in subsequent stages (even in the age of categorical philosophical
discourses and of the science of Modernity itself, up to the present).
Myths will never completely disappear as long as some of them
continue to make sense, as Ernst Bloch argues persuasively in his work
The Principle of Hope.”

3. The New Rational Development of Discourses with

Philosophical Categories
We have become accustomed, in the context of explanations of
the transition from mythos to légos, to understand this process as a
leap from the irrational to the rational, from the concretely empirical
to the universal, and from the realm of the senses to the realm of
concepts. This is false. They are both rational. Each of the narratives
at issues has a certain degree of rationality, but their specific character
varies. There is a progression in terms of degrees of univocal precision,
semantic clarity, simplicity, and in the conclusive force with which their
foundations have been laid. But there are also /osses in multiplicity of
meaning when symbols displaced, but which can be hermeneutically
rediscovered in diverse moments and places (as is characteristic
of mythical rational narratives). For example the Promethean or
Adamic* myths continue to have ethical meaning today.
Thus univocal rational discourse as expressed in philosophical
categories that are capable of defining conceptual content without
recourse to symbols (as in a myth) gains in precision but loses in terms

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ofits resonance of meaning. All of this nonetheless implies an important
civilizable advance, which opens up the possibility of abstraction
in modes of analysis. Here, the separation of the semantic content
of the phenomenon being observed - the description and precise
explanation of empirical reality - enables the observer's management
to be more efficient in the reproduction and development of human
life in community.
In this context, wisdom can order the diverse responses to the core
problems that have been enumerated, and becomes the content of a
differentiated social “role” focused upon the clarification, exposition,
and development of said wisdom. From the perspective of the sociology
of philosophy, communities of philosophers form groups differentiated
from those of priests, artists, political actors, etc. The members of these
communities of sages take on a ritualized form constituting “schools
of life” with a strictly disciplinary character (from the Aztecs calmécac
to the Athenian academy or the sages communities of the city of
Memphis in the Egypt of the Third Millennium B.C.), and came to be
known as the so-called “lovers of wisdom” (philo-sdphoi) among the
Greeks. But from a historical perspective the “lovers of myths” were
also, strictly speaking, “lovers of wisdom,’ and this is why those who
will later be described as philosophers should be described more aptly
as philo-logists, if logos is understood to mean a rational discourse
that employs philosophical categories and no longer has recourse to
mythical symbolic narrative, or only exceptionally and as an example
of how philosophical hermeneutics holds sway.
This process of leaving behind the purest form of mythical rational
expression and stripping away its symbolic content gradually emerged
in all of the great urban cultures of the Neolithic. This process gives
certain terms or words a univocal, definable meaning with conceptual
content that is the fruit of methodical analytical elaboration and is
capable of moving from the whole to the parts as it fixes its specific
meaning. Key examples of narratives employing philosophical categories
began to emerge in India (subsequent to the Upanishads), in China
(from the Book of Changes or I Ching), in Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt
(in texts such as those described as the “philosophy of Memphis”), in
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the Eastern Mediterranean between the Phoenicians and the Greeks,
in Mesoamerica (the Maya and Aztecs or Mexican), in the Andean
region the amautas among the Aymaras and the Quechuas, who gave
life to Incan civilization, etc. Among the Aztecs, Quetzal-coatl was
the symbolic expression of a dual ancestral deity (“Quetzal” referring
to the green and red feathers of a beautiful tropical bird as a symbol
for divinity, and “coatl” referring to a twin or brother, the “duality”).
This is what the tlamatinime (“those who know things” and whom
Bernardino de Sahagun called “philosophers’™) described as
Ometeotl (from the roots in the Nahuatl language omé, which means
two, and teotl, which refers to divinity), leaving the symbol aside. This
denomination highlighted the “dual origin” of the universe (instead
of the unitary origin characteristic of to én, or the One in Plato or
Plotinus, for example). This indicates the beginning of the transition
from symbolic rationality to the rationality of philosophical conceptual
categorization among the Aztecs, as reflected in the historical figure of
the poet and philosopher-king Nezahtialcoyotl (1402-1472).
Some authors such as Ratil Fornet-Betancourt in Latin America™
concede that philosophy was practiced in Amerindia (before the
European invasion in 1492) or in pre-colonial Africa, without
much elaboration of what he understands to be philosophy. Paulin
Hountondji’s*® sharp critique of the concept of ethnophilosophy,
derived from Placide Tempel’s book Bantu Philosophy”, highlights
the need to better define what we mean by philosophy in such contexts,
in order among other things to distinguish it from myth.
Nonetheless when we carefully read the first sentences of the Tao
Te-king (or Dao de jing) by the legendary Lao-tze: “The Tao that can
be spoken of is not the constant Tao; the name that can be named
is not the constant name; the nameless is the beginning of Heaven
and Earth,”*” we find ourselves confronted with a text that employs
philosophical categories distant from those of a purely mythical
narrative. It is also impossible today to ignore the argumentative
density and rationality characteristic of the philosophy of K“ung
Fu-Tsu (Confucius) (551-479 B.C.), and the levels of philosophical
development evident in Mo-Tzu (479-380 B.C),*” whose continuous,
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even excessive patterns of argumentation criticized the social and
moral implications of Confucianism, affirming a universalism with
grave political implications, and which was skeptical of rituals and
unduly elaborate organizations or “schools.” His contributions are one
of the pillars of Chinese philosophy that predated the great Confucian
synthesis of Meng Tzu (Mencius) (390-305 B.C.) This philosophy
spans some 2,500 years, with classics each century, and even during
the period of European Modernity thinkers such as Wang Yang-
ming (1472-1529), who develops the neo-Confucian tradition that
extends all the way up to the present, influencing Mao Tse-tung and
playing a role in the emergence of contemporary capitalism in China
and Singapore equivalent to that of Calvinism in Europe. There was
also Huang Tsung-hsi (1610-1695) a great renovator of political
philosophy.
In the same way the philosophies of the Indian subcontinent
are organized in terms of the philosophical expression! of the core
problems. We read in Chandogya Upanisad:
In the beginning, my dear, this world was just Being (sat), one
only, without a second. Some people, no doubt, say: In the be-
ginning, verily, this world was just Nonbeing (asat), one only,
without a second; from that Nonbeing Being was produced.
But how, indeed, my dear, could it be so? said he. How could
Being be produced from Nonbeing? On the contrary, my dear,
in the beginning this world was Being alone.
Is it not a philosophical discourse?
In Hinduism the concept of Brahman refers to the totality of the
universe (as does that of Pacha in Quechua among the Incas of Peru);
atman refers to subjectivity, karma to human action, and moksha to
the relationship between atman and Brahman. It is with these “core”
concepts as points of departure that a discourse undertaken by means
of philosophical categories begins to be constructed in the fifth century
B.C. It is then with Sankara (788-820 A.D.) that the philosophy of
the subcontinent achieves a classical level, which it has continued to
develop up to the present.
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 Buddhist philosophy, meanwhile, beginning with Siddhartha
Gautama (563-483 B.C.), rejects the concepts of Brahman and atman,
given its assumption that the totality of the universe is an eternal
process unfolding in an interconnected manner (patitya samatpada).
This even more clearly negates the mythical traditions (such as those
of the Vedas), contributing instead to the construction of a strictly
rational narrative, which is not, as in all philosophies, utterly exempt
from mythological moments, such as ensomdtosis, referring to the
successive “re-incorporations of souls.”
Meanwhile, Jainism, whose first exponent was Vardhamana
Mahvira (599-527 B.C.), ontologically defends the Tattvartha Sutra
(“no violence, no possession, no determination’) from the perspective
of a universal vitalism, which has great relevance to the ecological
crisis we face today.
All of this clearly implies that philosophy was not born solely
or originally in Greece, nor can it be taken as the prototype of
philosophical discourse. This error arises from taking Greek
philosophy as the definition of philosophy itself, rather than discover
a clear criteria of demarcation between mythical and philosophical
categorical discourse. This confuses the part with the whole: a specific
case does not capture the universal sweep of the definition needed.
This does not deny Greek philosophy its historical place among these
philosophies, or its continuity with the philosophies of the Roman
Empire, which in turn opened a cultural horizon towards the so-called
Latin-Germanic European Middle Ages. These will culminate in the
European philosophy that laid the foundations for the Modernity
produced by the European invasion of the American continent, and the
emergence of colonialism and capitalism. The Industrial Revolution
at the end of the 18th century (only two centuries ago) will make
Europe the central dominating civilization in the world-system, up to
the beginning of the 21st century. This domination has obscured and
distorted our understanding of history (due to the combined effects
of what I have described as hellenocentrism and eurocentrism), and
impeded the global perspective necessary to grasp an authentic history
of philosophy.
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 As a Latin American I am convinced that the future development
of world philosophy will be jeopardized if we do not clarify these
issues by means of a contemporary dialogue between non-Western
philosophical traditions and those of Europe and North America.
In this context, E. Husserl’s reflection set forth below, and repeated
in general by M. Heidegger and throughout Europe and North
America, seems so naive:
Thus philosophy [...] is ratio in the constant movement of
self-elucidation, begun with the first breakthrough of philo-
sophy into mankind [...] The image of the dawn characterizes
Greek philosophy in its beginning stage, the first elucidation
through the first cognitive conception of what is as universe
(des Seienden als Universum) [...]**.

In Latin America, David Sobrevilla essentially supports the same

approach:
“T believe that there is a general consensus that the philosop-
hical activity of humanity first emerged in Greece and not in
the East. In this regard Hegel and Heidegger appear to be cor-
rect, instead of Jaspers, who argues for the existence of three
great philosophical traditions: those of China, India, and
Greece.”
The philosophy of the East would be philosophy understood in a
broad sense, and that of Greece according to much narrower criteria.
There is a confusion between the origins of European philosophy,
which may in part lie in Greece, and the origins of world philosophy,
which has diverse origins, almost as many as there are fundamental
traditions of philosophy. In addition it is assumed that this process was
linear, following a sequence “from Greek philosophy to Medieval Latin
philosophy and from there to their Modern European expressions”
But the true historical trajectory was much more complex. Greek
philosophy was cultivated subsequently and principally by Byzantine
civilization, and Arab philosophy in turn was the inheritor of
Byzantine philosophy, and in particular its Aristotelian tradition.

240
This required the creation of an Arabic philosophical language in the
strictest sense*’.
Latin Aristotelian philosophy in Paris in thirteenth century, for
example, has its origin in Greek texts and their Arabic commentaries
(translated in Toledo, in Spain, by Arab specialists), and these
Greek texts were utilized and commentated by the “Arab Western
philosophers” (in the Caliphate of Cordoba, in Spain), continuing the
“Eastern” tradition with origins in Cairo, Bagdad, or Samarkand. This
produced a Greek legacy profoundly reconstructed from a Semitic
perspective (such as that of Arab civilization), and then passed on
to Latins and Germanics in Europe. It is ‘Ibn Roshd (Averroes) who
marks the origin of the European philosophical renaissance in the
thirteenth century.
All of the world’s great cultures have created philosophies as
well, with varying styles and characteristics of development, but all
have produced (some only initially and others with great depth and
precision) conceptual structural categories that must be recognized as
philosophical.
Philosophical discourse does not destroy myth, although it does
negate those who lose the capacity to resist the empirical argumentation
inherent in such discourse. For example the myths of Tlacaelel among
the Aztecs, which justified human sacrifice and provided good
reasons for it**, completely collapsed once their impossibility was
demonstrated, as well as their lack of practical feasibility.
In fact, mythical elements may contaminate even the discourses of
great philosophers. For example, Immanuel Kant argues in favor of
the “immortality of the soul” in the “pure practical reason dialectics”
of his Critique of Practical Reason, as a way of resolving the question
of the “supreme Good” (since the soul would receive after death the
happiness it had earned in its earthly life). But these concepts of the
“soul” and of “immortality” demonstrate the persistence of mythical
elements of Indian origin in the Greek thought - elements that came to
permeate all of the Roman, Medieval Christian, and Modern European
world. The supposedly philosophical proofs provided are in these
cases tautological and not rationally demonstrative upon the basis of
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empirical facts. ‘This illustrates the unrecognized (and in this case
inappropriate) presence of mythical elements in the best philosophies.
We might also describe them as examples of unintentional underlying
ideologies.
On the other hand, the “Adamic myth” of the Hebrew Semitic
tradition, which shows that human freedom is the origin of “evil? and
not a deity, as in the Mesopotamian myth of Gilgamesh, is a mythical
narrative that can still be interpreted anew in the present, and which
resists the rationality of the age of logos.’ The same can be said of the
epic narrative of the slaves led by Moses who freed themselves from
Egypt - narratives recovered by Ernst Bloch in his previously cited
work.

4. The Domination of Modern European Philosophy

and its Universality Claim
Beginning in 1492 Europe conquers the Atlantic, which becomes
the new geopolitical center of hegemony in the world, replacing the
Mediterranean and extending its sweep all the way to the “Arab sea”
(Indian Ocean) and the “China Sea” (the Pacific). This becomes the
basis of new colonial empires (almost exclusively centered on the
American continent between the 15th and 17th centuries), which in
turn make it possible for a capitalist civilization to develop. It is in this
context that Medieval Latin-Germanic philosophy becomes the core
of Modern European philosophy, in a manner inextricably intertwined
with its political and economic hegemonical claim. I believe that the
specific philosophical origin of this process is Bartolomé de Las Casas’s
philosophical critique of the new colonial domination in the Caribbean
region in 1514, long before that of Descartes’s Discourse on Method,
written in Amsterdam in 1637. European philosophy was until then
singular and regional in character, but could now reposition itself in
terms of a claim to take on the trappings of philosophy itself. It is valid
to characterize the domination of European philosophy as hegemonic
because it imposed its sway on the philosophical communities that
had been colonized or reduced to its periphery. It is this economic,
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military and political hegemony that makes it possible for modern
European philosophy to develop in a unique manner, unlike any other
in the world during the same historical period. My emphasis here,
then, is on exploring possible explanations for this development and
its supposedly universality claim.
Modern colonial expansion through the opening of the Atlantic
by Portugal to the West of Africa, and then towards the Indian Ocean
(which leapt over the “wall” surrounding the Ottoman Empire), and by
Spain towards the Caribbean and the American continent, laid siege to
the Islamic world from the end of the 1500’s, paralyzing its civilizable
and thus, too, its philosophical development. Classic Arab philosophy
was not able to survive the crisis in the Caliphate of Baghdad and
declined definitively thereafter. The presence of the Mongol Empire
similarly destroyed the possibility of new developments in Buddhist
and Vedanta philosophies during the sixteenth century. China,
meanwhile, began to feel the weight of having failed to complete the
Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, just as Great
Britain began to experience it fully; by the end of the same century
China had already ceased to produce new hegemonic philosophy.
In Latin America the process of the Spanish conquest destroyed
all of the most outstanding intellectual and cultural resources of the
great Amerindian cultures; subsequently the Spanish and Portuguese
colonies of the Baroque period were never able to surpass the
achievements of the Scholastics of the sixteenth century Renaissance.
The dominating centrality of Northern Europe as a military,
economic, political, and cultural power laid the foundation for the
development of its philosophy from the end of the Middle Ages,
from the fifteenth century of Nicolas de Cusa (1401-1464) and the
Italian Renaissance, with its origins in the presence and influence of
the Byzantines expelled by the Ottomans of Constantinople in 1453.
This made it possible for its own philosophy to develop and, in the
face of the crisis of the other great regional philosophies, elevate its
philosophical particularity to a universality claim.
Modern European philosophy was therefore positioned in such a
way as to appear to be the universal philosophy - both in its own eyes
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and in those of the intellectual communities of the colonial world that
lay prostrate at its feet, and philosophically paralyzed. It was situated
geographically, economically, and culturally in the center, able to
manipulate the knowledge and information wrested from all of the
peripheral cultures within its grasp. These cultures were connected
to the center along a link running between the Colonial South and
the European metropolitan North, but disconnected from each other,
without any South-South relations or alliances possible as yet. These
relation will evolve during the Age of European Modernity, cultivating
an increasing disdain for their own identities and contributions, which
includes forgetting their traditions and confusing the high levels of
development produced by the Industrial Revolution in Europe with
the supposedly universal truths in its discourse — both its content and
its methods. This is what makes it possible for Hegel to write:
“Universal history goes from East to West. Europe is absolu-
tely the end of universal history’ “The Mediterranean Sea
is the axis of universal history.’
Similarly, certain European mythic narratives will be confused with
the supposedly universal content of purely European philosophical
rationality. Hegel is also the one who wrote that “the Germanic
Spirit is the Spirit of the New World [Modernity], whose end is the
realization of the Absolute Truth.’* He fails to note, however, that
said “Spirit” is regional (European Christian and not Taoist, Vedanta,
Buddhist or Arab), nor is it global, nor does its content reflect the
problems characteristic of other cultures. For these reasons, it does
not constitute a universal philosophical discourse, but instead reflects
the characteristics of a mythic and provincial narrative. What does it
mean in terms of a strictly universal philosophical rationality to speak
of the “Spirit of Christianity”? Why not then speak of the “Spirit of
Taoism” or of Buddhism or Confucianism? That “Spirit” is completely
valid as a component of a mythic narrative with meaning for those
who live within the horizons of a regional culture (such as Europe),
but not to attribute to it a rational philosophical content with an
empirically based universal validity, as modern European philosophy
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still claims for itself.
Philosophical eurocentrism is, then, in essence this universality
claim of a particular philosophy, many aspects of which may still
be absorbed by other traditions. We can assume that all cultures have
ethnocentric tendencies, but modern European culture was the first
whose ethnocentrism became globalized, with its original regional
horizon extended to coincide with that of the emergent world-system
itself, as proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein.” But this universality
claim falls of its own weight when philosophers of other philosophical
and cultural traditions become conscious of their own philosophical
history and its grounded implications.

5. Philosophical Universality and Cultural particularity

None of what I have argued thus far negates that it is possible for
philosophical discourse to take into account the fundamental “core
problems” and attempt to develop responses with universal validity,
as contributions that can be discussed by other cultures, since they
would involve problems that are ultimately human and thus universal
in character. K.-O. Apel ‘s* effort to define the universal conditions of
validity necessary for a “argumentative discourse” makes it plain that
there must be symmetrical possibilities for each of the participants
to engage in the process; otherwise, the conclusions of the discussion
will not be valid because participants have not participated under
equal conditions. This is an ethical-epistemological formal principle
(without any content based in any particular material value judgment
of any culture), that can be assessed critically by other cultures.
Similarly, the fact that there are historical-material and economic
conditions grounded in the affirmation and development of human
life, which are universally necessary for human existence (since we are
subjects in living bodies as suggested by Karl Marx), appears to be valid
for all cultures. The formal abstract universality of certain statements
or principles, which can be shaped differently at the material level of
each culture, does not negate that they can be “bridges” which can
make it possible for there to be dialogue and debate between different

245
philosophical traditions. This meta-philosophy is a product of all
humanity, even if it emerges initially in the context ofa specific culture,
or in some specific tradition or historical period, which might have
been able to make greater progress on this issue than others, but from
which all the other traditions could learn from within the bounds of
their own historical assumptions.
For example, in the tenth century A.D. in Baghdad, mathematics
advanced significantly, immediately contributing to a leap in the
development of Arab-Aristotelian philosophy and proving useful to
other traditions as well. An absolutely post-conventional philosophy
is impossible (implying no relationship to any concrete culture), but
all philosophies, located inevitably in some specific cultural context,
are nonetheless capable of engaging in dialogue with others through
the prism of shared “core problems” and categorical discourses of a
philosophical character, which are universal to the extent that they
are human.

6. The New Age of Dialogue between Philosophical

Traditions
It has been asserted for too long that this universal function is
fulfilled by modern European philosophy. This insistence has obscured
many great discoveries made by other philosophical traditions. This
is why the great task that lies before us at the beginning of the 21th
Century is the initiation of an inter-philosophical dialogue.
First, we must start with a dialogue between North and South,
because we will be reminded of the continuing presence of colonialism
and its legacies, still with us after five hundred years. This is a multi-
dimensional phenomenon that includes economic and_ political
structures and expressions, as well as cultural and philosophical ones.
The philosophical communities of the post-colonial world (with their
distinct problems and responses) are still not generally accepted,
recognized, nor engaged by their counterparts in metropolitan
hegemonic communities.
Second (and no less important) is the need to undertake and deepen
246
permanent South-South dialogue, in order to define the agenda of the
most urgent philosophical problems in Africa, Asia, Latin America,
Eastern Europe, etc., and discuss them together philosophically. The
tules for such a dialogue must be patiently developed.
We must lay the pedagogical foundations by educating future
generations in multiple philosophical traditions. For example, in the
first semester in the history of philosophy in our universities at the
undergraduate level, we should begin with the study of the “First Great
Philosophers of Humanity” - the thinkers who developed the original
categories of philosophical thinking in Egypt (Africa), Mesopotamia
(including the prophets of Israel), in Greece, India, China, Meso-
America, or the Incas. In the second semester we should continue
with study of the “Great Ontologies,’ including Taoism, Confucianism,
Hinduism, Buddhism, the Greeks (such as Plato, Aristotle, and up to
Plotinus), the Romans, etc. A third course should explore later stages
of philosophical development in China (beginning with the founding
of the Han empire), later examples of Buddhist and Indian philosophy,
Byzantine Christian philosophy, Arab philosophy, the Medieval
European philosophy, and so on. This is how a new generation can
begin to think philosophically from within a global mindset. The
same approach should be reflected in the courses specializing in ethics,
politics, ontology, anthropology, and even logic (should not we have
some notion of Buddhist logic as well?)
Furthermore, we mustask ourselves if other philosophical traditions
(beyond those of Europe and North America) have wrestled with
questions ignored by our own traditions, even though those traditions
might have explored them in different ways, with varying emphases.
The differences might provide new perspectives on the particular
conditions of the geopolitical environment where they were engaged.
There must not be only dialogue between East (an ambiguous concept
deconstructed by Edward Said) and West (equally ambiguous)”, but
also with the world Periphery, because Africa, Latin America, and
other regions are until now excluded.
We also need a complete reformulation of the history of
philosophy in order to be prepared for such a dialogue. World
247
Philosophy, the pioneering work by the sociologist Randall Collins,”
points to key aspects that must taken into account. His comparative
analysis crosses the geography (space) and history (time) of the great
Chinese, Indian, Arab, European, North American, and African
philosophers, which he categorizes in generations and in terms of
their relative importance, although glaring omissions include his
failures to devote a single line to five hundred years of Latin American
philosophy, and to the nascent philosophies of the urban cultures
prior to the conquest. Despite these weaknesses, he provides rich
information for further interpretation and gives the philosopher
pause, since the author is a sociologist who provides a great deal of
material for philosophical thinking.

7. Inter-philosophical Dialogue towards a Trans-

modern Pluriverse
After a long crisis resulting from the impact of modern European
culture and philosophy, the philosophies of other regions are
beginning to recover a sense of their own histories buried beneath
the hurricane of Modernity. Take the example of a contemporary
Arab philosopher, Mahomed Abed Yabri, at the University of Fez
in Morocco, a prestigious university renowned for over a thousand
years, and city which in the thirteenth century had more than 300,000
inhabitants, and where Moses Maimonides, among others, went to
study and teach.
Ata first stage, in A. Yabri’s two works, The Critique of Arab Reason™
and The Arab Philosophical Legacy: Alfarabi, Avicena, Avempace,
Averroes, Abenjaldun,” he begins with an evaluative assessment of the
philosophy of his Arab cultural tradition. Along the way, a) he rejects
the tradition of interpretation prevalent in this historical period (that
of the salafis or fundamentalists), a reaction against Modernity that
lacks a creative reconstruction of the philosophical past; b) he rejects
of “Marxist safism,” which forgets its own tradition; and c) he rejects
with equal force the liberal Eurocentric tradition that does not accept
the existence of a contemporary “Arab philosophy.’ Instead the author

248
employs his linguistic skillsin Arabic asa native speaker and undertakes
original research in the philosophical traditions of the great thinkers
of the “Eastern” schools (of Egypt, Baghdad, and towards the East,
under the influence of Avicenna) and of the “Western” schools (of the
Caliphate of Cordoba, including the Berber regions of Fez) that pivot
around the contributions of ‘Ibn Roshd.
At a second stage in his exploration, A.Yabri undertakes a critique
of his own philosophical tradition by employing the resources of Arab
philosophy itself, but also drawing from some of the achievements of
modern hermeneutics (which he studied in Paris). This combination
makes it possible for him to discover new historical elements in his
own tradition, for instance, that the Arab “Eastern” tradition had
to contend with Persian Gnostic thinking as a principal rival. Thus
the mu'ltazilies created the first Arab philosophy: by opposing Persia
and at the same time drawing upon Greco-Byzantine philosophy
in order to justify the legitimacy of the Caliphate. Subsequently Al-
farabi and ‘Ibn Sina (Avicenna), employing neo-Platonic categories,
will produce a philosophical-mystical tradition of illumination.
While Andalusian-Maghrebi “Western” philosophy, inspired by
the scientific empiricism and strictly Aristotelian thought (with the
characteristic slogan: “abandon the argument based on authority and
go back to the sources” as urged by the Almohade ‘Ibn Tumert) will
produce the great Arab philosopher ‘Ibn Roshd, a true philosophical
Enlightenment (Aufkldrung), which will be the origin of the Latin-
Germanic philosophy in 13" Century, which was at the same time
the foundational moment of the modern European philosophy. ‘Ibn
Roshd perfectly defines what inter-philosophical dialogue should
consist of:
Undoubtedly we should build upon and take from the contri-
butions resulting from the research of all who have preceded
us (the Greeks, the Christians), as sources of assistance in our
process of rational study [...] Given that this is so, and since
the ancient philosophers already studied with great diligence
the rules of reasoning (logic, method), it will be appropriate

249
 for us to dedicate our labors to the study of the works of these
ancient philosophers, and if everything we find in them is
reasonable, we can accept it, and if not, those things that are
not reasonable can serve as a warning and a basis for precau-
tion.

