Abstract
Chapter 2, on Totality and Alterity, defines these two major categories of Enrique Dussel’s ontology and metaphysics. It examines Dussel’s critical adoption of Martin Heidegger’s early existential ontology to explain the concept of totality of sense. It also discusses Dussel’s interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas and Dussel’s critical adoption of the phenomenology of the face-to-face encounter as the occasion for the possible movement of naïve consciousness to critical ethical consciousness. This chapter also discusses the interface between totality and alterity and the concrete expression of this interface in the relationship between modernity (totality) and subalternized peoples (alterity), peoples who neverthess exist for themselves as autonomous beings.
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Notes
- 1.
Stricting speaking, the term totality refers to any totalizing system , so this includes capitalism, theocracy, as well as real socialism.
- 2.
For a discussion of the ability to be (poder-ser) of the Other as revealed in the analectic experience, see Barber (1998, 37–38).
- 3.
By the term ‘naive’ I am referring to the everyday uncritical practical engagement in the world that takes its political, economic, and social structures for granted. This naive consciousness stands in contrast to critical thematic awareness . Of course, this is not a binary, as there are gradations of critical awareness.
- 4.
- 5.
Descartes did try to theorize a bridge between mind and body at the site of the pineal gland.
- 6.
- 7.
For an excellent detailed discussion of Heidegger’s break with Cartesian epistemology, see Hubert L. Dreyfus (1991).
- 8.
This is very similar, as we will see in a moment, to Dussel’s distinction between things-with-sense and cosmic things.
- 9.
- 10.
Don Ihde points out that embodiment relations have the structure (I—technology)—world, where the technology becomes transparent because I am directed at the world through the technology (1990/2009). In The Absent Body, Drew Leder makes a detailed study of this phenomenon (1990). See also Frederick Mills (2013) on Merleau-Ponty’s views on embodiment.
- 11.
“It is the exteriority of the Other which permits us to overcome the ontological horizon itself …” (Dussel 2016, 35–36 [2.72]).
- 12.
The reference here to mathematical physical properties is itself, strictly speaking, also a partial knowledge of cosmic being in-itself. For Dussel, the cosmic being is neither the unknowable Kantian thing-in-itself nor the idealist, entirely immanent object of consciousness. “The rose grows not because I know it, but because it has the capacity to grow.” Since “cosmos is the totality of reality,” and “we only know of the cosmos what we have incorporated into the world ” our knowledge is always partial and relative to the singular and cultural sense of our world (Dussel, interview with the author, January 10, 2018, Mexico City).
- 13.
We have followed Dussel in defining the cosmos as things as they are in themselves (observer-independent) and the lifeworld as the totality of things-with-sense (cosas-sentido). The cosmos underlies different possible totalities of sense. Not all things, however, as cosmic things in themselves, become things-with-sense or entities within the lifeworld ; many things may not even be noticed. And not all entities are grounded in cosmic things, for there are imaginary and purely conceptual entities that figure into making sense of the world that do not require a cosmic basis (see Dussel 1977/2011, 55 [2.2.3.3]). For example, there are no perfect circles in nature, yet we can make use of them in pure geometry. The future is not yet, but we can imagine a possible future state of affairs and base our behavior on what we take to be a feasible project. Of course, we can try to broaden what counts as part of the cosmos to include geometric abstractions, fantasms, and possible worlds, but such a discussion is not within the scope of this chapter.
- 14.
Starting from mundo as the broadest totality of sense , Dussel lists campo, sistema, subsistema, función, and acto humano singular in the order of increasing extension (see 2016, 46 [4.02]).
- 15.
- 16.
The idea of poder-ser also has a broader meaning as a person’s fundamental project. That which mediates this project can be considered of value , as mediating one’s poder-ser. See Dussel (1979/1995a, 105–108). Barber (1998) points out that poder-ser refers to human freedom within the limits of objective conditions: “The being of the human person is essentially non-totalized, open; that is, the human person is always able to be something different, and therefore is, in Dussel’s words, a being-able-to-be (poder ser ). One experiences such possibilities emerging from the life-situation into which one has been born, not which one has chosen” (p. 34).
- 17.
As Alberto Acosta as well as many other scholars of decolonial thought point out, “a process of intellectual decolonization is a prerequisite for decolonizing the economy , politics, [and] society” (2013, 51).
- 18.
See Bolivia (Plurinational State of)’s Constitution of 2009, Article 8, I. “The State adopts and promotes the following as ethical, moral principles of the plural society: ama qhilla, ama llulla, ama suwa (do not be lazy, do not be a liar or a thief), suma qamaña (live well), ñandereko (live harmoniously), teko kavi (good life), ivi maraei (land without evil) and qhapaj ñan (noble path or life). 8, II. The State is based on the values of unity, equality, inclusion, dignity , liberty, solidarity, reciprocity, respect, interdependence, harmony, transparency, equilibrium, equality of opportunity, social and gender equality in participation, common welfare, responsibility, social justice , distribution and redistribution of the social wealth and assets for well being.”
- 19.
See Stansfield Smith (2018) on eleven years of the “process of change” in Bolivia .
- 20.
See Maldonado-Torres (2008, 212–213).
- 21.
While Maldonado-Torres is critical of Dussel’s earlier “continentalist” approach to Latin American history, with regard to the publication of Invention he credits Dussel with “a fundamental step toward the formation of the de-colonial attitude: he suspends the ontological priority of his identity and adopts a ‘preferential option’ for the point of view of the condemned” (2008, 194, 206).
- 22.
As Grosfoguel points out, the Cartesian ego comes to represent the universal pretensions of the Eurocentric point of view: “The social, economic, political and historical conditions of possibility for the subject to assume the arrogance of becoming God-like and put himself as the foundation of all Truthful knowledge was the Imperial Being, that is the subjectivity of those who are at the center of the world because they have already conquered it” (2007, 215).
- 23.
As Grosfoguel points out, “the fact that one is socially located in the oppressed side of power relations, does not automatically mean that he/she is epistemically thinking from a subaltern epistemic location. Precisely, the success of the modern/colonial world-system consist[s] in making subjects that are socially located in the oppressed side of colonial difference to think epistemically like the ones on the dominant positions” (2007, 213).
- 24.
As Maldonado-Torres points out “the idea of the ‘innocence’ of enlightened Europeans–and the intrinsic culpability of non-enlightened peoples–is the crux of Dussel’s analysis of what he refers to as the ‘myth of modernity ’” (2008, 200).
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Mills, F.B. (2018). Totality and Alterity. In: Enrique Dussel’s Ethics of Liberation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94550-7_2
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