Explore
Compare
Life
He argued that modernity's self-image as pure reason and progress depends on hiding the violence it inflicted on everyone outside Europe — and called for a philosophy that starts from the perspective of the excluded instead.
He argued that philosophy had been describing the world when it should be changing it — and then described it more precisely than almost anyone.
Connection
Karl Marx critique of capitalism extended to the periphery Enrique Dussel — Dussel's close readings of Marx's late notebooks, especially the Grundrisse, fed directly into his philosophy of liberation, which extends Marx's critique of exploitation to argue that the wealth of Europe's center depended on the violent extraction of Latin America's periphery.
Ideas
Words
“Modernity is not a strictly European phenomenon, but a European-Amerindian phenomenon.”
“The Other is not just another self; it is the one whose suffering the system does not see.”
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Key Moments
1973
Survives a bomb attack during Argentina's dictatorship
1992
Publishes The Invention of the Americas
1849
Permanent exile in London
1867
Capital, Volume I published
Works
The Invention of the Americas
Capital, Volume I