At a third stage, that of new creation based upon one’s own

tradition and nourished by dialogue with other cultures, we should
not allow ourselves to be blinded by the apparent splendor ofa modern
European philosophy that has laid the groundwork for exploring its
own problems, but not for exploring the problems particular to the
Arab world:
How can Arab philosophy assimilate the experience of libe-
ralism before the Arab world has experienced that stage, or
without having done so?”
One more theme must be addressed at fourth final stage. The
dialogue that can enrich each philosophical tradition must be
carried out by critical and creative philosophers in each tradition,
and not by those who simply repeat the philosophical theses that are
the traditional echoes of consensus. An essential element of such a
critical stance is for philosophers to assume the responsibility for
addressing the ethical and political problems associated with the
poverty, domination, and exclusion of large sectors of the population,
especially in the Global South (in Africa, Asia, or Latin America). A
critical philosophical dialogue presupposes critical philosophers, in
the sense of the “critical theory’, which we in Latin America refer to
our reality as Philosophy of Liberation.
European Modernity has impacted cultures throughout the world
through colonialism (except for China, Japan, and a few others,
who were spared direct European rule). It exploited their resources,
extracted information from their cultures, and discarded that which it
could not absorb. When I speak of Trans-modernity, I am referring to
a global project that seeks to transcend European or North American
Modernity. It is a project that is not post-modern, since post-

250
Modernity isa still-incomplete critique of Modernity by European and
North America. Instead, Trans-modernity is a task that is, in my case,
expressed philosophically, whose point of departure is that which has
been discarded, devalued, and judged use-less among global cultures,
including colonized or peripheral philosophies. This project involves
the development of the potential of those cultures and philosophies
that have been ignored, upon the basis of their own resources, in
constructive dialogue with European and North American Modernity.
It is in this way that Arab philosophy, for example, could incorporate
the hermeneutics of European philosophy, develop and apply them
in order to discover new interpretations of the Kordn that would
make possible a new, much-needed Arab political philosophy, or
Arab feminism. It will be the fruit of the Arab philosophical tradition,
updated through inter-philosophical dialogue (not only with Europe,
but equally with Latin America, India, China, etc.), oriented towards
a pluriversal future global philosophy. This project is necessarily trans-
modern, and thus also trans-capitalist.
Foralong time, perhaps forcenturies, the many diverse philosophical
traditions will each continue to follow their own paths, but nonetheless
a global analogical project of a trans-modern pluriverse (other than
universal, and not post-modern) appears on the horizon. Now, “other
philosophies” are possible, because “another world is possible” — as
is proclaimed by the Zapatista Liberation Movement in Chiapas,
Mexico.
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 Notes

1 Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion Ed. Alejandro

A Vallega. Tr. Eduardo Mendieta, Camilo Pérez Bustillo, Yolanda Angulo, and
Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press,
2013). Originally published as Etica de Ja liberacién en la edad de la globalizaciony
la exclusién (Madrid: Trotta, 1998). See: www.enriquedussel.com
2 Present volume, p.1. Dussel’s point echoes Augusto Salazar Bondy’s powerful
expose of the coloniality operative in the development of Latin American philosophy
in his ground-breaking essay, “The Meaning and Problem of Hispanic American
Philosophic Thought? (in Latin American Philosophy for the 21st Century, Ed. Jorge
E. Gracia and Elizabeth Millan-Zaibert (New York: Prometheus Books, 2004).
3 For Dussel another major influence from Paul Ricouer is his Histoire et verite.
Dussel identifies an earlier version of this essay as a crucial reading that marks his
thinking to the late 60's (titled “Civilization universal et culture national; published
in Sprit). (Filosofia de la Culturay de la Liberacion, p.11) Dussel finds in Ricoeur's
essay the insight that all civilization precludes a cultural life that projects and
manipulates the objects of civilization. In other words, meaning comes from living
praxis, and the values and symbols that arise in a particular group. Dussel writes
concerning Latin America: “a people that comes to think itself, that reaches self-
consciousness, the comprehension of its cultural structures, of its ultimate projects,
in the cultivation and evolution of its traditions, has its identity with itself” (Present
volume, p.76). This means that to think our being-there in its historical authenticity
will require engaging the cultural (and religious) structures out of the praxis of the
particular culture.
4 Present volume, p.4.
Present volume, p.4.
Ibid.
Cnn

Present volume, p.5.

On the Dussel — Wallerstein dialogue see for example Dussel’s “World-System
and Transmodernity,’ Nepantla: Views from the South “(Durham), Volume 3, Issue
2 (2002), p.221-244. Also see, Dussel’s “Debate on the Geoculture of the World-
System, in The World We are Entering 2000-2050, Ed. I. Wallerstein and A. Clesse.
(Netherland: Dutch University Press, 2002), pp.239-246.
9 Filosofia de la Cultura y la Liberacion, p.29.
10 Enrique Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, Tr. Aquilina Martinez and Christine
Morkovsky (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1985). Available online from Servicio
CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, 1996/2002. From here
on I refer to the work as PL, first indicating the English translation’s page number,
then the Spanish. PL, 173 ;200. This work is a dense and tight synthetic discussion of

268
Dussel’s thought up to 1977, and it also contains the basic conceptual elements that
will be developed in Dussel’s philosophy of liberation thereafter.
11 Present volume, p.4. In fact as this text indicates, Dussel is already lecturing on
Heidegger two years before in El Chaco in 1966.
12 Lecciones de Introduccidn a la Filosofia, de Antropologia Filoséfica (Mendoza,
1968), unpublished manuscript.
13 Present volume, p.4. In his Mendoza Lectures (1968) Dussel emphasizes the
importance of the shift from the treatment of the human as an entity among other
entities in a world that has forgotten the authentic sense of being human, to the
human understood in its situated experience as a being that is by “being-there” or
being-in-the-world in an authentically historical manner (Geschehen).(Mendoza
Lectures, 1968, p.76) This authentic being-there means recovering a sense of being
that has been forgotten by our involvement with the immediate worldly things
and concerns, and with novelty over against a deeper sense of our existence or
temporality. This forgetting has covered over the authentic sense of our existence as
our openness towards past and future which allows us to claim sense out of a concrete
being-there (Ibid, p.77). Furthermore, the forgetting involves a system of knowledge
that covers over authentic ways of being human. Therefore, this remembering will
require the destruction of the Western ontological tradition, of what Heidegger
called the history of Western metaphysics (Ch. V, part ii. Historia Antropo-ldgica,
p.75-80). Here we have the first response to the two leading questions above, the
tradition must be destroyed in order to recover our authentic ways of being; and
in terms of Latin America, this is the role of the history of Western philosophy, it
is that which must be destroyed for the sake of a more authentic historical way of
being. As Dussel writes, “Our de-structive task, to annihilate forgetting in order
to have the sense of being reappear, must know to choose some fundamental and
decisive epochs and moments in history and within cultural horizons that may not
be excluded in order for us to arrive at the comprehension of ourselves. This under-
standing is at the bottom or is the foundation for all authentic thinking, it not only
does depend on it my personal project, but equally the collective destiny of “my”
people (“my” us) (“mi” pueblo, “mi” nosotros)... As Latin Americans that we are, we
must know to choose the history of the peoples that builds us (the cultures) and in
them the essential historical moments” (p.78).
14 The departure from Heidegger may be followed in chapters 21-24 of Método
para una filosofia de la liberacién, 2nd Ed. (Salamanca, Spain: Sigueme, 1974). On
Heidegger, Sarter, Zubiri, and Levinas.
15 Dussel’s transition from Heidegger to Levinas is rather complex and may be
followed in his Towards an Ethics of Latin American Liberation (1973). It is here
that Dussel articulates his shift from Heidegger beyond Heidegger through Levinas
and “the other” In Towards an Ethics, the shift happens in chapter three titled “The
metaphysical exteriority of the other.’ The Mendoza course is useless for what is

269
presented in this volume. (Intro. P.13.) However, the book begins by presupposing
the des-truction of the tradition Dussel finds in Heidegger. Thus, the move from
ontology to analectic thought happens in light of the task of the destruction of the
Western tradition. As Dussel points out, this thought is not only for Latin America
but for the Arab world, for black Africa, India, the Asiatic south-east, and China.
(intro. P.12).
16 America Latina: dependencia y liberacion, (Buenos Aires: Fernando Garcia,
1973), p. 67-132.
17 Filosofia de la cultura y de la Liberacion, (Universidad Aut6noma de la Ciudad
de Mexico, 2006) p.27. Also see, Liberacién Latinoamericana y Emanuel Levinas
(Buenos Aires: Bonum, 1975).
18 “Sensibility” and “Otherness” in Emmanuel Levinas; Philosophy Today
(Chicago) Vol.43, 2 (Summer) (1999), pp. 126-134
19 Método para una filosofia de la liberacién, 2nd Ed. (Salamanca, Spain: Sigueme,
1974) “El método analéctico” (“The analectic method”), p. 181-183.
20 This point must be emphasized, Dussel ‘s aim is not to abandon ethical principles
or the task of constructing political institutions, at the same time he is not interested
in mere reforms of the systems of oppression. Rather, Dussel sees the need in such
structures conceptual and practical, but also the fact that the institutions must begin
to work for people’s lives.
21 In the Método para una filosofia de la liberacién one finds a systematic critical
rereading of the history of Western philosophy, as well as the discussion of the
steps beyond the Western tradition within Europe. Of critical importance is that
at this point appears a critique of “analogical” thinking, from the dialectic totality
of traditional ontology under the idea ofa logos that represents being by analogy,
to an exteriority indicated by the Greek ana- or ano-, which mean from above
and ultimately beyond the rational system that organizes the logic of inclusion
of metaphysics.(175-193)This is a fundamental moment for understanding what
Dussel will mean by his “analectic” thought or method. The analectic method is
already introduced in a lecture given in 1972 at the VIII Panamerican Congress of
Philosophy, titled “The analectic method and Latin American Philosophy” (Published
in Latin America: Dependency and Liberation (1973)).
22 PL, 170; 198.
23 PL, 3; 15. “Total exteriority” does not mean a total severing of relations between
center and periphery, but it indicates that the center, Western thought, categories,
etc., is not ontologically determining of the distinct existences of the periphery. It is
a matter of recognizing other beginnings, unthinkable to the tradition.
24 PL, 3-4; 15-16.
25 PL 170; 197.
26 See Dussel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberation (1977). In this work
Dussel begins to develop philosophy of liberation out of the exteriority of the
system. No longer is the thought oriented by a critique of the tradition, but it is
about developing analectic thought out of its external concrete situation. Here the
categories that orient philosophy of liberation begin to appear.
27 That is, in a moment that is not individual as may be the case in a capitalist-
individualist society but of a disinct people, of a community in its distinct lives and
in its creative force.
28 Weare speaking of Dussel’s works on Marx through the eighties: The theoretical
Production of Marx (1985, on the Grundrisse); The Last Marx (1988, 1863-1882);
Towards a New Marx (1990, 61-63 manuscripts). These works culminate in Marx’
Theological Metaphors (1994). Several essays have also been published in English:
“Marx's Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63 and the “Concept” of Dependency, Latin
American Perspectives Vol. 17, Issue 2 Post-Marxism, the Left, and Democarcy,
pp.62-101. “Four Drafts of Capital,” Rethinking Marxism Vol. 13, number 1, Spring
2001. “Marx, Schelling, and Surplus Value, International Studies in Philosophy, Vol.
XXXVIII/4, 2006. “The Definitive Discovery of the Category of Surplus Value,” in
Politics of Liberation (2007).
29 Politica de la liberacién. Historia mundial y critica (Madrid, Trotta, 2007.)
(Politics of Liberation. World History and Critique.)
30 Politica de la liberacion, p.221.
31 Dussel, Enrique Las metdforas teolégicas de Marx (Navarra: El Verbo Divino,
1994).
32 Etica de la liberacion en la edad de la globalizacién y de la exclusién (Madrid:
Trotta, 1998.) Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion Ed.
Alejandro A. Vallega. Tr. Eduardo Mendieta, Camilo Pérez Bustillo, Yolanda
Angulo, and Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University
Press, 2013). The two volumes of the politics that are already in print are: Politica
de la liberacion I. Historia mundial y critica (Madrid: Trotta, 2007) and Politica de la
liberacién I, arquitecténica (Madrid: Trotta, 2009).
33 See, Dussel, Enrique The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor,
and the Philosophy of Liberation, Ed. and translated by Eduardo Mendieta (New
York: Humanities Press, 1996); and, Dussel, Enrique Thinking from the Underside of
History Ed. Linda Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,
2000). Dussel, Enrique. Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty y la filosofia de la liberacién (México:
Universidad de Guadalajara, 1973.) Dussel, Enrique La ética de la liberacién ante
el debate de Apel, Taylor y Vattimo con respuesta critica de K.-O. Apel (México:
Universidad Auténoma del Estado de México, 1998). Dussel, Enrique and Apel
Karl-Otto, Etica del discurso Etica de la liberacién (Madrid: Trotta, 2005), Eduardo
Mendieta offers a fine treatment of the dialogues and a general introduction to
Dussel in “Politics in an Age of Planetarization: Enrique Dussel’s Critique of Political
Reason,’ in Global Fragments (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), pp.125-140.
34 “Against Gianni Vattimo, who affirms: “There are no facts, only interpretations!”

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I replied to him in Bogota: “There are facts, which are always interpreted!” Politica
de la liberacién II, arquitecténica (Madrid: Trotta, 2009), p.440.
35 See Mendieta’s discussion in “Politics in an Age of Planetarization: Enrique
Dussel’s Critique of Political Reason,’ in Global Fragments (Albany: SUNY Press,
2007), pp.125-140.
36 See for example: Hinkelammert, Franz. Hacia Ia critica de la razén mitica: El
laberinto de la modernidad (Bogota, Colombia: Ediciones desde abajo, 2009).
37 Some of the historical publications worth mentioning in terms of the
beginnings of the philosophy of liberation are: “Hacia una filosofia de la liberacién”
Enfoque Latinoamericanos numero 2 (Buenos Aires: Bonum 1973), the authors
include Dussel, Hugo Assmann, Osvaldo Ardiles, Marios Casalla, Horacio Cerutti,
Carlos Cullen, Julio De San, Enrique Dussel, Anibal Fornari, Daniel Guillot,
Antonio Kinen, Rodolfo Kusch, Diego Pré, Agustin de la Riega, Arturo Roig, and
Juan C. Scannone. Also: Cultura popular y filosofia de la liberacién (Buenos Aires:
Cambeiro, 1975). Revista de Filosofia Latinoamericana: Liberacién y cultura,
Tomo 1, Enero-Junio 1975, Numero 1. Revista de Filosofia Latinoamericana
Tomo I, Julio-Diciembre, 1975, numero 2. See also the exchange between Dussel
and Horacio Cerutti Guldberg: Filosofia de la liberacién latinoamericana (México:
Fondo de Cultura Econémica, 1983). Also see: Critica intercultural de la filosofia
latinoamericana actual, Ed. Rat] Fornet-Betancourt (Madrid: Trotta, 2004).
38 Quijano, Anibal “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Social Classification,
Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate Ed. Mabel Morajfia,
Enrique Dussel, and Carlos A. Jauregui (London: Duke University Press, 2008),
181-224.
39 Castro-Gémez, Santiago, Critica de la razon latinoamericana (Barcelona:
Puvill Libros, 1996). Castro-Gémez, Santiago La Hybris del Punto Cero: Ciencia,
raza e ilustracién en la Nueva Granada (1750-1816) (Bogota: Editorial Pontifica
Universidad Javeriana, 2005).
40 Mignolo, Walter. The Idea of Latin America (London, Blackwell, 2005);
Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border
Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), and The Darker Side of the
Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 1995). For a representative anthology that introduces the work of
the subaltern studies group see The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America Ed. J.
Beverly, J. Oviedo, and M. Aronna (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). See also
the critical essay by Ramon Grosfoguel, “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn; in Cultural
Studies 21:2, p.211-223.
41 Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border
Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
42 Ramén Grosfoguel 2008 “Para descolonizar os estudos de economia politica e
os estudos pés-coloniais: Transmodernidade, pensamento de fronteira e colonialidade

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global” Revista Critica de Ciéncias Sociais, numero 80 (margo): 115-147. The English
version of this article can be found in: http://www.eurozine.com/pdf/2008-07-04-
grosfoguel-en.pdf. On Grosfoguel’s dialogue with Dussel see also his essay Ramon
Grosfoguel 2008 “Hacia un pluri-versalismo transmoderno decolonial” in Tabula
Rasa No. 9 (julio-diciembre): 199-215. http://www. revistatabularasa.org/numero_
nueve/10grosfoguel.pdf
43 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson Against War (Durham: Duke University Press,
2008).
44 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the
Development of the Concept? Cultural Studies Vol. 21, No. 2-3 March/May 2007, pp.
240-270.
45 See footnote 31. Also, Dussel, Enrique. Beyond Philosophy: Ethics, History,
Marxism, and Liberation Theology (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
46 Alcoff, Linda. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005). She coedited with Eduardo Mendieta Thinking from the
Underside of History (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). Schutte, Ofelia
Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American Thought (Albany, SUNY
Press, 1993).
47 As Vallega points out, the sense of exteriority and the call for a thought that
arises in light of life refer us to the realm of aesthetic experience, in the literal
sense of bodily experiences, sensibilities, and disposition through which one finds
language, self, world, and others. At the same time, these levels of understanding
are overwhelmed by the coloniality of power, being, and thought in its destruction
of cultural practices and configurations of distinct identities. Alejandro A. Vallega,
Latin American Philosophy from Identity to Radical Exteriority (Bloomington,
Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2014), Part I, Ch. 3 and Ch. 4.
48 See, for example, Dussel’s engagement with Fabien Eboussi Boulaga’s La crise
du muntu in his introduction to the Ethics of Liberation, sections 53-55. Eboussi-
Boulaga, Fabien. La crise du Muntu Authenticité africaine et philosophie (Paris,
Présence Africaine, 1977).
49 See Dussel’s 1492: The Covering of the Other. (N.Y.: Continuum Press, 1995).
In this work Dussel engages the historical character of the development of the
myth of modernity. On the one hand, modernity has an element of rationality that
Dussel wants to sustain. On the other hand, this rationality is inseparably entangled
in modernity with the irrationality of having rational consciousness serve as a
justification for violence (ex. colonialism). The critique of modernity appears as
an attempt to expose this irrational element. This critique is not conceptual per
se but historical. In short: in order for the modern consciousness to arise as the
center it must sacrifice the other lives beyond it and make them its other. This
historical recovery of the other figures a path towards what today Dussel calls the
philosophy of “Trans-Modernity; i.e. once the myth of modernity comes undone,

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a new philosophy of liberation arises beyond modernity, hence not post-modern
but “Trans-modern.” The term also indicates this is not a philosophy that abandons
reason; instead it resituates philosophy in terms of the concrete existence of the
other.
50 Present volume. 38.
51 Present volume. 341. It should be noted that here appears a double meaning
of post-modern. While the term “post-Modern” is associated today with post-
structuralism and deconstruction, particularly Derrida and Foucault, Dussel
coins the term before post-modern is associated with deconstruction and post-
structuralism; and yet, in this quote the two senses are brought together. For
a discussion of the relation between Dussel’s thought and deconstruction see
Alejandro A, Vallega, Latin American Philosophy from Identity to Radical Exteriority
(Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2014), Part I, Ch.4 and Part III,
Ch.8.
52 resent volume. 369.
53 Politica de la liberacién I. Historia mundial y critica (Madrid, Trotta, 2007.)
Politica de la liberacién II, arquitecténica (Madrid: Trotta, 2009). Volume I in English:
Politics of Liberation: A Critical World History, Tr. Cooper (SCM Press, 2010). The
synthesis of the three volumes on the politics of liberation appears in 20 Theses on
Politics (Duke University Press, Durham, 2011).
54 Etica de la liberacién en la edad de la globalizacion y de la exclusién (Madrid:
Trotta, 1998.) English: Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion.
Ed. Alejandro A Vallega. Tr. Eduardo Mendieta, Camilo Pérez Bustillo, Yolanda
Angulo, and Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University
Press, 2012).
55 Under numbers two and three in the present work. There is a German edition
under the title Der Gegend Diskurs der Moderne (Turia-Kant, Berlin, 2013).
56 Dictated in Cologne (Germany) in 2011 and published in the German edition
cited in the previous note.
57 eea later publication on this theme in Douglas Harink (Ed.), Paul, Philosophy,
and the Theopolitical Vision (Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2010).
58 Our province of Mendoza (Argentina), it's true, was among the furthest
southern territories of the Incan empire, or more precisely of the Uspallata Valley
between Argentina and Chile, with an “Incan Bridge” and “Incan Trails’, which, in
my youth as an Andean expert, I could observe with awe at more than 4,500 meters
above sea level. For biographic-philisophical aspects of my generational experiences,
see “Hacia una simbélica latinoamericana (hasta 1969), in my work, Apel, Ricoeur,
Rorty y la filosofia de la liberacén, Universidad de Guadalajara (México), 1993,
pp.138-140; and $§ 1-3 in the article “En busqueda del sentido (Origen y desarrollo
de una Filosofia de la Liberacién); in the issue dedicated to my work in the journal
Anthropos 180 (Barcelona, 1998), pp. 14-19.

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59 _ublished in Histoire et verité, Seuil, Paris, 1964, pp.274-288, and earlier, in the
journal Esprit (Paris) in October. The differentiation between levels of “civilization”
- with reference to technical, scientific, or political instruments — from culture
indicates what I would call today a “developmentalist fallacy,’ as it fails to note that
all instrumental systems (especially the political, but also the economic) are already
“cultural.”
60 hese works were published in Esprit, 7-8, (October 1965). I presented an essay
about “Chrétientés latino-américaines’, pp. 2-20 (which appeared later in Polish
“Spolecznosci Chrzescijanskie Ameriki Lacinskiej’, in Znak Miesiecznik (Krakow)
XIX (1967) pp. 1244-1260).
61 “Iberoamérica en la Historia Universal” in Revista de Occidente, 25 (1965),
pp.85-95. At that time, I had nearly completed two books: E/ humanismo helénico,
written in 1961, and El humanismo semita, written in 1964, and I had the materials
for what would later appear as El dualismo en la antropologia de la cristianidad,
which was finally completed in 1968. I had performed a creative reconstruction
of what I called a Latin American “protohistory,’ that of Christopher Colombus or
Hernando Cortés.
62 In contrast to many of those who speak of culture, and of Latin American
culture in particular, I had the opportunity over four years to spend long hours in the
General Archive of the Indies in Sevilla to study foundational historical works of the
scientific-positivist understanding of Latin America in the sixteenth century—the
beginning of the colonial period. This filled my brain with an impressive quantity of
concrete references from all parts of the Latin American continent (from Mexican
California to the South of Chile, since I also immersed myself in documents from
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). For me, to speak of “Latin American
culture” was to refer to indigenous peoples, struggles for conquest, processes
of indoctrination, the foundation of cities, missions for forced relocation and
subjugation of indigenous people (reducciones), the local colonial administrations
(cabildos), provincial councils, diocesan synods, the tithes of the haciendas, the
payment of mines, etc, etc. See the nine volumes published between 1969 and 1971
about El episcopado hispanoamericano, Institution misionera en defensa del indio
(Coleccién Sondeos, CIDOC, Cuernavaca).
63 Which took place over the course of four months of feverish work, from August
to December of 1966, since upon leaving Maguncia in Germany I would return
again at the end of that year to Europe (my first airplane trip over the Atlantic) to
defend my second doctoral thesis in Paris in February 1967.
64 vailable in rotaprint from the Universidad del Noreste, Resistencia (Argentine),
265 pages. It was published for the first time on CD entitiled: Obra Filoséfica de
Enrique Dussel (1963-2002), available through the internet at www.clacso.org.
65 Inreality, I omitted Latin-Germanic Europe, since I had only studied it through
the fifth century.
66 This is included in a book edited in 1972 (under the title: Historia de la iglesia
en América Latina, Nova Terra, Barcelona), p. 56.
67 ‘This speech appeared for the first time, with that title, in Cuyo (Mendoza), 4
(1968) pp.7-40, and appears in a compilation in Portuguese, under the title Oito
ensaios sobre cultura latino-americana e liberacdo, Paulinas, Sao Paulo, 1997; the last
of these appears on pp.25-63. I had included it before, in modified form, in Historia
de la Iglesia en América Latina. Coloniaje y Liberacién 1492-1972, Editorial Nova
Terra, 1972, pp. 29-47.
68 A synthesis of these courses in Quito appeared later under the title Caminos
de liberacion latinoamericana, vol. I: Interpretacién historico-teoldgica de nuestro
continente latinoamericano, Latinoamérica, Buenos Aires, 1972. The revised edition
appeared in Spanish as: Desintegracién de la cristianidad colonial y liberacién.
Perspectiva latinoamericana, Sigueme, Salamanca, 1978; in English as: History and
the Theology of Liberation: A Latin American perspective, Orbis Books, New York,
1976; in French as: Histoire et théologie de la liberation. Perspective latinoaméricane,
Editions Economie et Humanisme-Editions Ouvriéres, Paris, 1974;andin Portuguese
as: Caminhos de libertacao latino-americana, vol. I: Interpretacdo histérico-teoldégica,
Paulinas, Sao Paulo, 1985. Another version was published in abridged form as:
América latina y conciencia cristiana, Ipla no. 8, Quito, 1970. These were years of
great critical and creative intellectual effervescence.
69 “Cultura latinoamericana e historia de la Iglesia” in L. Gera, E. Dussel and
J.Arch, Contexto de la iglesia argentina, Universidad Pontificia, Buenos Aires, pp.32-
155.
70 Ibid., pp.33-47.
71 bid., p.48.
72 Eudeba, Buenos Aires, 1975.
73 This text has as its subtitle: Desde los origenes hasta antes de la conquista de
América, Guadalupe, Buenos Aires, 1974.
74 For example, in the “General Introduction” to the Historia General de la Iglesia
en América Latina, CEHILA-Sigueme, Salamanca, t.I/1, 1983, pp.103-204. And, in
many other works (like in Etica de la Liberacién, Trotta, Madrid, 1998, [26]; and
more extensively in Politica de Liberacién which I am currently writing), I again
take up the question of the “foundation” and “development” of Latin-Germanic
Christianity (the first stage of Europe, properly stated). See my article “Europa,
Modernidad y Eurocentrismo” in Hacia una Filosofia Politica Critica, Desclée de
Brouwer, Bilbao, 2001, pp.345-359.
75 See the history and the theoretical reconstruction of Dependency Theory
in my book Towards an Unknown Marx: A commentary on the Manuscripts of
1861-1863, Routledge, London, 2001 (published in Spanish in 1988), pp. 205-230.
Theotonio dos Santos has recently returned to this theme in his book Teoria de
la Dependencia, Plaza y Janés, México, 2001, confirming my thesis entirely. From

276
1975 through the end of the 1990s, Latin American social sciences were becoming
increasingly skeptical of Dependency Theory. I demonstrated (in 1988, op.cit.) that
the refutation was inadequate and that, thus far, Dependency Theory has been the
only sustainable theory. In a polemic with Karl-Otto Apel, Franz Hinkelammert has
emphatically demonstrated the validity of this theory.
76 Dussel, 1983, vol. 1, pp. 35-36.
77 Tr: English in original]
78 Insubsequent years (and indeed up to the present), we have held encounters in
Delhi, Ghana, Sao Paulo, Colombo, Manila, Oaxtepec, etc.
79 For me, after living in Europe for almost eight years, two years among
Palestinians (many of whom were Muslim) in Israel, traveling and giving conference
talks or participating in seminars on five occasions in India (among all cultures, the
most impressive), in the Philippines three times, in Africa at numerous events (in
Kenya, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Ethiopia, etc.), I had an immediate
understanding of the “great cultures” that I have respectfully and passionately
venerated.
80 This appeared under the title “Cultura imperial, cultura ilustrada y liberacién
de la cultura popular,” published in Oito ensaios sobre cultura latino-americana, pp.
121-152. This speech was given in front ofa crowd of hundreds and hundreds of
participants, and openly attacked the military dictatorship. It appeared for the first
time at a conference given at the Fourth Academical Week at the Universidad de El
Salvador, Buenos Aires, on August 6, 1973; in Stromata (Buenos Aires), 30 (1974),
pp. 93-123; and in Dependencia cultural y creacion de la cultura en América Latina,
Bonum, Buenos Aires, 1974, pp.43-73.
81 The tumultuous protests of December 2001 in Argentina were the culmination
of a long process of the hollowing-out of a peripheral state through three centuries
of colonial exploitation, through foreign loans and extraction of agricultural riches
since the middle of the nineteenth century, and through the accelerated extraction
of the neoliberal model implemented by Bush and Menem. A generation was
physically eliminated in the “dirty war” (1975-1984) so that an economic model
could be implemented that brought misery to what had been - from 1850 to 1950
- the wealthiest and most industrialized country in Latin America. All of this had
been clearly foreseen since the early 1970s by Philosophy of Liberation, following
the rightward political shift that removed the Campora administration, under the
direction of the unconcealable fascism of J.D. Perén from June 1973.
82 ]Tr: I retain the accent to emphasize that Dussel is referring to Latin America
as a whole, and not the United States.]
83 Oito ensaios, p.137.
84 Ibid., p.147.
85 In Ibid., pp.146ss.
86 “Cultura latinoamericana y Filosofia de la Liberacién (Cultura popular

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revolucionaria: mas alla del popularism and dogmatismo),” in Oito ensaios, pp.171-
231. t first appeared in Cristianismo y Sociedad (México), 80 (1984), pp.9-45; and in
Latinoamérica: Anuario de Estudios Latinoamericanos (UNAM, México), 17 (1985),
pp-77-127.
87 See Oito Ensaios, pp. 171ss.
88 Ibid., p. 189ss.
89 “La cultura del pueblo” in Habla la direccién de la vanguardia, Managua,
Departamento de Propaganda del FSLN, 1981, p.116.
90 Oito ensaios, p.191ss.
91 This was later explored in my trilogy: La Produccién téorica de Marx, Siglo XXI,
México, 1985; Hacia un Marx desconocido, XX1, México, 1988 (translated in Italian
and English), and El ultimo Marx, XXI, México, 1990.
92 Although in reality these are the same things, because upon harming the
terra mater with the plow, the Indo-european needed a sacred act of anticipated
“reparation”: a “cult of terra mater” serving as a condition for the possibility of
extracting from it - through work and its “sorrows” (both those of the earth and of
humanity) - the fruit, the harvest, human nourishment. This is the dialectic of life-
death, happiness-sorrow, nourishment-hunger, culture-chaos. And consequently, of
death-resurrection, sorrow-fertility, necessity-satisfaction, chaos-creation.
93 [Tr: Dussel refers to the Greek term poietiké.]
94 Oito ensaios, p.198ss.
95 See “Cultura(s) popular(es),’ a special issue on this subject in Comunicaciény
cultura (Santiago), 10 (1983); Ecléa Bosi, Cultura de massa e cultura popular, Vozes,
Petropolis, 1977; Osvaldo Ardiles, “Ethos, cultura, y liberacién,” in the collected
work Cultura popular y filosofia de la liberacién, Garcia Cambeiro, Buenos Aires,
1975, pp.9-32; Amilcar Cabral, Cultura y liberacién, Cuicuilco, México, 1981; José L.
Najenson, Cultura popular y cultura subalterna, Universidad Auténoma del Estado
de México, Toluca, 1979; Arturo Warman, “Cultura popular y cultura nacional”
in Caracteristicas de la cultura nacional, IIS-UNAM, México, 1969; Raul Vidales,
“Filosofia y politica de las étnias en la ultima década” in Ponencias do Ll Congreso de
Filosofia Latinoamericana, USTA, Bogota, 1982, pp.385-401; etc.
96 In 1984 we had designated this “multinational culture” in connection with
“multinational” corporations, but in reality it would be more appropriate, in 2003,
to call it the “dominant culture that is globalizing from the core of Post-Cold-War
capitalism.”
97 This text can be found in the volume La pedagégica latinoamericana, Nueva
América, Bogota, 1980, p.72.
98 Ibid.
99 See Ernesto Cardenal, “Cultura revolutionaria, popular, nacional, anti-
imperialista,” in Nicarauac (Managua), | (1980), pp.163.
100 Oito ensaios, pp.220-221. Mao Tse-tung wrote: “It is imperative to separate the

278
 fine old culture of the people which had a more or less democratic and revolutionary
character from all the decadence of the old feudal ruling class |...) China's [...|
present new culture, too, has developed out of her old culture; therefore, we must
respect our own history and must not lop it off. However, respect for history means
giving it its proper place as a science, respecting its dialectical development [...]”
(“On New Democracy,’ in Select Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Foreign Languages Press,
Peking, 1967, vol. II, pp.339-384). [available online at http://www.marxists.org/
teference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm]. In this short
work, Mao distinguishes between “ancient” (antigua) and “old” (vieja) culture;
between “dominant, “current, “imperialist” “semi-feudal,’ and “reactionary”
culture, a culture of “new democracy,’ a “culture of the popular masses,’ a “national”
or “revolutionary” culture, etc.
101 See Sergio Ramirez, “La revolucién: el hecho cultural mds grande de nuestra
historia”, in Ventana (Managua), 30 (1982), p.8; and Bayardo Arce, “El dificil terreno
de la lucha: el ideolégico”, en Nicarauac, 1 (1980), p.155.
102 Antonio Gramsci writes in paragraph 86 or 89, of vol. I of his Prison Notebooks:
“Folklore must not be thought of as something ridiculous, as something strange
that causes laughter, as something picturesque; it must be understood as something
relevant and must be taken seriously. In this way learning will be more efficient and
formative in terms of the culture of the grate popular masses [cultura delle grandi
masse popolari].” (Quaderni del Carcere, I; Einaudi Milan, 1975, p.90).
103 In those affirmations that are so evidently true for all Europeans or North
Americans that “Europe is the culmination of world history, or that that history
“develops from East to West,” from the beginning of humanity through its full
development. See my first lecture given in Frankfurt, published in my book: Von
der Erfindung Amerikas zur Entdeckung des Anderen. Ein Projekt der Transmoderne,
Patmos Verlag, Diisseldorf 1993. Available in English as The Invention of the
Americas: Eclipse of “the Other” and the Myth of Modernity, Continuum Publishing,
New York, 1995.
104 In 1976, before Lyotard, I used this concept in the opening words of my Filosofia
de la Liberacién when I wrote: “Philosophy of liberation is postmodern, popular (of
the people, with the people), profeminine philosophy. It is philosophy expressed by
(‘pressed out from”) the youth of the world, the oppressed of the earth, the wretched
of the Earth,’ Philosophy of Liberation, Orbis Books, New York 1985.
105 Originally published as Hipotesis para el estudio de Latinoamerica en la
historia universal. Investigacion del ‘mundo’ donde se constituyen y evolucionan las
‘Weltanschauungen (Chaco: Resistencia, 1966).
106 [Tr: this reference is, literally, to the Greek for inhabited (oixos) spaces (nenon),
and rendered in English as anything from “cultural circles” to “regional civilizations.”
For an understanding of Dussel's view of the role of these ecumenes, see the
“Appendix” in A History of the Church in Latin America: Colonialism to Liberation,

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(1492-1979), William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1981, 297-298.]
107 A further explication of what we are discussing can be found in my article:
“Europa, Modernidad y Eurocentrismo,” in Filosofia politica critica, Desclée de
Browuer, Bilbao, 2001, pp.345ss. There are translations in diverse languages: “Europa,
Moderne und Eurozentrismus. Semantische Verfehlung des Europa-Begriffs,” in
Manfred Buhr, Das Geistige Erbe Europas, Instituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici 5,
Viviarium, Napoli, 1994, pp.855-867; “Europe, modernité, eurocentrisme, in Francis
Guibal, 1492: “Recontre” de deux mondes?” Regards croisés, Editions Histoire et
Anthropologie, Strasbourg, 1996, pp. 42-58; “Europe, Modernity, and Eurocentrism”
in Nepantla: Views from South (Durham), Vol.I, Issue 3 (2000), pp.465-478.
108 For intellectuals from Northern Europe and the United States, from J.
Habermas to Toulmin, Modernity more or less follows this geopolitical path:
Renaissance (East) Protestant Reform (North)>French Revolution (West) English
Parlimentariansm. Western Mediterranean Europe (Portugal and Spain) is explicitly
excluded. This is due to a historic myopia. Even G. Arrighi, who studies Genovese
financial capital, ignores that this represented a moment of the Spanish Empire (and
not vice versa). That is to say, Renaissance Italy was still Mediterranean (ancient),
whereas Spain was Atlantic (that is to say: modern).
109 See the magnificent reinterpretation of the history of philosophy by Abed Yabri's
two books: Critica de la razon arabe, Icaria, Barcelona, 2001; and El legado filoséfico
arabe. Alfarabi, Avicena, Avempace, Averroes, Abenjaldun. Lecturas contempordneas,
Trotta, Madrid, 2001.
110 Keep in mind that René Descartes was a student at La Fléche, a Jesuit school,
and that the first philosophical work that he read was F. Suarez’s Disputaciones
metafisicas. See the historical chapter in the book that ] am currently writing entitled
Politica de Liberacion.
111 But we should not forget that the medieval gentleman, Quijote, confronts the
windmills which are symbols of Modernity (but which originated in the Muslim
world: Baghdad had windmills in the seventh century).
112 See the first three volumes of Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World-
System, Academic Press, New York, 1974-1989, vol. 1-3.
113 [Tr: English in original.]
114 University of California Press, 1988.
115 Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000. In this text Pomeranz proves
that until 1800 England did not actually have any significant advantage over the
Yangtze River Delta in China, and that after evaluating, with new arguments, the
ecological development of the exploitation of the land in both regions, he attributes
the possibility of the industrial revolution in England to two fortuitous factors
which were external to the English economic system: the possession of colonies and
the use of coal. No other factor was responsible for the minimal initial advantage
of England over the Yangtze River Delta region which, within a short time, became

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enormous. He does not even consider an economic crisis in China and Hindustan.
The increasing and anti-ecological use of land in China required s greater degree of
peasant labor, which prevented the simultaneous development of a nascent capitalist
industry in China (unlike England, which could do so thanks to the factors external
to its economic system).
116 [Tr: English in original.]
117 From the French Revolution to the fall of the USSR, which has meant the
unipolar rise of the current North American hegemony, after the end of the Cold
War.
118 See Section 5, “La Trans-modernidad como afirmacién; in my article “World-
System and Transmodernity, in Nepantla: Views from South (Duke, Durham), Vol.3
Issue 2 (2002), pp.221-244.
119 “Transversal” connotes that movement from the periphery to the periphery.
From the feminist movement to the antiracist and anticolonial struggles. These
“Differences” enter into dialogue from the perspective of their distinct negativities,
without the necessity of transversing the “center” of hegemony. Frequently, large
metropolitan cities have subway services that extend from suburban neighborhoods
to the center; however, they do not offer connecting service between the suburban
sub-centers themselves. This is an analogy for what occurs in intercultural
dialogue.
120 Icaria~Antrazyt, Barcelona, 2001.
121 Trotta, Madrid, 2001.
122 Arabic, after centuries of translation of the Hellenic philosophical works from
Greek, invented an extremely sophisticated technical-philosophical language. For
that reason, from Morocco to the Philippines, the philosophy of the Muslim world
is called “Arab philosophy,’ the name of the classic language.
123 EI legado, p.20ss. To the question of “how to recognize the glory of our
civilization, and how to give new life to our legacy,’ our author responds with a
thorough description of the ambiguous, partial, and Eurocentric responses. The
“salafies” originated from the position of Yamal al-Din al Afgani (+1897), who
struggled against the English in Afganistan. He resided in Istanbul, took refuge in
Cairo and eventually fled to Paris. That movement intended to liberate and unify
the Muslim world. [Tr: “Salafi’” means predecessors or ancestors and refers to an
interpretation of Islam which derives from the lives and behavior of the three
generations that followed Muhammad.]
124 I have indicated above that my first publication (1965) sought to criticize the
interpretations or hermeneutics of the “Latin American issue.” All newinterpretations
grasp consciousness and critique other partial interpretations.
125. Ibid., p.24.
126 tr. E. Burgos-Debray, Verso, London, 1987. Originally published as Me Llamo
Rigoberta Menchi Y Asi Me Nacié La Concienca (Barcelona: Editorial Argos Vergara,

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 1983).
127 The schools linked to Baghdad are truly oriental, closer to the Persian
Gnosticism, whereas those linked to Cairo, to the Alexandrian Neo-Platonic
tradition, are occidental within the Islamic East, as we will see.
128 In a truly original and authoritative manner, Al-Yabri shows that “Greek
philosophical sciences” transformed into Islamic “philosophy,” theology, and
jurisprudence thanks to four philosophical currents: “The first is that which is
represented by Iranian translators and secretaries [...], the eastern (Persian) model
of neo-Platonism. The second is that which is represented by Christian doctors and
translators that had come from the Persian school of Yundisapur [...which] besides
Nestorian teachers lodged a group of teachers from the Athenian school [...] this
was the western neo-Platonic model. The third [and most important] current,
eastern, was that which was represented by the Harranian translators, teachers, and
wise men. The fourth, western, was that which appeared finally with the arrival
of the Alexandrian Academy” (Al-Yabri, op. cit., p.177 [Tr: my translation]). The
Academy functioned for 50 years in the city of the Sabeans in Harran. This school
was fundamental, since it represented a synthesis of Persian, Neo-platonic, and
Aristotelian thought (see op cit., p.165)—a question rarely studied outside of the
Arab philosophical world, since it requires a bibliography of texts that have not been
translated into western languages. The “Brothers of Purity” [Tr: an association of
Arab philosophers founded in Syria in the tenth century] depended on the tradition
of Harran.
129 Fez came to have over 300,000 inhabitants in the twelfth century.
130 See Al-Yabri, El legado..., p.226ss. For Avempace, human perfection did not
consist in the ecstatic contemplation of Sufism, but rather in the life of the “solitary
man” (who, like a budding plant in the imperfect city longs for the perfect city),
and the rational study of philosophical sciences. ‘The act of the “intellect agent” par
excellence—the knowledge of the wise—is spiritual and divine. Al-Yabri dedicates
several wonderful pages to the theme of Avempace and his treatise on the happiness
of the wise, which was inspired by and develops upon the late work of Aristotle. See
my article: “La ética definitiva de Aristétles o el tratado moral contemporaneo al
Del Alma” in £/ dualismo en la antropologia de la Cristiandad, cited above, pp. 297-
314.
131 Al-Yabri shows the remarkable similarities between the basic theses of Ibn-
Tumart and Averrées (EI legado...., p.323ss).
132 ‘That is to say, they confused and blurred the two in several manners, which
would prove inadequate for Averrées.
133 The “Latin Averréism” which was present in the schools of art and would
decisively influence the origins of experimental science in Europe, was an exception
to this.
134 Cit. Al-Yabri, Critica de la razon arabe, pp. 157-158. [Tr: my translation.]

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135 Ibid., p.159
136 [Tr: English in original.]
137 Ibid.
138 Ibid., p.160
139 3Existe una filosofia en nuestra América?, Siglo XXI, México, 1969.
140 Translated by George Ciccariello-Maher. This chapter began as a presentation
at the Second Annual Conference of the Caribbean Philosophical Association
(Puerto Rico, 2005) where I was invited by the Association president Lewis Gordon.
Ilater expounded on the subject with some additional content in a speech given at
the 10th Book Fair in Santo Domingo (April 25th 2007), where we also began to
prepare the Fifth Centenary celebration of the first critical-messianic scream in Santo
Domingo—which in 1511 took the form of Walter Benjamin’s Now- Time—against
the injustice of the nascent Modernity, of the colonialism inaugurated not only on
the American Continent but throughout the periphery of the world-system.
141 [Tr: English in original].
142 Recalling that the Chinese had empirically and historically discovered the
printing press centuries earlier.
143 Toulmin, Stephen, 1992, Cosmépolis, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago;
pe 5:
144 Ibid.,p. 9.
145 J. Habermas includes “the discovery of the New World” (Habermas, Juergen,
1989, El discurso filosofico de la Modernidad, Taurus, Buenos Aires; p. 15), but in
following M. Weber’s arguments he is unable to derive any conclusions from this
purely accidental indication.
146 See Dussel, E., 2007, Politica de la Liberacién. Historia mundial y critica, Trotta,
Madrid.
147 Dussel, Enrique, 1995, The Invention of the Americas, Continuum, New York.
and Dussel, E., 1998, Etica de la Liberacién, Trotta, Madrid (Introduction); Dussel,
E., 2001, Hacia una filosofia politica critica, Desclée de Brower, Bilbao (part two);
Dussel, E., 2007, Politica de la Liberacion. Historia mundial y critica, Trotta, Madrid;
etc.
148 See vol. 12 in Hegel, G.W.F, 1970, Werke in zwanzig Bande, Suhrkamp Verlag,
Frankfurt, vol. 1-20.
149 He already puts forth the ideology of “Orientalism”
150 Ibid., vols. 16-17.
151 Ibid., vols. 13-15.
152. [bid., vols. 18-20.
153 This means that for Hegel, the Renaissance is still not a constitutive part of
Modernity. On this point—but for very different reasons—we agree with Hegel
against Giovanni Arrighi, for example. From within his habitually “Eurocentric”
perspective, Hegel indicates that: “Although Wycliffe, Hus and Arnold of Brescia

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had already set themselves apart from the course of Scholastic philosophy [...] it is
with Luther that the movement of the freedom of the spirit originates” (Lectures on
the History of Philosophy, II, 3, C; Hegel, 1970, vol. 20, p.50). If the Atlantic had not
been opened up to Northern Europe, Luther would have been the Wycliffe or the
Hus of the early 16th century without any later significance.
154 He seems not to know that gunpowder, paper, the printing press, the compass,
and many other technical discoveries had been invented centuries earlier by China.
‘This is the infantile Eurocentrism of pure ignorance.
155 As ifthe indigenous Americans were not “humans” who had “discovered” their
own continent many millennia prior, but instead needed to wait for the Europeans
so that “Man” could discover the Americas. Such a vulgar ideologeme is not worthy
ofa renowned philosopher.
156 Op. cit., III, Introduction; Hegel, 1970, vol. 20, p. 62. [Dussel’s translation].
157 Ancient philosophy “reappears,” albeit with differences, without fully
discovering the radical geopolitical turn entailed by Modernity, which is situated
for the first time in a world-system that was completely impossible for Greeks and
Romans.
158 Ibid., p. 68.
159 Ibid., p. 67.
160 Ibid.
161 We should recall the dates, since in his old age he would live into the beginning
of the 17th century, having been born 70 years after the beginning of Columbus’
“invasion” of the Americas, when Bartolomé de las Casas was approaching death (+
1566),
162 Ibid., p. 70.
163 Ibid.
164 Ibid.
165 Ibid., pp. 71-72.
166 Already cited, [bid., p.70.
167 See Gaukroger, Stephen, 1997, Descartes. An intellectual biography, Clarendon
Press, Oxford; Cottingham, John (Ed.), 1995, Descartes, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge (UK).
168 One reads as early as 1538 “of examining the consciousness in that way of the
lines” (Autobiography, 99; Ignacio de Loyola, 1952, Obras completas, BAC, Madrid;
p-109). This refers to a line for each day in a notebook, in which one indicated
the errors committed, counting them by the hour from rising in the morning to
afternoon and night (three times a day). See Exercises, First Week [24] (Ignacio de
Loyola, 1952, p. 162).
169 “Use the daily examination of your consciousness” (Constituciones, II, 1, [261];
Ignacio de Loyola, 1952, p. 430).
170 Ibid., [23], p. 161.

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171 Reglas de San Ignacio, II. Constituciones de los colegios, [53-64]; Ibid., pp.588-
590.
172 And so it is not strange that Sudrez’s crowning work would carry the title
recommended by the Regla de San Ignacio: Disputationes Metaphysicae, and that
Descartes himself would himself pen the Regles sur la direction de lesprit (even
the prase “direction de lesprit” reminds us of the “spiritual directors” of the Jesuit
schools). In the Discours de la Méthode, II y IIL, he continues to speak of “rules”:
“Principales regles de la méthode,’ “Quelques regles de la morale.” Souvenirs of
his youth? (Vide Descartes, René, 1953, Oeuvres et lettres de Descartes, La Pléiade,
Gallimard, Paris. Descartes, R., 1996, Euvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam, P. Tannery,
J. Vrin, Paris, vol. 1-11.).
173 Although ofa Peninsular origin, he arrived in Mexico at 18 and studied all of
his philosophy at the University of Mexico (founded in 1553). It was there that he
wrote the work which as a result bore the name Mexican Logic (with the title even in
Latin). In Mexico he also wrote a Dialectica (later published in 1603 in Alcala), a
Physica (published in Madrid, 1605), a De Anima (Alcala, 1611), and an In de Caelo
et Mundo (Madrid, 1615). Other masters had also studied in the college, like Pedro
de Fonseca from Portugal (professor at Coimbra, as we said above, beginning in
1590).
174 The central texts are found in the 4" part of the Discours (Descartes, 1953,
pp. 147ss), and in the “Second Meditation” in the Méditations touchant la Premiére
Philosophie (Meditationes de prima philosophia, which in its first French version
bore more similarity to Suarez: Méditations métaphysiques).
175 This is an act of “sensibility” for the Stagirite, as equally today for A. Damasio,
who recalls that the cogito is a “feeling” (Damasio, Antonio, 2003, Looking for
Spinoza. Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harcourt Inc.).
176 EN, IX, 9, 1170 to 29-34. This self-consciousness of human acts was called
synaisthesis by the Stoics (J. V. Arnim, Stoicorum veterum Fragmenta, Stuttgart,
1964, vol. 2, pp. 773-911), and tactus interior by Cicero, This is the whole question
of “high self consciousness” (Edelman, G. M., 1992, Bright Air, Brillant Fire. On the
Matter of the Mind, Basic Books, New York.).
177 Damasio, 2003.
178 See also Edelman, 1992.
179 De Trinitate, X, 10, n. 14.
180 Ibid., XV, 12, 21.
181 Gilson, Etienne, 1951, Etudes sur le réle de la pensée Médiévale dans la formation
du systéme cartesien, J. Vrin, Paris; p.191.
182 “Si non esses, falli omnino non posses” (De libero arbitrio Il, 3, n. 7). See the
edition by Ch. Adam-P.L. Tannery, Descartes, 1996, vol. 7, pp. 197ss.
183 Gilson, 1951, p. 201.
184 As early as the Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis, on physics (In octo libros

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Physicorum Aristotelis), we read about the “tres esse abstractiones. ..” (Art.3, Proemio;
Antonii Mariz, Universitatis Typographi, 1592, p. 9): the abstraction of sensible
matter (natural philosophy), the abstraction of intelligible matter (metaphysics),
and the abstraction of all matter (mathematics). This book discusses the original
wisdom “secunum Aegyptios” (Proemium, p. 1), prior to falling into an absolute
Hellenocentrism, since it was the Egyptians who discovered that the intellection of
the universe cannot be reached without “solitudine, atque silentio” (this is the skholé
that Aristotle also attributes to the Egyptians) (Ibid.). Mario Santiago de Carvalho
shows that in this course on physics we already find a modern concept of imaginary
time (which makes us think of Kant): De Carvalho, M., 2007, “Aos hombros de
Aristoteles,” in Sobre o nao-aristotelismo do primeiro curso aristotélico dos Jesuitas de
Coimbra, en Revista filoséfica de Coimbra, (2007), 32, pp. 291-308).
185 Discours, IV; Descartes, 1953, p. 148; Descartes, 1996, vol. 6, p.33. In the 1598
volume of the Commentarii Coll. Conimbrisenses, in Tres libros de Animae, ed. by
Antonii Mariz in Coimbra, we find a Tractatus De Anima Separata, Disp. 1, art. 1
(pp. 442ss), a discussion of the immortality of the soul which could have inspired
Descartes. See the article by Mario S. de Carvalho (De Carvalho, Mario, 2006,
“Intellect et Imagination, en tiré 4 part de Rencontres de Philosophie Médiévale
(Brepols), 11, pp. 119-158) where he notes that, following Pomponazzi y Caetanus,
the Coimbrians proposed: “La singularité de l’ame ... ne tient uniquement a son
indépendance de la matiére, mais aussi au fait d’avoir un activité progre,” which
Descartes would adopt as his paradigm.
186 Gilson, 1951, p. 246.
187 Ibid., p. 250.
188 Santiago Castro-Gémez refers to the disproportionate claim of Cartesian
thought to situate itself beyond any particular perspective the “zero-point hybris”
Like the Renaissance artist who, on tracing the horizon and the vanishing point
in the perspective of all the objects he will paint, does not appear in the painting
himself, but is always “he who looks and constitutes the painting” (this is the inverse
of the “vanishing point”) and passes for the “zero point” of perspective. However,
far from being an uncommitted “point of view,’ it is this point that constitutes all
commitments. M. Weber—with his claim to represent an objective, “value-free”
viewpoint—is the best example of this impossible pretension of the “zero-point”
The ego cogito inaugurates this pretension within Modernity. (Santiago Castro-
Gomez, 2005, La Hybris del Punto Cero: Ciencia, raza, e ilustracion en la Nueva
Granada, Editorial Pontifica Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia.).
189 And of which what we have deemed the “developmentalist fallacy” consists, in
the belief that Europe is more “developed”—as in the “development” [Entwicklung]
of the concept for Hegel—than other cultures (See Apel, K.-O. y Dussel, E., 2005,
Etica del discurso y ética de la liberacién, Trotta, Madrid, p.107; Dussel, Enrique,
1995, The Invention of the Americas, Continuum, New York).

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190 The Antillean Tainos did not pronounce the “r? and so “Caribe” and “cannibal”
was the same.
191 “Of Cannibals, in Montaigne, M. de, 1967, Oeuvres complétes, Gallimard-
Pléiade, Paris, p. 208. Montaigne knew very well that if we situate ourselves from
the perspective of these “so-called” barbarians, the Europeans deserved to be called
“savage” on their part for the irrational and brutal acts that they committed against
these people.
192 Ginés de Septlveda, 1967, Tratado sobre las Justicas causas de la Guerra contra
los indios, FCE, México, 1967, p.85.
193. Ibid., p. 87.
194 Aristotle, Politica I, 1; 1253 a 19-20.
195 Ginés, 1967, p. 117.
196 Ahead of J. Locke or Hegel, he understands “private property” as a precondition
for humanity.
197 Ibid., pp. 110-111.
198 Ibid. On one of Pope John Paul II’s trips to Latin America, an indigenous
person from Ecuador presented him with a Bible as a gesture of returning to him
the religion that they had claimed to teach the Indians and asked of the Pope that he
return the wealth that had been extracted from the West Indies.
199 Mayor, 1510, dist. XLIV, q. II.
200 Recopilacién, 1943, vol. 1, p. 1.
201 Ginés, 1967, p.155.
202 The Jesuits would quickly come to enjoy a near-monopoly on philosophical
education in Catholic Europe, because Protestantism tended to grant greater
importance exclusively to theology.
203 See, Ferrater y Mora, José, 1963, “Sudrez et la philosophie moderne’, en Revue
de Métaphysique et de Morale, 13 (2), pp. 155-248. Second Scholasticism in its most
traditional sense begins with Juan de Santo Tomas and his Cursus philosophicum
(1648), which at any rate still enjoyed an exceptional degree of clarity and depth, but
which would decline with the passing decades.
204 We have consulted the Commentariorum Petri Fonsecae in libro Metaphysicorum
Aristotelis, edited by Franciscum Zanettum, Rome, 1577, with Greek text and Latin
translation, as well as simultaneous commentary.
205 See Pereira, Miguel B., 1967, Pedro da Fonseca. O Método da Filosofia,
Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra., pp. 280ss.
206 In Coimbra we were able to consult the Institutionum Dialecticarum, Libri
Octo, published by Iannis Blavii, 1564. See the 1964 edition by Joaquim Ferreria
Gomes under the title Instituigdes Dialécticas, Universidad de Coimbra, Coimbra.
It begins: “Hanc artem, qui primi invenerunt Dialecticam nominarunt, postrea
veteres Peripatetici Logicam appellaverunt” (cap. 1; p. 1).
207 Pereira, 1967, p. 340.
208 We have consulted the Metaphysicarum disputationem, published by
Koannem et Andream Renaut, Salamanca, 1597, whose vol.1 includes the first 27
Disputationem, and vol. 2 the rest up to 54. (Suarez, Francisco, 1597, Metaphysicarum
disputationem, ed. loannem et Andream Renaut, Salamanca, vol. 1-2.) The question
of “Infinite Being” and “finite being” is discussed beginning in Disp. 28, sect. 2, vol.
2, pp. 6 ss., from the “opinio Scoti expenditur” (which is perfectly coherent, since it
was Duns Scotus who posed the question of the absolute in this way). The problem
of the “analogy” is dealt with in sect. 3. To Suarez’s Dialectic we should add his
Philosophical Isagoge, published in 1591 (with a critical reprint by Joaquin Ferreria
Gomez published in 1965, University of Coimbra), which also saw 18 editions by
1623.
209 See Bueno, 2005, p.328.
210 B. de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, II], 4; Las Casas, 1957, vol. 2, p.l76.
211 Ibid.
212 Montesinos asks: “Do you not feel it?” (Ibid.). The pages that follow from the
History of the Indies deserve a thoughtful reading (pp. 177ss). This was a moment
at which Modernity could have changed its course. It failed to do so and its route
was inflexibly fixed until the 21" century. The astonishment of the conquistadors
that their every action was unjust and morally-lacking was such that they could
not believe it. The discussion was lengthy. The Dominicans had the philosophical
arguments; the colonizers their unjust and tyrannical habits. In the end, the latter
prevailed permanently, and it was on their basis that Modern European Philosophy
was established. From the 17" century on the right of the modern Europeans (and
North Americans of the 20 century) to conquer the Planet would never again be
discussed.
213 See my comments in Dussel, 2007b, II, 5; pp.179-193.
214 B. de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, Il, cap. 79; Las Casas, 1957, vol. 2, pp.
356. In Las Casas, B. de, 1957, Obras escogidas, BAE, Madrid, vol. 1-5.
215 Ibid., p. 357
216 Bartolomé, Apologética historia, proemio; Las Casas, 1957, vol. 3, pp. 3-4.
217 Brevisima relacién de la destruccién de las Indias; Las Casas, 1957, vol. 5,
p.136.
218 Note that Bartolomé is describing the “master-slave dialectic.” He demonstrates,
moreover, that the “pacification” of the Indies would only be possible “after all those
who would be able to yearn or long for or think of liberty had died.” Bartolomé has
a clearly anticipated vision of the violence of colonialism.
219 Brevisima relacion; p. 137.
220 Descartes bases modern ontology on the abstract and solipsistic ego cogito.
Bartolomé, on the other hand, bases the ethical-political critique of that ontology
on the responsibility to the Other, to whom arguments are due to demonstrate the
truth-claim itself. This is a paradigm founded upon Alterity.

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221 Which come to 478 pages in the Mexican edition of 1942.
222 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 1942, Del unico modo de atraer a todos los pueblos a
la verdadera religion, FCE, México, p. 81.
223 Ibid., p. 82. Also Del tinico modo..., ch. 5, 3.
224 Ibid., 5; p.94.
225 Ibid., 32; pp. 303-304.
226 See this question in my Dussel, 1983, Praxis latinoamericana y filosofia de la
liberacion, Nueva America, Bogota.
227 In Descartes or Husserl the ego cogitum constructs the Other (in this colonial
case) as a cogitatum, but the ego conquiro had already constituted this Other as a
“conquered” (dominatum). In Latin, conquiro means: to seek out with diligence,
investigate with care, and to gather. As a result, the conquisitum is that which is
diligently sought. But during the Spanish Reconquest against the Muslims, the word
came to mean to dominate, subjugate, to go out and recover territories for Christians.
Itis in this new sense that we now want to deploy the term ontologically.
228 Ibid., ch. 5, 1; p.65.
229 Las Casas, B. de, 1989, Apologia, Alianza, Madrid., p. 168.
230 If we apply such a clear doctrine to the conquest of New England, and from
there forward up to the current war in Iraq, we can see that patriots who defend
their land are justified in doing so on the basis of the argument offered by Las Casas.
See Dussel, E., 2007, Politica de la Liberacién. Historia mundial y critica, Trotta,
Madrid, p. 299.
231 Las Casas, B. de, 1989, Apologia, Alianza, Madrid, pp. 155-156, 157 y 160.
232 “Letter to the Guatemalan Dominicans” in 1563; Las Casas, B. de, 1957, Obras
escogidas, BAE, Madrid, vol. 1-5, vol. 5, p. 471.
233 De regia potestate, § 8; Las Casas, B. de, 1969, De regia Potestate, CSIC, Madrid,
pp. 47 y 49.
234 See Dussel, E., 2007, Politica de la Liberacion. Historia mundialy critica, Trotta,
Madrid, § 10.3; pp. 380ss.
235 Tratado de las doce dudas, first principle; Las Casas, 1957, vol. 5, p. 492.
236 Las Casas, B. de, 1954, De Thesauris, CSIC, Madrid, p. 101.
237 De Thesauris, p. 218.
238 Beginning on March 15" 1571; Coleccion de documentos inéditos para la historia
de Esparia, 1842, t.13, pp. 425-469.
239 See Wachtel, Nathan, 1971, La vision des vaincus, Gallimard, Paris, pp. 134ss:
“La destructuracion.” The author shows (in the figure on p. 184) that in Incan times,
the ayllu (basic community) paid tributes in work and products to the curacas
(caciques, or chiefs) and to the Inca; the curaca paid tribute to the Inca and provided
services to the ayllu; the Inca provided services to both the curaca and the ayllu. In
the Inca Empire, the wealth remained within a closed circuit. After the conquest, the
ayllu paid tributes in silver—and one had to sell themselves for a wage to get it—to

289
the curaca and to the Spaniard; the curaca paid tribute to the Spaniard and services
to the ayllu; but the Spaniard provided no service to either the ayllu or the curaca.
Moreover, the wealth of the Spaniard leaves the Peruvian circuit and sets out for
Europe. Such a process of colonial extraction of wealth is 500 years old, this being
what the now-globalized colonial system consists of, changing mechanisms but not
its deeper significance as a transfer of “labor-value””
240 See Rolena Adorno, “La redaccién y enmendacién del autégrafo..., en Guaman,
1980, vol. 1. pp. xxxii ss.
241 See G, Gutiérrez, 1992, pp. 616ss; Subirats, 1994, pp. 141ss; Wachtel, 1971, pp.
245ss, etc.
242 In general, we will leave the originary orthography of Gauman’s Castelian (in
order to give a taste of its linguistic singularity), although in some cases we will
update it in order to make the reading easier. He re-appears a question: should the
English translations keep the originary forms, e.g. “Yndians”?
243 El Primer nueva Corénica, 912 [926]; Guaman Poma, 1980, vol.3, p. 854.
244 There are, of course, exceptions: “Consider as wise [...] those holy doctors
illuminated by the Holy Spirit |...] like brother Luys de Granada [...| like reverend
brother Domingo [de Santo Tomas...) many holy doctors and graduates, masters,
bachelors [...] Others [in contrast] who have not even begun to write the letters a, b,
c, want to call themselves graduates, dimwit, and fraud, and sign as “don Beviendo
y dona Calabaza; (Mr. Drinker and Mrs. Pumpkin head) he writes with profound
humor, irony, and sarcasm (Ibid., p. 855).
245 In the emancipation process of the late 18th and early 19th centuries (as in
the case of Brother Servando de Mier in Mexico), not owing “even Christianity” to
the Spanish allowed him to deny other benefits that they might have brought to the
Americas alongside the conquest and colonial administration.
246 Among Incas, no one was supposed to look at the sun (Inti), not even the
Inca.
247 El Primer Nueva Corénica, 902-903 [916-917]; vol. 2, pp. 845-846. Author's
translation. See also Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and
Good Government. Tr. David Frye (Indiana: Hacket University Press, 2006). Also
see The Guaman Poma Website: http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/info/en/
frontpage.htm
248 Ibid., 22 (22]; vol. 1, p. 16.
249 Ibid., s.n. [28]; p. 23.
250 Ibid., 30 [30]; p. 25.
251 Ibid., 42 [42], p. 35.
252 Ibid., 45 [46]; p. 39.
253 Ibid., 48 [48]; pp. 41ss.
254 Guaman, who probably belonged toa pre-Incan provincial aristocracy, idealizes
the times prior to the Incas, characterizing the latter as “idolaters.” Perhaps in this

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way, he is able to refute the argument of Francisco de Toledo, the Viceroy, accepting
certain critiques of the Incas, but not of the culture of Tawantinsuyo asa totality.
255 Ibid., 79 [79]; pp. 63ss.
256 Ibid., 90 [90]; p.70. “He was born in the time and reign of Cinche Roca Ynga
when he was eighty years old. And in the time of Cinche Roca Ynga, he suffered
martyrdom and was crucified” (Ibid.). ‘The birth of Jesus Christ initiated the “fifth
age” of the European-Christian chronology, but this was now connected with
the Incan “fifth age” at the stage of the second Inca. As the New Testament story
indicates: in the time of “Emperor Tiberius...” (Luke, 3,1). Guaman Poma is speaking
metaphorically: “In the time of emperor Cinche Roca Ynga..””
257 Ibid., 93 [93]; p.72. This period saw great cataclysms, and it is this reason that
the epoch is referred as the era of the pachacuti (the transformer of the earth) or
pacha ticra (the one that turns it on its head) (Ibid., 95 [95]; p.74).
258 See Mignolo, 1995, The Dark Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Terrotoriality,
and Colonization, Michigan University Press, p. 5; Mignolo 2000, Local Histories
Global Designs, Princeton University Press, pp. 51ss.
259 El Primer Nueva Corénica., 120 [120]; p. 99.
260 Ibid., 145 [146]; p. 122.
261 Ibid., 174 [176]; p. 154. There are lists of other “queens” of every region of the
Empire.
262 Ibid., 182 [184]; pp.159-167. These even include the order: “We order that the
lazy and dirty pigs be punished with that the filth of their farm or home or the plates
they eat on or from their head or hands or feet be washed and given to them to drink
by force in a mate, as punishment in all the realm” ({bid., 189 [191]; p. 164). Hygiene
and cleanliness were as important as the triple commandment of: “Do not lie; do
not stop working; do not steal!”
263 Ibid ., 194 [196]; pp. 169ss. Of warriors from 33 years of age on (although
these existed from 25 to 50 years old); “of the walking elderly” (from 60 years);
from 80 years; of the sick and crippled; 18-year-old youths; 12-year-olds; 9-year-
olds; 4-year-olds; children who crawl; one-month-old child. Each age had its rights
to begin with, and thereafter also its obligations.
264 Michel Foucault would have found this Incan institution interesting.
265 Ibid., 201 [203]; p. 177. Similarly, “sick, lame, and blind women, widows,
hunchbacked women and midgets, had lands and crops and homes and pastures,
that sustained and fed them, and so had no need for alms” (Ibid., 222 [224]; p.
197).
266 Ibid., 215 [217]; pp. 190ss.
267 Ibid., 244 [246]; pp. 219ss. At the end of the work there is a very valuable
description of the “works” properly speaking of peasants (campesinos) (Ibid., 1130
[1140]; vol. 3, pp. 1027), where Guaman corrects a bit his first description “from
above,” from the Incan festivals.

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268 ‘These were certainly human sacrifices, some of “five-year-old children” (Ibid.,
267 [269]; vol. 1, p. 241), others of twelve-year-olds or adults.
269 Ibid., 299 [301]; pp. 272ss.
270 Ibid., 301 [303]; pp. 275ss.
271 Ibid., 315 [317]; pp. 288ss.
272 Of which this work has left testimonies which are not found in any other
Quechua source (Ibid., 317 [319]; pp. 288ss).
273 Ibid., 340 [341]; pp. 312ss.
274 | recall in my youth climbing mountains of some 6500 meters in height in
Uspallata, in a long valley, and soon we crossed a path that was absolutely straight,
to the horizon (perhaps some 30 kilometers), We were told: this is the Incan Road,
some 4,000 kilometers from Cuzco. In effect, as Guaman says: “With every league
and a half marked with milestones, each road four rods in width and with a straight
line of stones placed on both sides, which no kings on earth have made like the Inca”
(Ibid., 355 [357]; p.327). I have seen in the Mediterranean the stone roads of the
Roman Empire, from the north of Africa to Palestine, Italy, and Spain. None was as
“straight” as that of the Incas.
275 Ibid., 361 [363]; pp. 332-333, where we can see a sketch of this predecessor of
the modern abacus.
276 By this he means: one can already see in the customs of the Incas all the beauty
and value of the best of the modern Christian ethic, which they preach... but do not
obey.
277 This is the reproach of a “Christian” Indian.
278 Ibid., 367 [369]; p. 339.
279 Ibid., 369 [371]; vol. 2, p. 342.
280 Ibid.
281 Ibid. This “depopulation” owed to the violence of the conquest, the loss of
strucrues of the Incan agricultural system (e.g., the Incas maintained the aqueducts,
up to 400 kilometers in length, in perfect conditions, amid mountains, with stone
bridges, etc.; the European colonial world allowed the destruction of the entire
hydraulic system, constructed over more tan 1,000 years); and especially illnesses
unknown to the indigenous race.
282 Ibid., 374 [376]; p. 347.
283 Ibid., 389 [391]; p. 361.
284 Ibid., 437 [439]; p. 405.
285 Ibid., 446 [448]; p. 413.
286 Note the irony: Bartolomé de Las Casas also said, “they call themselves
Christians,” the same that Guaman says here. “Christians from the mouth outward?
but true “demons from the mouth inward, as with George W. Bush’s proposal to
spread “democracy” to Iraq. Modernity is always identical to itself.
287 El Primer Nueva Corénica., 485 [489]; p. 453.

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288 Guamian is particularly scornful of “mestizos” whom he deems “mesticillos”
(Tr: “little mestizos”].
289 Ibid., 504 [508]; p. 468. One of Guaman’s obsessions is that “the Indians of
this kingdom will cease to exist first” (/bid., 520 [524]; p. 483), since the female
Indians are snatched away from their natural partners. Among the miners, the
Spanish take “the women of the Indians [... by] force and take them away [from
their husband] and deflower them, and they rape the women of their foremen,
sending their husbands to the mines at night or sending them far away” (Ibid., 526
[530]; p. 489). By the way, the suffering of the Indians in the mines, in the tambos,
would be unimaginable (see pp. 488-505). He further characterizes the Spanish men
and women as short, fat, lazy, arrogant, and sadistic in their treatment of domestic
Indians (pp.506-515): “Before you are against the poor of Jesus Christ” (Ibid., 543
[547]; p. 515).
290. Ibid., 548 [562]; p. 519ss.
291 Ibid., 552 [566]; p. 523. “And similarly with the women, because they tame
them and save them for themselves [taxes and personal services] [...] And they
fornicate with the maidens and widows” (Ibid., 556 [570]; p. 526).
292 Ibid., 561 [575]; p.533ss. “The Indian women become whores and nothing can
be done. And so they don’t want to marry because they are following the priest or the
Spaniard. And so the Indians of this kingdom do not reproduce, but instead mestizos
and mestizas and nothing can be done” (Ibid., 565 [579]; p. 534). The critique of
the Church and the clerics reaches p. 663 (702 [716]), being one of the institutions
that he specifically focuses on. In a sense, it is only the Franciscans and especially
the Fathers of the Company of Jesus who come off well. This demonstrates a long-
term hypothesis in the ideological history of Latin America. See 635 [647]; p. 603ss,
and something earlier on 479 [483]; p. 447: “If only the clerics and Dominicans,
Mercedarians, and Augustinians were like these so-called fathers of the Company
of Jesus, who do not desire to return to Castile rich nor to have a hacienda, but for
whom wealth is measured in souls!”
293. Ibid., 712 [726]; pp. 670-687.
294 Ibid., 738 [752]; pp. 688ss.
295 Ibid., 791 [805]; p. 736. Guaman belonged to a family of Yarovilcas, local
bosses who predated the Incas (see Ibid., 1030 [1038]; vol. 3. p. 949). Fake curacas,
collaborators with the Spanish, had forced them off their lands. It is for this reason
that Guaman despised these “little bosses,” curacas who were not nobles but “faked
it? On his mother’s side, he might have been linked to a secondary Incan lineage.
296 Ibid., 757 [771]; vol. 2, p. 707ss.
297 Ibid., 792 [806]; pp. 739ss.
298 Ibid., 820 [834]; p. 764.
299 Ibid., 845 [859]; p. 791.
300 Ibid., 857 [871]; p. 803.

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301 Ibid., 863 [877]; p. 809.
302 Ibid., 884 [898]; p. 830
303 Ibid., 902 [916]; p. 845.
304 There still exists, it would seem, a double-past. There is that of the Inca, which
is frequently adopted as a reference-point. But at times we can sense a degree of
criticism of Incan domination from the perspective of those regions further from
Cuzco (to which Guaman himself belonged), and this is why we read: “The fourth
Auca Runa, were people of little knowledge but were not idolaters. And the Spanish
were of little knowledge but were from the beginning idolatrous gentiles, as were the
Indians from the time of the Inca” (Ibid., 911 [925]; vol. 3, p. 854). It would seem
that, for Guaman, the greatest development of civilization involved idolatry, which
was not the case for the more simple peoples lacking in mutual domination, as were
the civilizations prior to the Incan Empire. “The ancient Indians up to the fourth
age of the world called the Auca Runa looked to heaven [...] The Indians of the time
of the Incas were idolatrous like the gentiles and worshipped the sun-father of the
Inca” (Ibid., 912 [926]; p. 854).
305 Ibid., 938 [952]; p. 88. He writes: “The city of God and of poor men that kept
their word.” Into this city, very few Spanish—but all the poor Indians, the “poor of
Jesus Christ” —entered.
306 Interestingly, he uses the historico-political categories of Augustine of Hippo.
See Dussel, 2007, [44-45].
307 El Primer Nueva Corénica., 941 [955]; p. 882. Our author comments:
“Consider the patience of the Indian men and women in this life of so many evils
of the Spanish, the priests, the magistrates and mestizos and mulattos, the blacks,
the blacks, the yanaconas and chinchonas who take the lives and the entrails of the
Indians. Consider this.”
308 This is the title of the final “Table” (Ibid., s.n. [1186]; vol. 3, p. 1067). This
subject is discussed beginning at Ibid., 909 [924]; vol.3, p. 852.
309 From Ibid., 960 [974]; p. 896.
310 Ibid., 911 [925]; p. 852.
311 Once again there is reference to a “law” prior to the Incas: “How the first
Indians, although the Incas were idolaters, had faith and commandments from their
gods and law and maintained and obeyed this good work” (Ibid., 914 [928]; p. 857).
Guaman even criticized the Incas from the perspective of these original utopian
times, since he himself was not from an Inca family, but rather a nobility dominated
by the Incas.
312 Ibid., 936 [950]; p. 876.
313 Ibid., 962c [979]; p. 899.
314 Ibid., 972 [990]; p. 906.
315 Ibid., 914 [928]; p. 857.
316 Ibid.

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317 Ibid., 915 [929]; pp. 857-858.
318 See Lockhart, 1992, pp. 14ss: “Altepetl? On the “dual” organization in “four”
regions of the Inca Empire and the culture of the high plateau more generally, see
Parssinen, 1992, pp. 171ss: “Principles of the Dual and Quaternary Structures.”
319 “You must consider what great majesty the Yuga Topa Inga Yupanqui, King of
Peru, enjoyed [... like that enjoyed by] the kings and princes, emperors of the world,
as well as Christians like the Great Turk and the Chinese King, Roman emperors
and of all Christianity and of the Jews and the King of Guinea” (Ibid., 948 [962); p.
888). The Inca was a king on the same level of those described by other cultures,
and moreover, the “Inca had four kings of the four parts of this kingdom” (Ibid.).
Our author now proposes a new project: “For being monarch, King Felipe [below
whom there would be four lesser kings:] To the first, I offer my child, a prince of this
kingdom, grandson and great-grandson of Topa Ingd Yupangi [here reproducing a
bit the project of Torquemada’s The Indian Monarchy...]. The second, a prince of
the King of Guinea, black; the third, of the King of the Christians in Rome [...];
the fourth, the King of the Moors of the Great Turk, the four crowned with their
scepters and fleece” (Ibid., 949 [963]; p. 889).
320 Ibid., 949 [963]; p. 889.
321 Ibid., 916 [930]; p. 858.
322. Ibid., 957 [971]; p. 893.
323 Ibid., 962 [976]; p. 896. “Tell me author, how is it that the Indians now do not
multiply and become poor? I will tell your Majesty: Firstly, that they do not multiply
because all the best women and maidens are taken by the priests, the encomenderos,
the magistrates and Spanish, the foremen, lieutenants, and the officials raised
by them. And as a result there are so many little mestizos and little mestizas in
this kingdom. With the pain of disclosing to you they steal the women from the
haciendas of the poor [... The Indian] would rather die than find himself in such
pain” (Ibid., pp. 897-898).
324 Ibid., 963 [977]; p. 898.
325. Ibid., 966 [984]; p. 902.
326 Marx’s text to which we refer says the following: “To the [Lutheran German]
State which professes Christianity as its supreme norm, which professes the Bible
as its Magna Carta, we must contrast the Words of the Sacred Scripture which, as
such Scripture, is sacred even to the letter [for Lutherans]. This State [...] falls into
painful contradiction, irreducible on the plane of religious consciousness, when
confronted by those evangelical maxims which not only does it not obey, but which
it cannot obey” (On the Jewish Question, I; Marx, Karl, 1956, Marx Engels Werke
(MEW), Dietz Verlag, Berlin, vol. 1, pp. 359-360). See Dussel, 1993, pp. 133ss.
327 Ibid., 1094 [1104]; p. 1008.
328 In the second part of my work Dussel, 1965, I have attempted to glimpse the
perspective of the Other of the process of invasion and conquest, the origin of the

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 violent praxis of Modernity.
329 Aclose reading of this V Meditation would be worthwhile, on the “Description
of the transcendental sphere of the being as monological intersubjectivity” ($9 42ss,
of Husserl, Edmund, 1963, Cartesianische Meditationen, Martinus Nijhoff, Haag,
pp. 121ss), in which the philosopher from Freiburg attempt to move beyond the ego
cogito, when he deals with the question “of the Other” from the perspective of the
“common life-world” (der gemeisamen Lebenswelt) (§ 58, p. 162), setting out from the
need to “admit that it is in me that the others as others are constituted” (§ 56, p. 156).
For his part, Sartre will not be able to completely overcome the aporia represented
by “the gaze” (Le regard) (Sartre, L ‘étre et le neant, III, 1, iv; 1943, Gallimard, Paris,
pp. 310ss), through which “the Other” is constituted as an irremediable object. The
Other, for its part, similarly constitutes me as an object: “La personne est présente 4
la conscience en tant qu ‘elle est objet pour autrui” (Ibid., p. 318).
330 Translated by Michael Barber and Judd Seth Wright, with assistance from Kepa
Zubizarreta.
331 This article continues the thematic initiated in my works: “Sensibility and
Otherness in Emmanuel Lévinas,’ in: Philosophy Today (Chicago), Vol. 43: 2 (1999),
pp. 126-134; “Lo politico en Lévinas (Hacia una filosofia politica critica)”, in: Moisés
Barroso-David Pérez, Un libro de huellas. Aproximaciones al pensamiento de
Emmanuel Lévinas, Editorial Trotta, Madrid, 2004, pp. 271-293, and “Deconstruction
of the concept of Tolerance: from intolerance to solidarity”, in Constellations (Oxford),
Vol. 11, No. 3, September (2004), pp. 326-333.
332 Trans. R. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 149.
The translator writes: “said” and “say,” but in German it is “rief” and “ruf” which
means “to shout.” The Nietzschean text possesses a dramatism that Hollingdale’s
translation diminishes. J. Derrida retains this meaning in the French (“sécriait;”
“sécrie”; see J. Derrida, Politiques de lamitié, Galilée, Paris, 1994, pp. 45 and 68).
333 Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, § 376 (Nietzsche, 1973,
Werke in Zwei Biinde, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1973, vol. 1,
p. 404).
334 Nietzsche, Wille zur Macht, § 704; Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke, Musarion,
Miinchen, 1922, vol. 19, p. 151; Spanish ed., Obras completas, Aguilar, Buenos Aires,
1965, vol. 4, p. 268.
335 Trans. G. Collins, Verso, London, 1997.
336 See Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of what happens. Body and Emotion in the
Making of Consciousness, A Harvest Book, New York, 1999; and by the same author,
Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain, Harcourt Books, Orlando
(Florida), 2003.
337 On the material aspect (concerning content, Inhalt in German) of ethics see E.
Dussel, Etica de la Liberacién, Trotta, Madrid, 1998, chs. 1 and 4. On the material
aspect of politics see my upcoming work, Politica de la Liberacién, §§ 21, 26 (vol. 2),

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 33 and 42 (vol. 3).
338 “Shout I, the living fool” [a.2]. As will be seen later in my interpretation, being
“a fool” means a wisdom that is more than mere “ontological knowledge,” and that
criticizes that same ontology, but in the case of Nietzsche this critic is like a pre-
ontological critic still making ontological reference to that which returns in the
remote originary, Hellenistic past, whereas that which we propose amounts to a
trans-ontological limit in reference to exteriority or alterity, which is the proposal
indicated by Paul of Tarsus: “madness for the world” (a personage of “fashion,” given
the works of S. Zizek, A. Badiou, M. Henry, G. Agamben, F. Hinkelammert and
others in actual political philosophy, and as we will treat him in § 3 of this article).
I think that the Nietzschean text that we are analyzing is “beyond” his capacity of
interpretation, because I think that that which he announces with genius not even
he himself can resolve,
339 Derrida, 1997, Eng. ed., p. viii.
340 Op. cit., Eng. ed., p. ix.
341 Ibid., Eng. ed., p. ix.
342. In this article the concept of “metaphysics” has two completely different senses:
first, in its traditional sense and so as Nietzsche here uses it (it is “metaphysics” in
a sense that is otic and innocent of a-critical realism); second, in the sense that
E. Levinas uses it (where ontology is the order of Totality and metaphysics is of
the order of Exteriority), which is metaphysics as trans-ontology: meta-physics.
See Dussel, Filosofia de la Liberacién, USTA, Bogota, 1980, 2.4.9: “Ontologia y
metafisica.”
343 Derrida, 1997, Eng. ed., p. 34.
344 Ibid., Eng. ed., p. 39.
345 Ibid., Eng. ed., pp. 83ff. Derrida will produce the work central to this question
of C. Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, Dunker und Humblot, Berlin, 1993.
346 It is the text of the gospel of Matthew, 5:44: “Love your enemies.”
347 Derrida, op. cit., Eng. ed., p. 123.
348 See chapter 1 of my Etica de la Liberacién, Trotta, Madrid, 1998; and chapter 1
of the second part of my Politica de la Liberacién, forthcoming.
349 Ibid., Eng. ed., p. 123.
350 For our part we distinguish between power or the “power of the political
community in itself? the undetermined plurality of wills unified for fraternity and
discursive consensus, in fulfillment of the possibilities determined by feasibility.
This power is determined institutionally as authority (all the political institutions),
as a delegated exercise of power, from the institutions of civil society to the political
society or the State, in the Gramscian sense. See this theme in my Politica de la
Liberacion, vol. 2, § 14. Power can be exercised as when “those who order order
obeying” (of the Zapatista National Liberation Front of Chiapas). In this case power
is an exercise with a “political pretension of justice” When “those who order order

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ordering” against power, they weaken the power from below for the sake of being
able to exercise a despotic power from above (it is the corruption of political power
as such).
351 Ibid., Eng. ed., p. 124.
352 C., Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, Dunker und Humblot, Berlin, 1993, p.
35 (Spanish translation El concepto de lo politico, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1998, p.
65).
353 “Justice says respect for the Other”
354 The famous work of A. MacIntyre, in the debate about the formalist, analytical,
or liberal morality of a North American communitarianism that tries to show the
importance of the material (in a restricted sense; see Dussel, 1998, § 1.3), effects that
history in the evolution of Anglo-Saxon thought: “So the Aristotelian account of
Justice and of practical rationality emerges from the conflicts of the ancient polis, but
is then developed by Aquinas in a way which escapes the limitations of the polis. So
the Augustinian version of Christianity entered in the medieval period into complex
relationships of antagonism, later of synthesis, and then of continuing antagonism to
Aristotelianism. So in quite different later cultural context Augustinian Christianity,
now ina Calvinist form, and Aristotelianism, now in a Renaissance version, entered
into a new symbiosis in seventeenth-century Scotland, so engendering a tradition
which at its climax of achievement was subverted from within by Hume. And so
finally modern liberalism, born of antagonism to all tradition, has transformed
itself gradually into what is now clearly recognizable even by some of its adherents
as one more tradition” (MacIntyre, 1988, p. 10).
355 K. Marx, Grundrisse, notebook M, Eng. trans. Vintage Books, New York, 1973,
p. 91. “In alimentation, for example, one form of consumption, the human being
produces his own corporeality (Leib)” (Ibid.). The English translator confounds “to
create” with “to produce’, “object” with “thing”, “objectivation” with “reification” (for
this reason I have corrected the defective translation).
356 All of these are themes of our forthcoming Politica de la Liberacién.
357 See G. Agamben, Stato di eccezione, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2003.
358 See the work of C. Schmitt, Théorie du Partisan, in La Notion du Politique,
Flammarion, Paris, 1992, pp. 203-320. Although Schmitt and Derrida take
revolutionaries as examples, they are not concerned however with the heroes of the
colonial periphery in their wars for Emancipation (like G. Washington in the U.S.A,
M. Hidalgo in Mexico, or S. Bolivar in Venezuela~-Columbia). These examples give
more clarity for understanding the “war of resistance” of the Sunni patriots against
the “North American invasion” in Iraq, today in 2005.
359 Now it would still be necessary to make a distinction between “revolutionary
war” or “emancipatory war” (progressive, democratic) and (fundamentalist)
“terrorism,” before the newness of a global “revolutionary war” (with differing
interpretations).

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360 Derrida, 1994, French ed., p. 174; 1997, Eng. ed., p. 151.
361 Ibid., Eng. ed., p. 164. That of “biblical” would have to be expressed simply in
“Semitic” (on the contrary a confrontation between theology and philosophy has
to appear), already that is an opposition between two culturally distinct experiences
and which claim equal rights to be analyzed heremenutically by philosophy.
362. Ibid., French ed., p. 190; Eng. ed., p. 165.
363 Cited in the work of C. Schmitt, Ex captivitate salus, Editorial Struhart, Buenos
Aires, s.f., p. 85.
364 Cites Derrida, French ed., p. 190; Eng. ed., p. 165. The “final judgment” of
Maat, as we have already indicated, is an Egyptian theme that precedes the Hebrew
references by nearly twenty centuries.
365 Cited in Derrida, French ed., p. 317; Eng. ed., p. 285. He cites from the gospel
of Matthew 5:43 (and Luke 6:26). This text is already cited in the work of Schmitt, El
concepto de lo politico.
366 Derrida, 1997, Eng, ed., p. 51.
367 Ibid., Eng. ed., p. 84.
368 Fragment 53 (Hermann Diels (ed.), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,
Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchandlung, Berlin, 1964, vol. 1, p. 162.
369 Because “[terrestrial] life is the death of each one [...] Our life comes to us for
death” (Heraclitus, fragment 77, Diels, Ibid., vol. 1, p. 168).
370 In Nietzsche one can intra-ontologically understand the negation of a certain
enmity, that of the “strong,” which supports the domination of the “weak” (the
Judeo-Christian ascetics, the Semites). This is done in such a way that when the
“strong” (the Arian, the warrior, the “originary Greek”) undertake to annihilate the
prevailing values, which means an inversion or a constitution of the past vices of
the “weak” as if they were positive values, the strong affirm themselves as friends
to the “strong,” which means the enemies of the system (of the “weak”). But the
negation of this enmity is effected as the affirmation of “the Same,’ of the foundation,
of the being-past of the ancient system. The Modern Western world (of the “weak”)
contradictorily calls itself a Greco-Roman inheritance: Nietzsche, by affirming
originary Hellenicity against Judeo-Christian decadence, does not leave the realm
of ontology. It is not a matter of a solidarity with the “strong,” now oppressed and
needing to be affirmed anew (nor is it a matter of fraternity: the “strong” do not need
that decadent friendship). It is sufficient to have hate or enmity for the “weak” who
now masochistically and ascetically dominate against the Life of the “healthy” and
“strong” (it is a vitalism of the right, reactionary, pre-fascist).
371 For Nietzsche that text manifests that “cowardly humility” of the “weak” that
is not able to confront with pride the enemy as an enemy to be conquered. It is an
operation of “weakness” before “power”, which does not attack it from the front but
by a detour to situate itself in its back, to eliminate it by betrayal.
372 See Diagram 1.

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373 Matthew 5:43.
374 After making the critique of enmity within the people of Israel, the critique of
enmity against those outside of the people will appear. The gofm (non-Jews: Roman
pagans, for example) will be invited to form part of the “new people.’ It would
be negation-overcoming (subsumption) of “absolute enmity,” in a new universal
fraternity postulated for example, in Kant’s Perpetual Peace (every postulate affirms
a logical possibility and an empirical impossibility) for all hamanity (beginning with
the Roman Empire in the case of primitive Christianity). The empirical possibility of
the postulate is not found now within the horizon of politics nor of philosophy; it is
within an horizon of hope proper to the mythical-religious narrative -as studied by
Ernst Bloch in Das Prinzip Hoffnung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1970, vol. 1-3.
375 See my work El humanismo semita, Eudeba, Buenos Aires, 1969; Filosofia de
la Liberacién, USTA, Bogota, 1980, 2.4: “Exterioridad” (consult this and other of
my works by internet w: acso.org, virtual library, reading room); and Etica dela
Liberacion, 1998, already cited, chapters 4-6.
376 Song of Songs 1:2.
377 The so-called “biblical” or “religious” element ofa text, within the Jacobinism of
Modern European thought, discredits texts that are “symbolic-narrative” and those
on which the philosopher, as a philosopher, can affect a philosophical hermeneutic.
Hesiod’s Theogony is just as much a symbolic narrative as the Exodus of the Jewish
narrative tradition. As one may see both can be an object of a philosophical
hermeneutic. These texts are not philosophical for their contents, but for the mode
of reading them. I would thus like to free myself from the contemptuous epithet
that my analysis is “theological” because it takes for its analysis these “symbolic-
narrative” texts.
378 This “tale? which teaches by inventing or taking an example, is designated
a midrash. It is properly neither symbolic nor mythical, but properly rational,
and is constructed on a basis of selecting situations of daily life with pedagogical
intention. Plato’s “myth of the cave” is evidently a “symbolic” (or mythical) tale,
but the designated “parable (of midrash) of the Samaritan” is not since it does not
have a symbol or myth. It is an ethical-rational narrative with explicit methodical
structure.
379 Luke 10:25-37.
380 See in E. Levinas, Autrement quétre ou au-dela de lessence, Nijhoff, La Haye,
1974, pp. 102ff: “La proximité”,
381 The Platonic “critique” is theoretical: in the cave shadows are seen, not realities;
“the many” (hot polloi), the vulgar, confuse them with reality. The wise, the few, the
best, leave the cave; it is a politically aristocratic myth. The socio-political tale of the
midrash of the Samaritan is not mythical, it is socio-political, it is not aristocratic or
democratic, it is critical; it is not theoretical, it is practical; it is not only ethical, it is
socio-political.

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 382. See the ethical-philosophical sense of this action of a “closing” or a “totalization”
of Totality (Dussel, Para una ética de la liberacion latinoamericana, Siglo XXI, Buenos
Aires, 1973, vol. 2, § 21: “El mal ético-ontolégico como totalizacion totalitaria de la
Totalidad”; pp. 34ff).
383 The verb (spangkhnizomai) used in the Greek text proceeds from the root of
the substantive “bowels,” “viscera; “heart,” and signifies “to be moved,’ “to take
compassion upon.” We wish to choose this root to express the feeling of “solidarity”
(as critical emotivity upset at the suffering exteriority of the victim). It is rather
radically different from the mere “fraternity” of Derrida; but neither is it the
compassion of Schopenhauer, nor paternalistic commiseration, or superficial pity.
It is the metaphysical desire for the Other as other.
384 From 1970 we insist in all our works that this experience is always political.
See Dussel, Para una ética de la liberacién, 1973, vol. 1, ch. 3, and subsequently in
vols. 2 and 5 it is analyzed as the interpretation of the Other as other, as the person
of another class or sex, as new generations, as exploited or excluded fellow citizens,
as victim. Furthermore, see Dussel, Filosofia de la Liberacién, 1977, § 2.6; Etica
comunitaria, Paulinas, Buenos Aires, 1986, § 4.2; 1995 (all the work considering
the Indian as the original Other of Modernity); and also my work The Underside of
Modernity. Apel, Ricoeur, Taylor and the Philosophy of Liberation, Humanities Press,
New Jersey, 1996, especially “The Reason of the Other: Interpellation as speech-act”
(pp. 15ff); Etica de la Liberacién, 1998, chs. 4 and 5.
385 See the work of Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire. Theory and Practice
in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994.
386 The lengthy text to which we are referring is John 8:21-49.
387 Additionally: “spirit” (pneuma in Greek, ruakh in Hebrew) is of the ethical-
metaphysical order [ii], of Alterity.
388 Marx knew this well, and therefore he designated capital as Moloch (a
Phoenician god), who needed human victims, the first-born children (like Edgar,
Marx’s son, whom he considered “a one more victim more of the idol”) - capital,
which returns interest (the most fetishized form, separated from “living work”). The
Abrahamic myth has recovered a central place in actual political philosophy, in the
work of S. Zizek, although it had such centrality before in the work of Hegel.
389 The dominant Judaism, and then the Christianities, affirmed a sacrificing
Abraham (the Father asks for the blood of the Son). “Jeshua, on the other hand,
appears to interpret this myth in a different way and recovers in this manner the
original signification of the text. Abraham frees himself from the Law, recognizes
that the Law requires murder, and discovers the God whose law is the Law of life [...]
He does not kill, because he recognizes that liberty does not consist in killing. Then,
his faith consists in that: in not being disposed to kill, neither his son nor others.
Abraham frees himself before the law, frees himself to be an Abraham free in front
of the Law” (Hinkelammert, 1998, pp. 51-52). This interpretation of Hinkelammert's

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is opposed to that of Freud, Lacan, Zizek, and many others.
390 To bea “Samaritan” is, at that time in Israel, to be someone who knows nothing
of the Law, and also an enemy of the temple (because the Samaritans pretend that
it was on Mount Garitzim where one ought to worship God), This shows then the
sense of the “midrash of the Samaritan,’ but also indicates Jeshua’s critical sense
when he speaks with the Samaritan woman and exclaims: “The hour is coming
when you will worship [...] neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:20).
Jeshua universalizes the critical defiance of the prophets of Israel, within the whole
horizon of the Roman Empire, and beyond (now that their messianic communities
had arrived in the Persian Empire and spread to Turkestan and Tarim and as far as
Mongolia and China).
391 John 8:40-49. Nietzsche writes: “the living fool” (text already cited above),
Jeshua was also a “fool” according to the priests of the temple: madness of “this
world,” of the established, positive order. This is a crritical rationality belonging to
the world to come (“I am not of this world”). ‘The ethical-political transcendentality
of the category of Exteriority is substantivized by the Christianities (and their
modern enemies) as an exclusively religious reign of an ethereal “heaven.” It lost
its rational exteriority that was critical in the name of a subversive universality.
Nevertheless, all the revolutionary movements of the culture called Western, Latin-
Germanic, European (and Byzantine, Coptic, Armenian, etc.) emerge from this
critical horizon.
392 See La religién dentro de los limites de la pura razon (Kant, Werke, Suhrkamp,
Frankfurt, 1968, vol. 7, p. 760).
393 “De la ley moral” (VI, 3; Paidos, Buenos Aires, 2000, pp. 100ff).
394 Ibid., p. 103.
395 See, for example, the works of Giorgio Agamben, II tempo che resta. Un
commento alla Lettera ai Romani, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2000; Alain Badiou,
San Pablo. La fundacion del universalismo, Anthropos, Barcelona, 1999; Slavoj Zizek,
El fragil absoluto o Por qué merece la pena luchar por el legado cristiano?, Pre-Textos,
Valencia, 2002; Michel Henry, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, Seuil, Paris,
2000; etc.- In reference to the work of G. Agamben, in which he demonstrates a great
understanding of Greek and Semitic-Hebraic culture, he shows well the antinomy
between “the Law” (nomos) and “faith” (pistis) (Nomos; Agamben, op. cit., pp. 88ff),
thinking that “Abramo viene giocato, per cosi dire, contra Mosé” (p. 89). There is no
such an opposition between Abraham and Moses: the Abraham who does not want
to kill his son is the Moses who says: “Thou shalt not kill!”. Agamben thinks that this
opposition is an internal division of the same law: “si tratta piuttosto di opporre una
figura non normativa della legge a quella normativa” (p. 91). But, no! Since Agamben
does not distinguish the intrasystemic Law (nomos tén ergén) at the ontological level
(of the system) [i] from the extra-systemic opening of the “Law of faith” (nomos
pisteds) [ii]—in reference to the text of Paul, Romans 3:27 on which the Italian

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philosopher is commenting—he falls into confusion. In effect, both “laws” have
normativity, but differ in their content: one, obliged according to the requirements
of the fraternity of the system [i]; the other, obliged according to the requirements
of the extra-systemic solidarity [ii]. And therefore, he cannot clear up either, for
example, the sense of “the messianic power” that founds itself in “weakness” (pp.
92ff). The “power” of the Other in solidarity is that which we designate hyperpower
in Politica de la Liberacién: the wills unified by a wise madness (the reasons that
allow one to be against Habermas, but in consonance with A. Gramsci): the “critical
consensus” with strategic feasability, as a struggle for liberation of the oppressed and
excluded (the enemies of the system). ‘The “weakness” of that people in a process of
liberation (like plebs that seek to be a populus)—the small army of G. Washington
in Boston--transforms itself into “power” on the basis of the critical consensus of
the new socio-political actors, and, on the other hand, from the crisis of legitimacy
(“wisdom of the wise”) of the dominant system. In the end, Agamben remains stil]
trapped in “Roman law.’ “Semitic law” (from at least the twenty-fourth century
B.C., long before Hammurabi) constructs itself from other critical categories that
we are philosophically sketching in an introductory manner. In the same way,
Alain Badiou (in the op. cit.) shows us a Paul whose conversion on the road to
Damascus presents itself as the “event” (événement: see Badiou, Létre et lévénement,
Seuil, Paris, 1988) which opens a new world (the “universalist Christian world”) that
constitutes a new “regime of truth” to which its members keep fidelity. My critique
consists in thinking that that “event” is the fruit ofa subjective phenomenon lacking
real, objective conditions, of oppression and exclusion within the Roman Empire,
which will permit not only the “conversion” of Paul but also the acceptance of his
“proposal” by the “oppressed and excluded”— “madness” for the dominant of the
Empire. The concept of solidarity in Paul (dgape) distinguishes itself from mere
fraternal (philia) and erotic (éros) “friendship”: it is love as responsibility for the
Other, victim of the system. Badiou, suffers from a certain idealism, having lost
sight of the socio-economic and political conditions of oppression of the Empire.
Solidarity is material: give food to the hungry; cure the wounds of the traumatized;
suppose a living corporeality institutionally inscribed in an inevitable system of
dominator/dominated, of inclusion/exclusion, of ontological/ethical-metaphysical,
of Totality/Exteriority, but situating them always, not exclusively, at an erotic,
economic, political, etc., level.
396 It would be a good theme for discussion to show how, for example, Leo Strauss
(who finds inspiration in Alfarabi, the great Islamic philosopher, who seeks the
conciliation of philosophy and the Koran, but who at the end identifies the esoteric of
his doctrine with Greek philosophy and the exoteric with the narrative of the Koran;
in Strauss, in the same way, philosophy is the esoteric -the rational- and the biblical
narrative the exoteric -the religious imaginary-) or Hannah Arendt (who in the end
continued being a disciple of Heidegger and never went beyond ontology)—both
these did not capture the originality of the Semitic experience (as E. Levinas knew
how to explain it).
397 bserve that the reading of this “text” (in the Louvre one finds one of these black
stones where this text is written in cuneiform), allows the oppressed to confront the
very content of the Law, which could be contrary to the distorted oral interpretation
that the oppressor would be able to make of it had it not been objectively expressed
as written. In this case the writing is a condition of the universality of the law in
protection of the oppressed. Furthermore, we would be able to make another
exegesis of the sense of the “being-written” not coinciding with that of Derrida.
398 Code of Hammurabi, ed. of Federico Lara Peinado, Tecnos, Madrid, 1986, p.
43.
399 Before the Other, thrown off the path, subjectivity suffers an impact on its
“sensitivity, in its capacity of “affectivity” in so much as it can be affected by a
traumatism.
400 Empirically that court is the “critical consensus” of the community of the
oppressed and excluded (see my forthcoming Politica de la Liberacién, Second part,
chapter 5).
401 This is the “Law” that would kill Isaac, but Abraham does not fulfill it; it is that
which kills Jeshua. Of this, Paul of Tarsus exclaims that the Law which ought “to
give life (zoé), gives death (thdnaton)” (Romans 7:10). When Paul says, “You shall
not desire” (ouk epithuméseis) (Rom. 7:8) he does not treat Lacanian “desire” (desire
as an impossibility of reaching satisfaction in the object), which opposes itself to
the mere “drive” (which reaches satisfaction). Here the “desire of the flesh” is exactly
“to want to totalize the system” (the fetishization of Totality) in fraternity. The Law
of the system does not obligate the one who discovers solidarity, because that one
does not accept the “drives” of the system, the “desire of the flesh” In the system of
domination there is not then consciousness of “fault” (amartia: sin), which consists
in the “negation of the Other” The totalized formalism of the Law kills: kills the
Other; is the desire of the death of the Other. When the “spirit” of the Law reveals
itself, formalist law shows all its murderous power (it is the Law which justifies the
death of the Other). For its part, the “désir métaphysique” of Levinas is not that
“desire” of the system (the fraternity: the “desire of the flesh”), but a “desire for the
Other as other,’ in its Difference (it is, again, solidarity): “The metaphysical desire
(désir métaphysique) has another intention — it desires beyond everything that can
simply complete it. It is like goodness: the Desired does not fufill it, but deepens it”
(E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, 1969, p.
34).
402 In 1546 this thinker writes, defending the indigenous of Peru, a political
historical work: De potestate regis (see my Politica de la Liberacién, § 06, [101ff]),
where he justifies the illegitimacy of every decision of the King which would be
opposed to the consensus populi.

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 403 “History is an object of a construction whose place is not constituted by
homogenous and empty time [i], but by a full time, now-time” [ii] (Tesis de filosofia
de la historia, 14; in Discursos Interrumpidos I, Taurus, Madrid, 1989, p. 188). And
yet: “In this structure is recognized the sign ofa messianic delay or said in another
way: of a revolutionary juncture in the struggle in favor of the past oppressed person”
(Ibid., Tesis, 17; p. 190). Messianic “time” is the irruption in history of solidarity;
that is to say, of somebody who is encountered invested with responsibility for the
Other who obligates one to work against the current: it is the irruption of the critical
“word” [ii] which becomes present in the “flesh” [i]: the system of “unbroken time,”
404 Miguel Hidalgo is obligated: either to deny his cause (to be a traitor to his
oppressed people), held as a hostage by the Spanish in the Mexico of 1811 (a situation
considered by E. Levinas in his second great work of 1974), or to die as a traitor (“of
his king and his god”). What made Hidalgo unacceptable is that having belonged
to the dominant group (as white criollo and priestly authority before the people) he
would have betrayed his friends (of New Spain, the colony) and would have turned
into a friend the enemies of the colonial system.
405 Paul of Tarsus, | Corinthians 1:18. The rest of the texts are fromI Corinthians 1,
26-2, 14.
406 The Totality, the system, is the “flesh” but inasmuch as it is a subjective,
existential, anthropological category. Moreover, the “flesh” is the unitary expression
of being human (there is neither “body” nor “soul”; the Greek soul is immortal;
the Semitic flesh dies and revives). See Dussel, El dualismo en la antropologia de la
Cristianidad, Editorial Guadalupe, Buenos Aires, 1974.
407 Isaiah 29:14. This “wisdom of the system” dominator is then “wisdom of the
flesh” (cogia odpéa), is “the dying sage”.
408 The “world” is also the totality of the system, but as a category that expresses a
more objective, institutional, historical level as a structure of political power.
409 This Semitic “dabar,’ or Greek “légos,’ originates in the ancient manifestation
of the Egyptian god Ptah, whose “language” (like that of the Semites) was the word
as wisdom, the goddess Thoth. Egypt is behind Greece and the Palestinians (among
whom one finds the Jews, whose Hebrew language was a Canaanite dialect).
410 John 1:14.
411 See Ernesto Laclau, La razén populista, FCE, Mexico, 2005.
412 Nonetheless, we ought to add to Benjamin two fundamental aspects, not
clear in his reliable individualism: a) the messiah has a memory of heroic deeds
(a memory of the struggles of a people, and for that also another history [ii] than
the history of unbroken-time [i]); and the messiah b) is a messianic community (a
people), a collective actor of the construction of another future system [ii], beyond
the “Egyptian enslavement” (metaphor of the oppressor ontology).
413 The “maimed of Lepanto” pretends as if an author of a superior culture to the
European, that is to say the Arabic, which proceeds from the black South of North

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Africa, from The Thousand and One Nights, had dictated his work: “Cide Hamete
recounts [...] in this [...] history, that [...]” (Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la
Mancha, |, ch. xxii; Real Academia Espafiola, Mexico, 2004, p. 199).
414 Ibid., ch. 1, p. 29.
415 The text in ibid., ch. xxii, pp. 199-210.
416 ‘The text in ibid, p.200.
417 The text in ibid, p. 207.
418 “Pasamonte, who suffered nothing well, being already informed that Don
Quixote was not very sane [...]” (Ibid., p. 209), that is to say, was mad. Cervantes
presents the madness of fiction as the horizon from which is possible the critique of
the system, which is accepted likewise as the critique of the clown in the Medieval
festivals of the “Christ the Buffoon? where a critique in a carnival-fashion could
be mounted of even the king or bishop in power. Festive catharsis: metaphor of
empirical, historical, real revolutionaries. Like the slaves of Brazil who in their ritual
dances “struggled like the Lord of the talented,” [here is an] anticipatory symbol of
the effective socio-economic and political struggle which will be launched against
slavery.
419 Kant, I, 1968, Werke, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, vol.
1-10: vol. 7, pp. 645ss. (Dussel’s citations.)
420. Ibid., 9, pp. 263ss.
421 I, II (pp. 300ss.).
422 Ibid. 1, A 44; p. 300.
423 Ibid.
424 Ibid.,A 70; p. 314.
425 A myth, as Paul Ricoeur has explained, is a symbolically-based rational
narrative, whether religious or not.
426 Ibid., A 65; p. 312: “Begriffe der Vernunft; interpreted through “symbolic
representations” (symbolischen Vosstellungen). A bit later, Kant adds: “This book
[the Scriptures...] can be interpreted (ausgelegt) theoretically [...] according to
practical, rational concepts” (Ibid.).
427 See what I have already indicated in vol. I of my Politica de la Liberacién,
(Dussel, E., 2007, Politica de la Liberacion. Historia mundialy critica, Trotta, Madrid
(vol. I), 33-38.) There I discuss the present subject, but with reference to the founder
of Christianity, one Jeshua ben Josef (to call him as he was called by the Semites or
by Taubes, Jacob, 2004, The Political Theology of Paul, Stanford University Press,
Stanford.)
428 Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason, prologue to the first edition
of 1793, BA xvi; Kant, 1968, vol. 7, p. 655: “This [philosophical] theology, insofar as
it remains within the limits of pure reason and utilizes for its confirmation and the
clarification of its theses history, languages, the books of all peoples, including the
Bible, but only for itself, without introducing such theses in Biblical theology,’ that

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is, remaining on a philosophical horizon.
429 See the two volumes entitled Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von
der Souveranitét, published in 1922 (Schmitt, 1996), and Politische Theologie II. Die
Legende von der Erledigung jeder Politischen Theologie, published in 1970 (Schmitt,
1996b). ( Schmitt, Carl, 1996, Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der
Souverdnitét, Duncker und Humblot, Berlin. Schmitt, C., 1996b, Politische Theologie
II, Die Legende von der Eledigung jeder Politischen Theologie, Duncker und Humblot,
Berlin.)
430 It should be understood that said “Christian Commonwealth,” Anglican to be
specific, is already a community of believers, a historical, concrete, and religious
Church: the ambiguous Christendom. This is level c.1 of Figure 1 (see Politica de la
Liberacion, I, [39ss]).
431 This would be precisely Kant’s “rational theology” (or Theodicy) as we have
seen.
432 Hobbes, Leviathan, Il, ch. 32 (Hobbes, 1996, p. 255), Dussel’s emphasis.
433 Ibid., p. 259.
434 We will write Jeshuia (or Josef) with a “j’ which in Mediterranean languages
(Greek, Hebrew, or Spanish) is guttural (like the Spanish “j” of Arabic origin), but
which will be pronounced here like a Latin “i” (Jeshvia). On the other hand, for the
Spanish “j” we will use the letters kh and notj. Among Semitic peoples when a male
has no descendants his parentage is indicated (son of: ben Josef).
435 The meaning of “being children of God” enunciated for slaves, the oppressed,
and the excluded is the moment of the “ransom” (the payment to free the slave:
“redemption,” a subject suggested so clearly by W. Benjamin). See Hinkelammert
(Hinkelammert, F., 2008, Hacia una critica de la razén mitica. El laberinto de la
Modernidad, Editorial Driada, México, pp. 17ss) where he engages in a reflection
upon Marx’s text: “The critique of religién leads to the doctrine of the human being
as the supreme essence for the human being, and consequently to the categorical
imperative to undermine all relations in which the human being is a humiliated,
subjugated, abandoned, and worthless being [ein erniedrigtes, ein geknechtetes, ein
verlassenes, ein verdchtliches]” (Marx, Karl, 1956, Marx-Engels Werke (MEW), Dietz
Verlag, Berlin, vols. I-XL, I, p. 385).
436 Tamez, Elsa, 1991, Contra toda condena. La justificacién por la fe desde los
excluidos, DEI, San José (Costa Rica), pp. 51-75. This is a very precise commentary
on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.
437 Agamben, Giorgio, 1995, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Einaudi,
Torino. We need to understand that the fundamental categories of Roman law are
not, universally, the same categories ofa necessary Politics of Liberation. If the nuda
vita is the initial ontological moment of Roman law this does not mean that it should
be used in the same manner today. Nuda vita should be instead reinterpreted with
reference to another horizon (see Politica de la Liberaci6n, vol.2, § 14 [250ss]).

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438 See what we have already said in [33-38] of vol. 1 of Politica de la Liberacién.
439 Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason, II, 3, A 130ss, B 129ss; Kant, 1968,
7, pp. 757ss: “The concept of an ethical community (ethischen Gemeinen) is the
concept of a people of God (Volke Gottes) under ethical laws.” This is what Hegel,
writing to Schelling, would call the “invisible Church”
440 See Dussel, E., 1975, El humanismo helénico, EUDEBA, Buenos Aires, I, pp.
3ss.
441 In general, contemporary philosophical discussions of Paul of Tarsus drifts
about in a deep ignorance of the anthropological vision of this great militant (who
S. Zizek rightly compares to Lenin, although we will show where we disagree with
his interpretation later). Years ago, | studied this question in great detail. See at the
very least Dussel, 1969 and 1974b (Dussel, Enrique, 1969, El humanismo semita.
Estructuras intencionales radicales del pueblo de Israel y otros semitas, Eudeba, Buenos
Aires. Dussel, E., 1974, El dualismo en la antropologia de la Cristiandad, Editorial
Guadalupe, Buenos Aires.), Few among those philosophers discussing such themes
at present show sufficient knowledge of these distinctions.
442 Against what many have believed since Harnack (who W. Benjamin and many
others read) and Nietzsche, this expression is identical to the following: “What has
been born of the flesh (sdrx) is flesh, and what has been born of spirit (pnéuma) is
spirit” (John 3, 6).
443 This is the subject of my book El humanismo helénico (Dussel, 1975).
444 The second death, the physical, was in turn interpreted not as the devaluing of
the body in the impersonal immortality of the soul, but instead as the valorization
of the flesh as deserving of its resurrection or personal, singular reaffirmation, with
one’s own name (as in the final Judgement of Ma ‘at before Osiris; see my Politica
de la Liberacion, vol. 1 [8]). On intersubjective Semitic anthropology, see Dussel,
1969. The later process of confrontation between Hellenic and Semitic-Christian
conceptions of anthropology occurs from the first century CE onward (see Dussel,
1974b).
445 “Do not conform to this edn” (Rm 12, 2). On these two orders, ages, or ednes,
see figure 9 of my book Twenty Theses on Politics (2008, p. 79). We are speaking of
the philosophical categories “Totality” and “Exteriority” in my vocabulary, as will be
seen below.
446 See M. Jay’s work Marxism and Totality (Jay, Martin, 1984, Marxism and
Totality, Berkeley University Press, Berkeley.), as well as all of my works (you can
search for this concept using the program “copernic.com” in my books at www.
enriquedussel.org..
447 From now on, whenever we use the term “messianic” or “messianism”
(which originate from “messiah” (mesias), with its semantic roots in the Hebrew
for oil, as he who consecrates the anointed; in Hebrew: meshiakh, KAM, in Greek:
Khristés, we refer to those who fulfill one of two possible functions: that of king

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(“Davidic messianism”) or that of prophet (“prophetic messianism”). As a result, in
Antiochia the community of followers of Jeshia ben Josef was deemed: khristianéi
(messianics). When we use the word “messianics” between quotes, this should be
read “Christians.”
448 See in vol. II of my Politica de la Liberacién, [377ss], the difference between
foundation, justification, and application (and still a fourth concept could be
proposed: the subsumption of an act into a principle, or a principle into a field).
Recall Kant’s distinction between “reflective judgement” (from the particular to the
universal) and “determinant judgement” (from the given universal to the particular);
this distinction is clarified in vol. 1 of my Politica [172]. Here the justificatory
criterion is the universal, and it “subsumes” (subsumiert)” the particular (the actor
or act to be justified). (Kant, UK, B xxvi, A xxiv; Kant, vol. VII, p.251).
449 ‘The text refers to tsadik, according to the following passage: “the righteous
[tsadik] will live by emundh” (Habakkuk 2, 4), and not so much here to the concept
of “justification” as mishpat.
450 The god Osiris, again, in Egyptian ethical-political myth observed (and was
therefore represented by an eye in hieroglyphic texts) all acts, even the most secret,
which would be judged publicly in the Final Judgment of Maat. This is already
“moral conscience,’ an everyday anticipation of such transcendental Judgment.
451 Which we have explained in Polftica de la Liberaci6n at § 15 [262ss].
452 Indicating with this the continuity between the position of the Gospel of John
and Paul’s Epistles (against Harnack’s claim, which is supported to some degree
by J. Taubes), a continuity which in my personal view extends even to Revelation
(Hinkelammert, 2008).
453 Hinkelammert, F, 1998, El grito del sujeto, DEI, San José.
454 Hinkelammert, 1998, p. 27.
455 Which in reality was an old criterion, but one which had been obscured among
the Law’s many commandments.
456 Exodus, 20, 17.
457 Lacan, 1992, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Norton, New York, pp. 83-84.
458 I have already shown elsewhere the contrast to Greek thought which, for
example, in the death of the righteous (Socrates) demonstrates (to his disciples) the
injustice of the judges without ever calling into question the very justice of the law.
Now we confront a much more radical position.
459 Hinkelammert, 1998, p. 45.
460 See G. Agamben’s interpretation (Agamben, G., 2005, The Time that Remains:
A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, Stanford University Press, Stanford, p.
99).
461 Dialectically and diachronically, the old Law is that of the unjust prevailing
political system which will need to be deconstructed and overcome in the new future
system (with its new Law). Evo Morales, for example, inaugurates his delegated and

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obediential exercise of power through the proclamation of a new Constitution,
which derogates the previous one, not merely contradicting it but surpassing it
in a new form. ‘This is the diachronic political dialectic which is implicit in Paul's
rational, symbolic-religious narrative.
462 It is clear that for the symbolic religious narrative the ultimate source was
divinity, the eternal Word, which constituted a new intersubjective subjectivity
through a gift called grace. We need to read these symbolic expressions in light of
categorical, philosophical rationality.
463 “The mark of this critical and dangerous moment” (Benjamin, Walter, 1991,
Gesammelte Schriften, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, vol. I-VII, p. 578).
464 “La historia me absolvera” (in Castro, Fidel, 1975, “La historia me absolverd?
in La revolucién cubana, Editorial Era, México, p. 39).
465 This is “Now-Time.’
466 This concept is rooted in “doiilos; servant, slave. It is the praxis proper to the
“hebed”, the meshiakh. See my article on the “Servant to Yahveh” (Dussel, 1969,
Appendix), which is also liberatory praxis as labor, as service, habodd).
467 Agape, which in the terms “charity” or “love” has lost its powerful original
meaning, refers in Greek to this affection, this solidarious fraternity which
transcends the “friendship” of the dominators, and which unifies the “messianic”
community: “Agdpe (love) without frictions [...] Do not go backward in your tasks,
remain fervent in pnetimati (spirit)” (Rm 12, 9-11).
468 Itis in this precise sense that this is a politics of “liberation, of the “redemption”
of the oppressed, the exploited, the excluded. “Séma pneumatikds” refers directly to
the rescued human being in a new Alliance (that of the “messianic people”): as when
Evo Morales launches a profound transformative process that will culminate in a
referendum to approve a new Constitution (the law that subsumes the old, expired
Law).
469 Here it would be necessary to distinguish between those “transformations”
necessary in the creative time of the emergence of the new political system
(diachronically, moment A) and even those of classical time (moment B of
institutions, see my Twenty Theses (Dussel, E., 2008, Twenty Theses on Politics, tr.
G. Ciccariello-Maher, Duke University Press, Durham, NC.), thesis 17.2) from
those “transformations” or mere “reforms” occurring in the period of institutional
decadence, which is what is referred to by the subject of the katégon, a question
which is debated by C. Schmitt and J. Taubes (Taubes, 2004, pp. 107-113).
470 This is something like, for example, when after the end of the Cold War, the
United States no longer had anyone to “hold it back”—not Europe, not Russia, no
one—and began to launch military interventions which are suicidal for the Empire
itself, which fell into a delirium and then into the terrible “financial crisis,’ the
effect of its own immoral contradiction so many times foretold by, among others, I.
Wallerstein and myself.

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471 This expression “in the now-time, translated directly as W. Benjamin's “Jetzt-
Zeit, appears frequently in the Epistle to the Romans. See for example its use in 3,
26; 8, 18; etc. It expresses within the Jewish symbolic narrative the “Day (of the
manifestation) of God, the déxa Theow.
472 This is the “as if not” (hos me) (I Corinthians 7, 29-31) analyzed so well by G.
Agamben, 2005, pp. 75ss.
473 Inthe example of Mexico this refers to the old system which has been surpassed.
It matters not if this was done by a priest from among the creole elite or a mestizo
like Morelos y Pavén. A “hero” is determined by their behavior in the new situation,
not in the old one. The so-called “bandit” Pancho Villa was able to become a “hero”
in the “messianic time” of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
474 Here G. Agamben makes an essential wager: “every people,’ insofar as it “stands
up as a people” (as J. J. Rousseau would say), is “the” chosen people.
475 Agamben, 2005, p. 58. And for our purposes this is essential. Here Agamben
cites a passage by M. Foucault: “This part of pleb does not represent some exteriority
with regard to power relationships as much as it represents their limit, their ruin,
their consequence.” [ have used concepts similar to those employed by G. Agamben
and M. Foucault for more than forty-eight years (see my article written in 1961:
Dussel, Enrique, 1969, El humanismo semita. Estructuras intencionales radicales del
pueblo de Israely otros semitas, Eudeba, Buenos Aires., p. 156ss; and Dussel, E., 1973,
Para una ética de la liberacién latinoamericana, Siglo XX1, Buenos Aires, vol. 1-2,
vol. II, § 63, pp. 64ss), the only difference being that this plebs always maintained a
certain degree of “exteriority” (beyond an intra-systemic, constitutive domination),
and from this relative Exteriority the seat ofa new power can now be affirmed, the
“hyper-potentia” (or creative “hyper-power” that constitutes the central thesis of the
Politics of Liberation). The people is discussed in this sense in § 38. See also thesis
11.3 in Dussel, 2008.
476 This is a profoundly revolutionary passage: “kaleso ton on laon mou , laon
mou.”
477 Heidegger, 2004, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, tr. M. Fritsch and J.
Gosetti-Ferencei, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, I, 1, § 1.
478 Ibid., Il, 1, § 14 (p. 45).
479 Re-reading Luther’s texts (see for example Aus der Roemerbriefvorlesung 1515-
1516 [Luther, Martin, 1963, Luther Werke in Auswahl, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin,
vol. I-VII, vol. V, pp. 2228s], or Aus der Galaterbriefvorlesung 1516-1517 (Ibid., pp.
327ss]) we can see in this great Reformer a rather individualist and subjectivist
interpretation, rather than a more “messianic, intersubjective, and communal view.
This leads him to ambiguous formulations, such as when he writes: “Igitur ego ipse
mente servio legi Dei, carne autem legi peccati” (Roemerbrief, Duodecimum; Ibid.,
p. 259), In this passage, the “spiritual” is considered as a moment of the “mind? and
the “flesh” as body. He thereby eliminates all of the intersubjective and communal
 meaning of messianic concepts, and “flattens” them as anthropological moments
(body-soul, and part of the soul). In this way, “being at the same time [simul]
righteous [as both spiritual and as a free gift] and sinner [as flesh under the Law]” are
not clearly discerned as pertaining to two different times. In the first time of the Law
one is a sinner without the possibility of being saved (khrénos); in the second time
(kairés), the messianic time of emundh, one is righteous (through the intervention
of a gratuitous justice in redemption [the ransom that frees the slave from the Law],
because the sins of the first time are pardoned insofar as one is committed to the
labor of the “dangerous time” of the messianic saga: a transcendental time and space
with respect to the facticity of everyday life under the Law). Regardless, Luther
understands well that the medieval Church (which was still not “cathalic” because
“Catholicism” is a modern phenomenon, one concomitant with and simultaneous
to the “Protestant Reform”) had fallen—as “Latin-Germanic Christendom’—into
a system “under the Law” (Augustine's “City of Cain”; see what we have written in
Politica de la Liberacién, vol. I, [66] and [95ss]).
480 Ibid., § 4 (Heidegger, 2004, pp. 9ss).
481 Ibid., 2, § 10 (pp. 33ss).
482 Ibid., IL, 3, § 24 (pp. 61ss) [Dussel’s emphasis—Tr.]. It would take a long time,
leading us away from our subject, if we were to follow Heidegger’s phenomenological
itinerary step-by-step. But in any case, we must mention that in § 22 he clarifies
the three fundamental aspects of the “factical life experience”: a) It is a historic
situation; b) we must manage to observe the unfolding of the situation, describing
the plurality of its moments, reorienting ourselves toward its generative kernel, and
describing the rest on the basis of this center, and finally, c) returning to the origin
(p. 57).
483 See Dussel, 1973, vol. I, § 4, pp. 47ss.
484 Ibid., p.114.
485 Ibid.
486 Ibid., 4, § 29; p. 81 [Dussel’s emphasis—Tr.].
487 Ibid. [Dussel’s emphasis—Tr]. As we can see, Heidegger echoes this historically-
implausible anti-Jewish judgment.
488 See my Politica de la Liberacién, vol. U, § 15 [262ss]. Moreover, one could
consult Laclau for a critique of the foundations of Badiou’s interpretation (to which
we will return later, in § 37 [of the Politica—Tr.]).
489 Badiou, 2003, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Stanford University
Press (from the original 1997 French edition).
490 Ibid, p. 31.
491 Ibid., p. 45.
492 Since Le (re)commencement du materialisme dialectique (1967), passing
through Théorie du sujet (1982), Peut-on penser la politique (1985), and up to the
first volumen of L ‘etre et l’événement (1988), and the second in 2006.

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493 See the discussion of this subject in Badiou, 2003 pp. 25-50 passim. In effect,
firstly, when Paul speaks of the “unknown god," he is listened to attentively, because
this is a subject which is understandable (from everyday life [level a in Figure 1}
and Greek philosophy [level c.2.a]). But when he speaks of the “resurrection of the
flesh” they no longer listen to him, because this is an incomprehensible subject for
the everyday and Greco-Roman philosophical worlds (not because it is irrational
or anti-philosophical). On the other hand, it is a subject which is perfectly
understandable on both levels within the Semitic or Egyptian worlds (and in no
way are we introducing the false question of theology [level b.1], into which many
fall, including even J. Habermas and G. Vattimo years ago and many others who
think that the phenomenological philosophy elaborated in the Semitic experience
of E. Levinas, or my own, is theology). Stefan Gandler (as well as my very esteemed
colleague Bolivar Echeverria, who I appreciate for his knowledge of Marx) also
claims that “Enrique Dussel, the ex-liberation theologian” (Gandler, Stefan, 2007,
Marxismo critico en México: Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez y Bolivar Echeverria, FCE,
México., p. 34) in the end supports the Catholic Church and falls into dogmatism;
that is to say, I am accused of engaging covertly in theology. I believe that they
have understood little of what I am saying. For his part, Michael Lowy comes to
the defense of “liberation Christianity” when he writes: “it seems to me that Stefan
Gandler is mistaken in considering Samuel Ruiz and liberation theologians to be
committed to the brutal power of Karol Wojtila” (Ibid., en in the prologue to his
book, p. 16) [translated from the Spanish edition—Tr.]. This is still a Eurocentric
and modern view of the question, since the popular religious imaginary has not
been grasped on the everyday level, on the basis of which it can become philosophy!
We should return to the subject at hand.
494 The comparison of Paul with Pascal, Kierkegaard, or Claudel is far from
incidental (see Ibid., p. 2).
495 In Hebrew (Aramaic), Jeshtia ben Josef orders a dead girl: “Talita kumi”
(Young girl, arise!). For Paul, “death” certainly had many meanings, one referring
to those who respected the Law of the prevailing system. For Badiou, death linked
to suffering has no meaning, because he believes that the only meaning can be the
masochistic view that suffering in itself can save someone. We are dealing with
something very different. The “death of the righteous” contemplated by his disciples
(or the death of the members of the “messianic” community in the Roman Circus
before the multitude of Roman slaves and oppressed) produces the contradiction of
the system with itself and dismisses the Law (which kills the innocent); it undermines
its “legitimacy, erasing the subjective adhesion of the members of the system which
gives foundation to its normativity in a Law that kills unjustly. “Justification by Law”
is swept away by the “death” (of the righteous).
496 The first and the second terms being dominator and dominated within the
Totality, the “flesh,” “this world,’ “under the regime of the Law.”

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497 Ibid., p. 14.
498 Ibid., pp. 14, 29, etc.
499 This concept translates into Greek as éthne: “nation? or in the plural, “the
nations, the pagans, the non-chosen, the not-Israel, those for whom Paul sees
the possibility of dialectical overcoming (or Ubergehen, but in this case, strictly
speaking, this is ana-lectical rather than dialectical, because it offers novelty from
the Exteriority of Greco-Roman life, the positive Semitic experience, that of the
slaves and those dominated from outside the Empire). This overcoming occurs
through the “messianic” community that would dismiss the Empire, the temple, the
Law, and the old contradictory customs prevailing within the very same “messianic”
community (signified in the figure of “Peter,” who does not dare to disobey the old
Law).
500 See Ibid., p. 13. It is not singular because it is communal, as a people (the
remainder), and has negative causal conditions: the suffering of millions of human
beings throughout the Empire, and the anguish of the impossibility of fulfilling
Israel’s Law.
501 Ibid., p. 15.
502 Ibid.
503 Thesis 2 (Marx, 1956, vol. IIL, p. 533). Up to this point we agree with Badiou.
504 ‘Thesis 3 (Ibid., 1956, pp. 533-534).
505 See thesis 17.2 in my book Dussel, 2008. This change would be a) “reformist” if
it intends “to work” within the Law (the “works of the Law” which were perhaps not
interpreted in this way by Martin Luther and Karl Barth) which still serves as the
foundation of its “justification” (this would be under the mandates of the “flesh” the
Empire, and the legalists among Jews and Christians, or today’s legalists of capital).
It would be b) “transformation,” if the criterion for “justification” were, on the other
hand, the “critical consensus” of the “messianic” community (an intersubjective,
objective, historic, concrete consensus which emerges from the reality of suffering
which is an effect of economic, political, aesthetic, or religious injustice, etc.) but one
which maintains a relationship of transcendence with regard to the totality of the
system. A movement would be “free before the Law” ifand whenit transcends the order
of that Law. It is transcendent but nevertheless conditioned, just as the “situation”
determines (but not absolutely) the “event” as transformative praxis. It would seem
as though Marx wrote this passage with reference to Badiou: “Feuerbach [...] seems
obligaged |...] to dispense with the historical process |...] presupposing an isolated
lisoliert] individual” (Thesis 6; p. 535). Is this not Paul’s pure subjectivity which has
been individually “converted” according to Badiou’s interpretation? Returning to K.
Barth, who especially cites Kierkegaard at the outset of his commentary, “faith” is
wagered as an act of the singular: the faith of Paul in the messiah (See Barth, Karl,
1968, Epistle to the Romans, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 107ss). We, on the
other hand, have proposed a meaning which is communal and constitutes another

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form of emundh.
506 See the critique by Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Maldonado-Torres, Nelson,
2005, “Liberation Theology and the Search for the Lost Paradigm, in Ivan Petrella
(Ed.), Latin American Liberation Theology. The Next generation, Orbis Books, New
York), where he attempts to situate Zizek in relation to the argument of John Milbank
(Milbank, John, et al, 1999, Radical Ortodoxy. A New Theology, Routledge, London),
with whom I entered into a dialogue in 2007 at Birkbeck College in London,
allowing me to experience his Eurocentric conservatism first-hand. Milbank’s view
represents a tendency toward recuperating the “Christian heritage’—vis-a-vis
secularism and certain form of anti-Christian Judaism—within which we find G.
Vattimo as well, which is completely distinct from the Latin American liberation
theology movement (and equally distinct from its Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist forms,
etc., and from a Politics of Liberation) which situates itself (locus enuntiationis) in
a “messianic” attitude (which is critical toward the prevailing order “of the Law”)
defining the relevant antagonists within the global, national, capitalist, machista,
racist power bloc, etc. This critical tradition is not interested in recuperating the
legacy of Christendom, which with S. Kierkegaard we interpret as the inversion
of Christianity. Instead, our interest is to recuperate the Jewish-Christianity of
Jeshtia ben Josef, of the Synoptics, of Paul, which was opened universally to the goim
beginning in the first centuries prior to Constantine, and prior to the “restoration”
of the Law as a justificatory criterion with Theodosius (Roman-Christian law: from
this moment on it was possible to “kill” in the name of the crucified, and Lucifer,
Christ, would be sent to “hell”; see E Hinkelammert, 1991: Sacrificios humanos y
sociedad occidental. Lucifer y la bestia, DEI, San José. This is why Nietzsche, who in
the course of his grandiloquent pirouettes discovers himself to be the anti-Christ,
but by objecting to that Pantokrator, the Christ-Emperor or the new fetish, he
hardly recovers some very deformed attributes of the critical nature of the historical
Khristés who was crucified). What is the use of recuperating the heritage of this long
inversion? It would be better to stand on its feet what the centuries have stood on its
head. I don’t know if Zizek would agree!
507 Chesterton, G. K., 1908, Orthodoxy, John Lane Company, London. Chesterton
does not critique the system from the perspective of the oppressed, but rather from
the perspective of the past and with an eye toward the revitalization of existing
institutions. In one of his books he describes how a subject carefully prepares an
attack on a house, and arriving dramatically the night of the events, enters the
bedroom of the house to be robbed through a window, and finding a woman seized
her and makes love to her passionately, raping her with great pleasure... and it was
his wife! The traditional institution had been reaffirmed by the pleasure of the affair
of his transgression (think of Bataille). It was as though Paul were to confuse the
enjoyment of the “messianic” risk with the pleasure of the pure transgression of the
Law. Paul was no hippie, although I do understand, but do not justify, the nihilistic
rebellion ofa youth lacking in any feasible, historic project for transformation.
508 Lacan, Jacques, 1992, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Norton, New York, pp. 83-
84.
509 In various works (Dussel, 1985, 1985 and 1990) we have attempted to show the
major differences distinguishing Hegelian from Marxist discourses. Zizek does not
clearly demonstrate this distinction.
510 E. Bloch, in his book Atheismus im Christentum. Zur Religion des Exodus un
des Reichs (Bloch, Ernst, 1970, Atheismus im Christentum. Zur Religion des Exodus
und des Reichs, Rowohlt, Hamburg.). If we read carefully V. 32, pp. 157ss: “Paulus,
sogenannte Geduld des Kreuzes, aber auch Beschwoerung von Auferstehung und
Leben,’ we find many elements useful for our subject. Death? Everyone dies, he
tells us, but for the disciples of the meshiakh Jeshia, his death on the cross—rather
than his preaching or miracles (which did occur)—was what allowed them to
understand the “message” of overthrowing the Law. Bloch, a Jewish Marxist, has
been reinterpreting Christianity from the perspective of messianic Judaism since
long ago!
511 Zizek, S., 2003, The Puppet and the Dwarf. The Perverse Core of Christianity,
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA., p. 6.
512 In the New Testament we read the following, in the most political passage of all
the Synoptic Gospels: “The Son of Man has not come to be served but fo serve [...]
to surrender his life as ransom (redemption) for the multitude” (Mark 10, 45). See
also my Dussel, 2008, thesis 4.35.
513 ‘This universalist passage is from the Second Isaiah is deeply Jewish, which shows
us that the “messianic” Jews (from the movement of Jeshtia ben Josef) coherently
extended what was an old Jewish tradition.
514 We have attributed this inversion of Christianity to Anselm in full Latin
Christendom, when the pardoning of sins is rejected, since from the horizon of
a sacrificial God, to be righteous one must demand payment for Adam’s infinite
debt (because it is a debt against the Infinite), a debt which is not humanly payable.
As a result, the sadistic and Oedipal Father (in contrast to the Abrahamic myth,
since Abraham loves his som Isaac and does not sacrifice him, even though this is
against the Law) sends his Son to the “butcher” This entire story, the inversion that
is Christendom, Zizek rightly characterizes as “legalistic” (Zizek, 2003, p. 102).
515 Zizek, 2003, p. 102: “Christ's death as such”
516 “The true Light, that which illuminates all man, was arriving to the world. It
was in the world and [...] the world did not know it [...] and the dabar was made
flesh (sarx in Greek) [the order of the Law], dwelling among us” (John 1, 8-14). Here
it is necessary to read the work of Michael Henry, a great phenomenologist, Marxist,
and scholar of psychoanalysis, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (Henry,
Michel, 2000, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, Seuil, Paris.), and Cest moi, la
vérité (Henry, M., 1996, Cest moi, la vérité, Seuil, Paris.). Or again F. Hinkelammert

316
(2008) who explains the history of the myth of Prometheus, the mythical narrative
which provides the entire categorical framework for so-called western culture,
through Marx: “Jesus the man, son of God, by which all are children of God” (p.
75). We will return to this question later.
517 The existence of human freedom, which constitutes the apex of being “equal
to God” as Other than God, must be played out to its final consequences. These
consequences—as inevitable negative possibilities—include evil, injustice, the
fetishization of systems of injustice, the Law that kills. The Supreme Being would
not be so perfect if it had only created puppets with no possibility of being truly
Other than God, and thereby the cause of evil.
518 I wrote an article on the subject years ago: Dussel, 1987. This will slowly and
progressively unfold throughout volume II of the Politics of Liberation.
519 For example, 2003, pp. 111-121; 2000, pp. 145-148, in the “disconnection”
related to the subject of “as-if-not” (which we will see in G. Agamben); etc.
520 See my article “From Fraternity to Solidarity: Toward a Politics of Liberation,” in
Journal of Social Philosophy, 2007, no. 1, pp. 73-93).
521 Benjamin, Passagenwerk, Aufzeichnungen und Materialien, N (Benjamin,
Walter, 1991, Gesammelte Schriften, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, vol. I- VIL. , vol. V/1, pp.
600). “Redemption” also constitutes the central moment of Cohen and Rosenzweig's
respective frameworks.
522 Léwy, Michael, 1992, Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in
Central Europe, A study in elective affinity, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.,
pe97.
523 See Rosenzweig, Franz, 2005, The Star of. Redemption, University of Wisconsin,
Madison.
524 Cohen, Hermann, 1972, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism,
Frederick Ungar, New York.
525 See “The Elements or the Everlasting Primordial World [Vorwelt],” Part One
(Rosenzweig, 2005, pp. 9ss).
526 In Rosenzweig: “The Path or the Ever Renewed World [allzeiterneurte Welt]”
(pp. 103ss). It is interesting that Rosenzweig, against Cohen, begins with the subject
of Paul as surpassing the pagan “world”: “On Belief” (Ibid., pp. 124ss). Subject II, 1,
is “Creation [Schoepfung]” (pp. 123ss).
527 “Revelation [Offenbarung]”. This subject in Rosenzweig does not have a
messianic meaning (Rosenzweig, 2005, pp. 169ss).
528 Rosenzweig, 2005, pp. 221ss.: “Redemption [Erloesung]”. Cohen calls more
attention to “reconciliation,” not showing that the “ransom” (redemption) of the
slave occurs first, and the latter then “reconciles herself” with her old master, but
under the equality of a new system (the “promised Land,’ the “Kingdom of God”
that Cohen but also Rosenzweig and Benjamin summon).
529 Op.cit., cap. 16 (Cohen, 1972, p. 343).

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530 Cohen, 1972, ch. 13, and elsewhere.
531 Ibid., p.264, 266.
532 Ibid., ch. 19 (pp. 431) [Dussel’s emphasis—'Tr.].
533 See Scholem, Gershom, 1981, Walter Benjamin: ‘The Story of a Friendship,
Schocken, New York., p. 101.
534 Ibid., p. 3. It bears mentioning that between the two European wars, a youth
movement existed not only among Jews, but equally among Christians and Muslims.
A. Gramsci refers to Catholic Action in Italy, for example, which was very powerful
in Latin America, from Mexico to Brazil to Argentina, existing in parallel to the
youth organizations of the Communist Party and the Italian fascist movement. It is
out of Catholic Action that worker and university movements would emerge, giving
rise toward the end of the 1960s to Latin American Liberation Theology. In Egypt in
1926, a similar democratic and progressive youth movement was organized under
the name “Muslim Brotherhood, with a clearly popular political orientation. Abdel
Nasser “built himself” on this organization (with more than 3 million members),
persecuting it and killing its leaders, which led to the movement's transition
toward radical fundamentalism (see the work of Tariq Ramadan and his Egyptian
grandfather). In order to understand many aspects of contemporary politics, we
must study the “youth movements” that existed from 1920 to 1950,
535 Lowy, 1992.
536 Cohen, 1972, ch. 13; p. 254,
537 Ibid., p. 252 [Dussel’s emphasis—Tr.].
538 [have written a brief article (“Cuando la Realidad habla mas que las palabras”)
on this terrible subject, which will be published as an appendix to a book entitled
Meditaciones semitas (Anthropos, Barcelona, forthcoming).
539 See Agamben, 2005, pp. 138ss.
540 I (1991, vol. 1/2, p. 693). [In English at http://www.marxists.org/reference/
archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm -Tr.]
541 Agamben, 2005, p. 138.
542 Benjamin types this, spacing out the letters: “s ch wach e? which at that time
was a way of indicating a word in bold or italics.
543 Ibid., II (p. 694).
544 Benjamin, 1991, vol. II/1, p.204.
545 Agamben, 2005, pp. 73ss: “Typos”.
546 In Rm 5, 14: “This was an image |Gegenbild in Luther and Benjamin; tvo¢ iun
Greek] of the one to come.”
547 Benjamin, 1991, vol. 1/2, p. 695. With regard to the meaning of this passage
T recommend the work by Reyes Mate (Mate, R., 2006, Medianoche en la historia.
Comentario a las tesis de Walter Benjamin: “Sobre el concepto de la historia”, Trotta,
Madrid, ch. 5; pp. 107ss). In order to explain the passage, Mate makes the following
comment on ‘Thesis VII: “That present, illuminated not with its own light, but

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 instead with that which comes to it from the past [writes Mate], crystallized in
images (Bildern) that can be called dialectical. They represent a salvational discovery
for humanity” (Benjamin, 1991, vol. 1/3, p. 1248). A Zapatista in the present moment
refers to Emiliano Zapata of the past, recalling as living a past messianic time which
is actualized in the FZLN action in the present: the “image” of the past reinterpreted
from the perspective of the present grounds the messianic condition of the present.
A typological dialectical relationship. Zapata is the “image.”
548 We would say ho khrénos.
549 This is hd kairés.
550 W. Benjamin, Op. cit., Thesis XIV (p. 701). [English translation modified—
Te):
551 W. Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk, N (Benjamin, 1991, vol. V/1, p. 578).
552 The Political Theology of Paul (Taubes, 2004).
553 [This passage, drawn from p. 168 of the Spanish edition, cannot be located in
the English edition, and is therefore translated directly—Tr.]
554 The messianic (Christian) communities must be understood within a tradition
of Jewish proselytism. Normal proselytism allows for the goim (non-Jews) to enter
the community while becoming “Judaized” on the long run. The originality of this
messianic Jewish group or sect (those called “Christians”) is that they conceived of
a “new” Alliance, within which the proselytes were not required to fulfill the old
Jewish rites. Hence a new calendar and new celebrations (rites) were born, and
given its massive expansion this group left its original Jewish community as an
absolute minority, not only numerically, but also in terms of their understanding
of the transformation of the Greco-Roman world. We must clarify in a categorical
manner this messianism which has had such significant political results, but which
Taubes is not interested in analyzing.
555 It will be of the utmost importance for political philosophy to adequately
grasp—as a philosophical category—this scission that is produced within “all [pan
in Greek] Israel” with respect to a “part [the remainder] of Israel,’ a question which
Taubes announces as the underlying subject of the first four chapters of the letter [
Corinthians. A. Gramsci would argue that “the social bloc of the oppressed” splits
away from the hegemonic consensus of “the whole political community” under the
authority of the “historic bloc in power” In effect, the “remainder” is not a member
of the part which, controlling the temple, the schools of legal interpreters and
Pharisees, would bring the Righteous to the cross. These were the dominant groups.
Here we find an entire implicit categorical structure which Taubes himself does not
recognize.
556 ‘Taubes, 2004, pp. 38ss, see also 128.
557 Ibid., p. 45.
558 See “Thesis 4” in Dussel, 2008.
559 |i.e., the Politica de la Liberaci6n—Tr.]

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560 I don't believe that this is Paul’s position.
561 Taubes, 2004, p. 139 [This editor's epilogue from the German edition is included
as well in both the Spanish and English editions of Taubes’ text—Tr.].
562 Agamben, 2005 (originally 2000).
563 Ibid., p. 23.
564 Ibid., pp. 26-31.
565 The word “Pharisee” has the same root, parushim: those who are separated,
pure, strict.
566 [This is a modified form of the figure which appears on Agamben, 51, to
which Dussel adds the Law/flesh equation as well as the distinction within emundh
between spirit and calling (both, for Agamben, rendered “breath”)—Tr.]
567 Ibid., p. 47.
568. Ibid., p. 55.
569 Ibid.
570 Ibid. [Dussel’s emphasis—Tr. |
571 Ibid., p. 69.
572. Ibid., p. 76.
573 Important for Agamben is the Pauline origin of the concept of “subsumptio”
(according to the Latin root) or “Aufhebung” in German, which has a long tradition
in Kant, Hegel, and Marx (Agamben, 2005, pp. 99ss), a question that I have dealt
with on many occasions in my work.
574 [Dussel refers to the three volumes of his Politica de la Liberacion, from the
third of which this essay is drawn—Tr.|
575 See the excellent introduction to this author's difficult thought, presented
archaeologically, in Bautista, Juan José, 2007, Hacia una critica ética del pensamiento
latinoamericano. Introduccién al pensamiento critico de Franz J. Hinkelammert,
Grupo Grito del Sujeto, La Paz (Bolivia).
576 Hinkelammert, 1998, pp.11-14.
577 Ibid., p.18. For Paul, “the principal sin is committed in fulfillment of the law
and not in its violation. This dimension disappears and is substituted by the violation
of the law as the only sin” (Ibid.). “Nietzsche does not perceive—or does not want to
perceive—the total inversion of meaning that Christianity suffers upon becoming a
Christianity of power” (p. 21).
578 See what I have already said on [pp. 35ss] of vol. I of my Politica de la
Liberacién.
579 Hinkelammert, 1998, p. 46.
580 Ibid., p. 48.
581 Ibid., p. 72.
582 Ibid., pp. 93ss.
583 See [33] and [3945].
584 Ibid., p. 98. “The death of Socrates devours the death of Jesus. The death of

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Socrates is a sacrificial death. It is death on the altar of the law, demanded by and
accepted by the law itself [...]. The death of Jesus is a sacrifice by the law, by a law
that is fulfilled in front of Jesus who [like Abraham] refuses to obey it; instead he
interrogates it in the name of life, toward which the law must function [...]. The law
sacrifices him, but Jesus does not sacrifice himself on the altar of the law. Jesus is
required to not escape, but to confront the law. But God does not demand this as a
sacrifice, doing so instead to reveal what it means when the law kills the innocent in
its fulfillment. The death of Jesus is the catastrophe of the law” (Ibid., pp. 104-105).
“Socrates is the hero of power [...], Jesus is the paradigm of the relativization of the
law in function of the living subject” (Ibid.).
585 Cited in Hinkelammert, Op. cit., p. 134.
586 See the Third Part of Hobbes’ Leviathan in order to see the inversion we are
speaking of.
587 Ibid., pp. 177.
588 Ibid., p. 188.
589 Hinkelammert, F., 2008, Hacia una critica de la razén mitica. El laberinto de la
Modernidad, Editorial Driada, México.
590 Marx, 1956 (MEW), vol. I, p. 385. “[...] der Mensch das héchste Wesen fiir den
Menschen sei [...]?
591 See Bautista, Juan José, 2007, Hacia una critica ética del pensamiento
latinoamericano. Introduccién al pensamiento critico de Franz J. Hinkelammert,
Grupo Grito del Sujeto, La Paz (Bolivia)., pp. 103ss. “Hinkelammert considers it
fundamental to dismantle the foundational myths of the west, not only because it
is these in the last instance that provide grounding for the grand western narrative,
but also because if we do not gain a critical consciousness of these myths, we will
remain trapped within them” (Ibid.). And this applies first and foremost to all the
social sciences.
592 Moreover, it is useful to keep in mind the fact that this entire theme is sketched
out by A. Badiou and the Althusserians, who wonder how to reformulate the
question of the subject after the essentialist death of the “subject of history.”
593 “The glory of God is that the human being lives.”
594 Hinkelammert, 2008, p. 22.
595 Ibid., p. 55.
596 Here we have an inversion of Agamben’s proposal. If it is true that the messianic
event (B’ in Figure 3) could appear as a “state of exception,’ it is in reality something
more radical: the “state of rebellion” that suppresses the Law when it kills. On the
contrary, fetishized Power continually institutes “government by law” through the
“state of exception,’ but not on the basis of the will of the people but its opposite, the
despotic will of the dominator (that of Caesar over the Roman Law of the Senate,
which is no longer “dictatorship” according to the Law; Hitler presiding over the
weak law of the republic).

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597 Ibid., p. 184.
598 In Greek, pneiima is used, in Hebrew ruakh. Jeshta ben Josef is reading a
passage from the Third Isaiah (Jsaias 61, 1-3). In the version found in Luke, we find
reference to the modified translation of the Seventy in Greek.
599 In Hebrew , mashakh, in the sense of “consecrating” the meshiakh.
600 In the sense of “apostle” (see Agamben, pp. 59ss).
601 In Greek afésin.
602 Those who “see” are those who accept the Law; the “blind” are those who do
not know it, but “they will see” their contradiction and will be able to cease to obey
it.
603 In Hebrew deror, which means to pay the “ransom” for the captive, the slave: to
liberate her.
604 In Greek sémeron. This is, precisely, “Now-Time”: “today” is “now,” and “in
presence” is the kairés which inaugurates the messianic “event” (B’ in Figure 3).
605 Translated by Omar Rivera.
606 Note this topic in E. Dussel, “Estatuto ideoldgico del discurso populista’, in
Ideas y Valores (Bogota), 1977, 50, pp. 35-69; and again in Politica de la Liberacion,
2007, Trotta, Madrid, pp. 435-463.
607 Without noticing that the French phenomena of the XVIII and XIX centuries
cannot correspond to other very diverse phenomena of the post-colonial world
and, further, of the XX century. Others, equally in the left, simply confused the
Latin American populism with European “fascisms” (Italian, German or Spanish),
without noticing again the emancipatory charge of nationalist, anti-imperialist
movements (even though they were capitalist).
608 This ‘war’ was first of all a military and anti-democratic war, since the
‘populisms’ were defeated by military coups orchestrated from the United States,
thanks to the education of highly ranked Latin American military in strategic
schools of the Pentagon in Panama, West Point, etc.
609 Note the article cited in footnote 1, Dussel, 2007, pp. 449-450. The Cuban
socialist revolution signified, as well, a process that emerges after the historical
populism of the ‘second kind’ (note E. Dussel, “El populismo latinoamericano (1910-
1959)”, in Ideas y Valores (UN-Bogota), (1977), 50, pp. 35-69; also, in Politica de la
Liberacién, 2007, Trotta, Madrid, pp. 435-463).
610 Note Dussel, 2001, Towards an Unknown Marx, Routledge, London, Chapter
13, pp. 205ff.
611 It is interesting to note that, in the presidential electoral campaigns in the
United States prior to January 2008, politicians spoke of the negative effects of
globalization on the United States and proposed a return to a neo-nationalism,
criticizing the Free Trade Agreements signed in the previous two decades. Having
lost the industrial race against China, the race for the exploitation of oil against
Russia and the OPEP, the race for electronic and computational systems against

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India; the United States returns to ‘protectionism. This is the way, as we will soon
see, in which what has been criticized until now in Latin America as ‘radical, neo-
nationalist ‘populism; is being implemented in the Northern country. But we should
not get ahead of ourselves.
612 In Spanish, La Rézon Populista in the FCE, México, 2005; in English, On
Populist Reason, Verso, Londres, 2005.
613 In my work, La produccion teorica de Marx. Un comentario a los Grundrisse,
Siglo XXI, México, 1985, I entitle a paragraph: La cuestién popular |the popular
question] (pp. 400ff.). I learnedly return to this topic in “Cultura Latinoamericana y
filosofia de la liberacién (Cultura popular revolucionaria, mas alla del populismo y
del dogmatismo)’, en Filosofia de la cultura y la liberacién, Universidad Autonoma
de la Ciudad de México, 2006, pp. 251-329. One should note that for K. Marx the
category “people” (never explicitly constituted as a category) is definitely used,
alongside the category “poor” (puper ante o post festum), when the masses of
servants wondered over Europe after having abandoned feudalism and before being
subsumed by capital. In this “no one’s land,’ Marx cannot use the economic categories
“servant” or “working class’, he rather resorts to the political category “people”.
614 Manuscrito de 1861-1863, MEGA II, 3, P. 333; Teorias del plusvalor, FCE,
México, 1980, vol. 1, p. 33. Note my work Hacia un Marx Desconocido, Siglo XX1,
México, 1988, p. 110. Marx adds: “The confusion of the economists [consists] in
that for them there is no difference between earnings and surplus [for us now:
between populism, popular and people], which shows that the have not clearly
understood neither the nature of the first [populism and the popular] nor that of
the second [people]” (Grundrisse, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1974, p. 450). That is to say,
the concept “people” (phenomenologically deeper) founds the concepts “populism”
and “popular” (more superficial phenomena), the first one (populism) being its
fetichized appearance, and the second (the popular) being the phenomenon or the
undistortioned appearing of the people in the political and ontological field.
615 Note 20 tésis de politica, Siglo XX1, México, 2006, Tésis 11, pp. 87 ff: “El pueblo.
Lo popular y el populismo”. It is concerned with a synthesis of paragraph 38 of my
work Politica de la Liberacion, volumen 3, still unpublished.
616 Note Op. cit., Tésis 3, pp. 29 ff.
617 Cuaderni del Cacere, 3, paragraph 34 (Edited by V. Gerratana, Einaudi Editori,
Torino, 1975), vol. 1, p. 311.
618 Note the application of the categories that we are trying to constitute in our
work Politica de la Liberacion, vol. 2 forthcoming, paragraph 19, [301].
619 Note the topic in the chapter “Del ultimo Marx a América Latina’, of my book
El ultimo Marx (1863-1882), Siglo XXI, México, 1990 (forthcoming in an Italian
translation), chapter 7, pp. 238 ff.
620 Paul Ricoeur, in a discussion we had face to face in Naples in 1991, fell into
the same confusion (note my work La ética de la liberacién ante el desafio de Apel,

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Taylory Vattimo, Universidad Autonoma del Estado de México, Toluca, 1998, in the
chapter “Respuesta inicial a Karl-Otto Apel y Paul Ricoeur’, pp. 73 ff).
621 Note the difference in my work 20 Tésis de Politica, Tésis 17. 2, pp. 127 ff.
622 The concept “collective agent” attempts to replace the metaphysical concept—
in the sense of the post-althusserian school of E. Balibar, A. Badiou, etc.—of
the “historical subject”. The “people” is not a “subject”, it is a collective agent,
intersubjective. In the Gramscian metaphor “bloc” it is given to understand that it is
not as consistent as a “rock” or “stone”, that it can re-fashion itself, grow or diminish,
and, finally, dissolve and disappear. We don’t want to say that the bloc is “empty”—as
a comrade of the MST once indicated to me--, that would be an undesired reference.
We are open to the proposal ofa more adequate “metaphor”, meanwhile I stay with
Gramsci’s.
623 Note the conceptual clarifications of all of these terms in 20 tésis de politica,
Tésis 7, pp. 55ff; and in vol. 2 of Politica de la Liberacién (forthcoming), chapter 21.2
[316]. And chapter 22.1 [330].
624 Nevertheless, one should reflect about a work of Carl Schmitt which has not
received due attention. The aged German thinker wrote in 1963 a work that referred
not only to the Spanish armed people fighting against the Napoleonic invasion at the
beginnings of the 19" century, but also to the guerrillas (given that Mao Tse-tung,
Ho Chi-min, Fidel Castro and even Che Guevara are explicitly named by Schmitt) of
the 20" century. The Partisan Theory (which I find in La notion de politique. Théorie
du partisan, trans, French, Flammarion, Paris, 1992) asks: “Who could impede the
emergence of analogous and infinitely more intense modes, of unexpected kinds of
hostilities, where new kinds of partisan would be engendered? [...] The theory of
partisan leads to the concept of the political, above the search for the real enemy,
and provokes a new nomos in the Earth” (p. 305). In a way, the partisan is singularly
the origin of the “emergence” of a “people”. [hey are “opponents” of the established
political order, not in a particularity, but in its totality: they are dissident political
opponents, not merely social or illegal (like the thief) on the basis of the authoritative
consensus. Schmitt, however, does not have the categories to explain the birth of
this new nomos.
625 Note Tésis2 of my work 20 tésis de politica, [2.35]; in the Politica de la Liberacion,
chapter 14, [250 ff.].
626 Presently, such a “community” is neither pre-modern, nor does it negate
“individuality”, it should be, rather, as Marx indicated in the Grundrisse, the third
stadium that would reach full individuality in full community. Currently there is an
anticipation of an “after” to modern-liberal individualism, where “individuality”
liberated from the metaphysical isolation in the competition of the market,
progresses toward the recovery of a “communitarian” intersubjectivity. This would
be the full singularity (individuality) in full community (in the future), that are being
initiated by the very social movements.

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627 Consider the concept “fetishism of power” in Tésis 5, in 20 Tésis de politica, [5.
1ff.].; and in Politica de la Liberaci6n, vol. 3, chapter 30.1.
628 Consider the concept of potestas in Tésis 3 of the book frequently cited.
629 In 20 tésis de politica, [9.14] and [11.1]; and in Politica de la Liberacién, vol. 2,
chapter 24. 3. B, [372-375].
630 La Razon Populista, p. 309.
631 Il tempo che resta. Un commento a la Lettera alla Romani, Torino, 2000, p. 55 ff:
“Rest”. Note my work El humanismo semita, Eudeba, Buenos Aires, 1969, pp. 157 bff.,
regarding the “personalidad incorporante” which dialectically signifies a historical
person, a community, the rest, etc. I investigate this theme in chapter 31, vol. 3 of
Politica de la Liberacién: “E] acontecimiento liberador” [the liberating event]—
beyond A. Badiou. Agamben cites: “In this way, in the time of now [a technical
expression of messianic time, explains Agamben| a rest has been produced by the
action of grace” (Romans, 11, 5). “Grace” is, secularized and in political philosophy,
the “self-consciousness of the people” (the “people for itself”) which allows it to arrive
as a collective agent and as builder of the future history: the critical consensus of the
people as dissent against the old consensus determined by an ideology of domination
through the repressive praxis of the historical bloc in crisis of legitimacy. We will
cover all of these issues in the work Politica de Liberacién.
632 Letter to John Cartwright, June 5", 1824 (cit. H. Arendt, Sobre la revolucién, 6,
iii. Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1988, p. 257).
633 Arendt, Ibid., p. 259.
634 Note this concept in the Tésis 12, of my work 20 tésis politica, [12.3]: “If potentia
is a capacity of the public community, now a dominating one, that has organized the
potestas in view of its interests and against an emerging people, the hyperpotentia
is the power of the people, the sovereignty and authority of people emerging in the
creative moments of history” (p. 97). It is W. Benjamin's “Jetztzeit.”
635 The constitutional fathers of the United States feared the democracy of the
people. For this reason, they came up with a “representative democracy” where
the elites (the bourgeoisie and the factical powers) elected the candidates that the
people confirmed in its sporadic and frequently manipulated interventions called
elections.
636 The Bolivarian Constitution of 1999 in Venezuela has created this fourth
power. The reform to this constitution, which failed at the end of 2007, proposed
in the new Article 184 the creation of these organisms under the municipalities,
popular “cabildos’, that exercised popular power. In the reform’s text one reads: “
Mechanisms will be created through which the popular Power, the states and the
municipalities will descentralize and transfer to organized communities, community
councils and other entities of the popular Power, services such as: housing, sports,
culture, social programs, protection of the environment, maintenance of industrial
areas [...], crime prevention and neighborhood protection, building projects [...],
participation in economic processes stimulating the divers expressions of the social
economy |...], the creation of organizations, cooperatives and communal enterprises
[...]. The organized community would be under that maximum authority of the
Asamblea de ciudadanos y ciudadanas del Poder Popular [The Citizen Assembly of
Popular Power], which designates and revokes the organisms of communal power
in the communities [...]. The Communal Council constitutes the executive organ of
the decisions of the Citizen Assembly [...]. The projects of the communal councils
would be financed with the resources contemplated in National Fund of the Popular
Power’. This article, and all of the others in the referendum, were not approved. If
the referendum would have been summoned for the approval of this article only, the
attempt would have been revolutionary—since the other reforms were secondary.
637 Note this architectonic problematic of politics in my works 20 Tésis de politica,
Tésis 6 [6. 01. Ff.], and Politica de la Liberacion, vol. 2, [246 ff.], in particular, chapter
1, paragraph 16 ff.
638 “La historia me absolvera” [History will Absolve me], in Fidel Castro, La
revolucién Cubana, Era, México, 1975, p. 39.
639 De la Guerra, I, chapter 3; Colofén, México, 1999, p. 43.
640 Cuaderni 4, chapter 10; vol. 1, p. 432.
641 Ibid. In this case “the protagonist of this new Prince should be the organic
intellectuals of the socially oppressed ones.”
642 II Principe, chapter 6; N. Machiavelli, Opere, Einaudi-Gallimard, Torino, 1997,
p-431.
643 Ibid., chapter. 9; pp. 143-144.
644 Note Tésis 4, in 20 tésis de politica.
645 Note my Politica de la Liberacién, vol. 1, [76 ff.].
646 In the chapter: “Concerning the Prince’, in Huang Tsung-hsi, Waiting for the
Dawn: A Plan for the Prince, Columbia University Press, New York, 1993, p. 92.
647 Von Clausewitz, Op. cit., p. 45.
648 See Foucault (1966,1969,1972,1975,1976,1984,1986). D. Eribon (1989) tells us
that, in The History of Madness, Foucault shows that the excluded are not allowed
a voice (as in his critique of psychiatry), while in The History of Sexuality (since La
Voluntad de saber), the notion of Power proliferates, and the excluded has the last
word (against psychoanalysis). His intent is a liberation of the subject arising from
originary negation and establishes the possibility of a differential voice. The “order”
(the system) of disciplinary discourse (the repressor), exercises a Power that at first
either legitimizes or prohibits. Nevertheless, at a later point the "repressed" finds a
voice. Foucault is an intellectual of the "differential" whereas Sartre elaborates on the
“universal”. It is necessary to learn how to connect both tendencies.
649 See Deleuze 1983, 1991, and Deleuze and Guattari 1972.
650 See the early works of Derrida 1964, 1967a and 1967b.
651 See Vattimo 1968, 1985, 1988, 1989a, 1989b and 1998.

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652 Welsch shows that the historical origin of the term is earlier (1993, 10).
653 Besides Herlinghaus and Walter's articles, the volume includes essays by José
Joaquin Brunner, Jesis MartinBarbero, Nestor Garcia Canclini, Carlos Monsivais,
Renato Ortiz, Norbert Lechner, Nelly Richard, Beatriz Sarlo and Hugo Achugar.
654 Besides Beverley and Oviedo's articles, the volume includes essays by Xavier
Alb6, José J. Brunner, Fernando Calderén, Enrique Dussel, Martin Hopenhayn, N.
Lechner, Anibal Quijano, Nelly Richard, Beatriz Sarlo, Silviano Santiago, Hernan
Vidal.
655 See Castro-Gémez (1996 and 1997) and Teorias sin Disciplina (Castro-Gomez
and Mendieta, eds.), which includes contributions by Walter Mignolo, Alberto
Moreiras, Ileana Rodriguez, Fernando Coronil, Era von der Walde, Nelly Richard
and Hugo Achugar.
656 On this issue see Castro-Gomez (1996, 18, 19). It is worth mentioning that
both A. Roig and L. Zea are often criticized authors. On Salazar Bondy see Castro-
Gémez (1996, 89 and ff.): "Salazar Bondy believes that psychological schizophrenia
is just an expression of economic alienation" (Castro-Gémez 1996, 90). Santiago
Castro-Gémez has the irritating inclination to simplify the position of others too
much.
657 Castro-Gémez does not take into consideration that H. Cerutti criticized
my position in the name of the working class (the proletariat as a metaphysical
category that I could not accept as a dogmatic concept), and also in the name of
Althusserianism, due to the improper use of the concepts of "the poor" and "the
people" which, as I will show, constitute a very Foucauldian way to refer to the
"excluded" (the insane in madhouses, the criminal in prisons .... those "Others" that
wander outside of the panoptic perspective of the French "totality" in the classic
era). Levinas had radicalized topics that M. Foucault approached later on.
658 Guha (1988). As one might suppose, this current is opposed to a mere
“historiography of India", traditional in the Anglo-Saxon world. The difference
between the two lies in its critical methodology, informed by the works of Karl
Marx, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. It is in this aspect that its similarity to the
Philosophy of Liberation becomes evident.
659 According to Said (1978), Bhabha's work "is a landmark in the exchange
between ages, genres, and cultures; the colonial, the post-colonial, the modernist
and the postmodern" and is situated in a fruitful location: the "in between(ness)."
It overcomes dichotomies without unilaterally denying them. It operates within
tensions and interstices. Bahbha does not deny either the center or the periphery,
either gender or class, either identity or difference, either totality or alterity (he
frequently makes reference to the “otherness of the Other," with Levinas in mind).
He explores the fecundity of "being-in-between", in the "border-Iand" of the earth,
of time, of cultures, of lives, as a privileged and creative location. He has overcome
the dualisms, but he has not fallen into their pure negation. The Philosophy of
Liberation, without denying its originary intuitions, can learn a lot, and can also
grow. Bahbha assumes the simplistic negation of Marxism, as many postmodem
Latin Americans do, falling into conservative and even reactionary positions
without even noticing.
660 See Dussel (1996a and 1996b).
661 The panopticon could be observed in the design of clear and square spaces,
with the church in the middle, in towns designed with the rationality of the Hispanic
Renaissance. At the same time, this rationality managed to “discipline” bodies and
lives, by imposing on all individuals a well regulated hourly schedule, beginning
at 5am. These rules were interiorized through a Jesuitical "self-examination," like
a reflexive "ego cogito" discovered well before Descartes. This was implemented in
the utopian socialist reducciones in Paraguay, or among Moxos and Chiquitos in
Bolivia, or among Californians, in the North of México (in the territory that is today
part of the US).
662 In other words, since 1973, in my book Para una ética de la liberacién
latinoamericana I was speaking of "Différance" as a "Difference" that is not just
the mere "difference" in Identity. In Filosofia de la liberacién I point out on several
occasions the contrast between "difference" and "Dis-tinction" of the Other (1977).
In all modesty, in the prologue of this book I state (two years before Lyotard) that
this is a "postmodern" philosophy.
663 Hermann Cohen explains that the ontic method begins by assuming the
position of the poor
664 ‘The situation begins to undergo a radical transformation only when Asiatic,
African, and Caribbbean intellectuals start thinking about the "Commonwealth",
along similar lines as the Philosophy of Liberation.
665 With excellent descriptions, Moore-Gilbert (1997) demonstrates the presence
of critical thought within the postcolonial periphery in Departments of English in
US. universities.
666 See Mendieta and Castro-Gomez (1998, 59-83). "The North American
Latin Americanism" practiced within the field of "Area Studies" in United States
universities counts on the massive migration of Latin American intellectuals, in a
hybrid condition, and inevitably rooted out. Nonetheless solidarity is possible. "The
politics of solidarity must be conceived, in this context, as a counter-hegemonic
response to globalization, and as an opening into the traces of Messianism in a
global world" (Mendieta and Castro-Gomez 1998, 70). The only question, then,
would be whether poverty and domination of the masses in peripheral nations does
not exclude them from the process of globalization. In other words, it does not seem
clear that "today civil society cannot conceive itself outside global economic and
technological conditions" (71).
667 ‘This is the position of Ernesto Laclau (1977, 1985, 1990, 1996). An article of
mine will soon be published offering a critical account of this crucial Latin American

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thinker.
668 This chapter was originally presented as a paper version in the XXII World
Congress of Philosophy (Seoul, Korea) (August 2, 2008), in the III Plenary Session
on “Rethinking History of Philosophy and Comparative Philosophy”.
669 Metaphysics I, 2; 982 b 17-18.
670 “Civilization universelle et cultures nacional”, en Histoire et Verité, Seuil, Paris,
1964, pp. 274-288.
671 Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1959, vol. 1-3.
672 See Paul Ricoeur, La symbolique du mal, Aubier, Paris, 1963.
673 See my book The Invention of the Americas, Continuum, New York, 1995, § 7.1.
The tlamatini.
674 R. Fornet-Betancourt, Critica intercultural de la Filosofia Latinoamericana
actual, Trotta, Madrid, 2004.
675 P. Hountondji, Sur la philosophie africaine. Critique de |’ethnophilosophie,
Maspero, Paris, 1977.
676 P. Tempel, La philosophie Bantue, Présence Africaine, Paris, 1949. See Miguel
Leén-Portilla, Filosofia Nahuatl, UNAM, México, 1979.
677 Sources of Chinese Tradition from earliest Times to 1600, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 79.
678 See Confucius Analects, trans. by Edward Slingerland, Hackett Publishing
Company, Indianapolis, 2003.
679 See Sources of Chinese Tradition from earliest times to 1600, vol. 1, pp. 66 ff.
680 Ibid., pp. 114 ff. See Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies. A global
Theory of Intellectual Change, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge (Mass), 2000, pp. 137 ff., and 272 ff.
681 See Sources of Indian Tradition from the beginning to 1800, Columbia University
Press, New York, vol. 1. Also R. Collins, Op. cit., pp. 177 ff. On Japan, Ibid., pp. 322
ff.
682 6. 12-14 (Sources of Indian tradition, vol. 1, p. 37).
683 Philosophy as Mankind’s Self-Reflection; the Self-Realization of Reason, en
The Crisis of European Sciencies, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1970,
pp. 338-339 (the § 73 of Die Krisis der europdischen Wissenschaften, Nijhoff, Haag,
1962, Husserliana VI, p. 273). It is the same text of The Crisis of European Sciences,
§ 8, pp. 21 ff. (German original, pp. 18 ff.). For example, the so call “Pythagoras
theorem” was formulated by the Assyrian 1000 B.C (see G. Semerano, La favola
dell’ indoeuropeo, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 2005).
684 D. Sobrevilla, Repensando la tradicién de Nuestra América, Banco Central de
Reserva del Pert, Lima, 1999, p.74.
685 See for example the Lexique de la Langue Philosophique D’Ibn Sina (Avicenne),
edited by A.-M. Goichon, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1938. The 792 different terms
analyzed by the editor in 496 large format pages, provide us with an idea of the

329
“precise terminology” of Arab falasafa (philosophy). The final entry is: “792. Yaqini:
certain, known with certitude, relative to a certain knowledge [...]”, and thereafter
follow 15 lines of explanation with the Arabic expressions, in Arabic script, at the
right-hand margin.
686 See the subject on Bartolomé de las Casas and the human sacrifices in my
book Politica de la Liberacion. Una historia mundial y critica [Politics of Liberation.
A worldly and critical history], Trotta, Madrid, 2007, pp. 203 ff.
687 See La symbolique du mal (supra) by Paul Ricoeur.
688 K. Pommeranz, The Great Divergence. China, Europe and the Making of the
Modern World Economy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000.
689 Hegel, Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, Zweiter Entwurf (1830), C, c en
Sdmtliche Werke, Ed. J. Hoffmeister, F. Meiner, Hamburg, 1955, p. 243. English
version Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975, p. 197.
690 Ibid., p. 210; English, p. 171.
691 Hegel, Vorlesung iiber die Philosophie der Geschichte, en Werke, Suhrkamp,
Frankfurt, 1970, vol. 12, p. 413; The Philosophy of History, Colonial Press, New York,
1900, p. 341.
692 I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, Academic Press, New York, 1980-
1989, vol. 1-3.
693 K.-O. Apel, Die Transformation der Philosophie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1973,
vol. 1-2.
694 And what does the West consist of? Is it only Western Europe, and in that case
where does Russia fit, which was certainly a part of the culture of the ancient Eastern
Byzantine Empire? Is its origin in Greece? But this too is problematic because for
Greece the rest of Europe was as barbarous as other regions were to the North of
Macedonia.
695 See the book of R. Collins quoted supra.
696 Icaria-Antrazyt, Barcelona, 2001
697 Trotta, Madrid, 2001.
698 A. Yabri, Critica de la razén drabe, pp. 157-158.
699 Ibid., p. 159.
Decolonizing the mind

Author of more than 50 works, Argentine-Mexican philosopher of liberation

Enrique Dussel (1934 -) is one of the major figures in the development of
world philosophies. He is one of the founders and the most recognized
member of the group that begun philosophy of liberation in the early
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a Mel g Mage Velare Mamta
development of the theology of liberation in Latin America. Dussel’s work
Tela Nastia ameterae ove earmoldCe Me ccl-tccrem or Lad lele] Uiaice)
Latin American concerns such as: the social and political revolutions in
Latin America in the Seventies, the birth of the theology of liberation, and
the role in Latin America of pragmatism and neo-Marxist theory. However,
as the present volume reveals, the scope of Dussel’s work is much larger as
it points to a reconfiguration of the very way one understand the task and
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1s OLA
lal aoa Mela ala cectsct-
Ua age LCT areas
today.

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