Enrique Dussel’s (2011) Ética de Liberación En la Edad de la Globalización y de la Exclusión [Ethics of Liberation. In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion] is the culmination of a life project which Dussel initially embarked on in the early 1970s. The project was (or is, as I will argue it is not finished) to construct an alternative ethics; one that is situated¹ and (similarly to Benhabib’s attempt) universal. One that is substantial, that is, with material, and is simultaneously formal. Call the first the particular-universal dilemma, and call the latter the form-matter dilemma. 

Regarding the particular-universal dilemma, Dussel clearly notes in the book’s (herein after referred to as ‘The Ethics’) preliminary words that the Ethics is “situated in a world horizon, planetary, beyond the Latin American region, beyond helleno– and eurocentrism characteristic of Europe or current  United States; from the center and the periphery towards worldliness”.² That is, the Ethics are aware of cultural particularities and of distinct individual struggles, taking them into account. Dussel, however, does not fall into relativism. One can acknowledge that each culture has a specific ethic, as demonstrated by cultural perceptions, language, and material conditions, while also acknowledging that across all cultures there still remains one universal component. To put it another way, while Charles Taylor argued that there can be no universal principle because, in the end, it all becomes cultural, Dussel does not agree. For Dussel there is a universal principle within which cultures and different ethics can debate. The universal component present across all cultures, states, historic periods, etc., is what Dussel calls criterio material universal de verdad práctica [material universal criterion of practical truth] (herein after referred to as the Criterio). The Criterio states:

“Whoever acts humanly always and necessarily has for the content of their act some mediation for the production, reproduction or self-responsible development of life of each human subject in a life community [comunidad de vida], as material fulfillment of the cultural corporality necessities, with all of humanity as the ultimate reference [trans.].” ³

Thus, the Criterio has six main components to it. First, it has a someone who acts humanly [a]; it has an act [b] with content consisting of mediation towards the production, reproduction or self-responsible development of life  [c] of each human subject in a life community [d]. The Criterio also includes a material fulfillment of the cultural corporal necessities [e], with all of humanity as the ultimum reference [f]. We now turn to its first component [a] to problematize the Criterio.

Who is someone who acts humanly [a]? One can know what X is by knowing what X is not. Dussel devotes §1.1 to explore the cognitive and affective-evaluative system to, tacitely, differentiate between humans and non-humans. Drawing from Maturana,⁴ Damasio,⁵ and Edelman,⁶ Dussel reconstructs a system of philosophy of the mind to argue that humans have certain superior cognitive capacities like “conscious conceptual re-categorization”, “reflexive categorization”, among others.⁷ Thus, any being who does not possess such ‘superior’ cognitive faculties is not human. Two comments. Descriptively, this all refers to capacities which relate to human survival. For example, our capacity to designate a past experience, based on new information, as unpleasant, cognize it and then associate an actor in such experience as unpleasant. In a critical dimension, while not mentioned explicitely, the adjective ‘superior’ reveals the existence of its Other; of an inferior cognitive capacity. It is not merely a different form of cognizing, it is inferior, it is less and non-deserving of the Criterio. Analyzing Marx, Dussel will argue that “the eating of such subjects [humans] […] Is not the animal ‘devouring’, but a cultural gastronomic act”.⁸ Thus, it is clear that, for Dussel, humans have Ethic superiority to animals. 

Why is it that being cognitively inferior results in less moral standing? It is, according to Dussel, because these cognitive faculties grant humans with responsibilities, wholly different from instinctive obligations. The human is not only aware that it is hungry and must eat, the human is aware of its hunger which can lead to death. “Being under our own responsibility” is thus “proper and exclusive of the mode-of-reality of human life”.⁹ The being who has no ‘superior’ cognitive faculties only feels hunger; it feels how the stomach growls, how the mouth waters, and how its prey moves, but the animal is not aware of its possible death and thus is not responsible for itself.

The problem with the Criterio having as a component the acting human is not necessarily that only humans can act ethically, but rather, with whom we act ethically. As Dussel states, it is the human who can act ethically but the act must be guided towards the “production, reproduction or self-responsible development of life of each human subject in a life community [comunidad de vida], as material fulfillment of the cultural corporality necessities, with all of humanity as the ultimum reference [trans.]”.¹⁰ Thus, there is no ethics towards non-human beings. Anything is allowed so long as the “production, reproduction, or self-responsible development of life of each human subject in a life community [comunidad de vida], as material fulfillment of the cultural corporality necessities, with all of humanity as the ultimum reference” is correctly pursued.¹¹ That is, it is allowed, for ethics is nowhere involved, to kill, torture, and put through the highest forms of pain as many animals as possible if this does not invade human wellbeing. Perhaps, from an anthropocentric point of view this may not seem problematic. To those who see non-human beings as inferior it may all be the same so long as their suffering does not inflict upon us. Hence, any sort of non-human well-being would stem from anthropocentric extensionism. That is, extending moral standing to non-human beings simply because it is good for us. 

I find three things troublesome with such a view. First, this Ethics is clearly guided by sentiments of love to the Other. Throughout the book several times the words ‘victim’, ‘dispossessed’, ‘tortured’, etc., are used to refer to the morally wronged. Several times these victims are referenced as having not been taken into account by a hegemonic form of rationality that excluded them. Are we not doing the same? That is, if we only grant humans superiority based on a form of rationality, and thus exclude non-humans from ethics, are we not similar to the Eurocentrics, to the racists, excluding an Other whose rationality is different? It is of course different in one aspect, the rationality of the Aztec people was as human as the rationality of the colonizers. The point is not if the non-human rationality or mode of being is the same as the colonized; rather, the point is if the hegemonic and dominating philosophy is not excluding Others as colonizers once did. This is similar, but with nuance, to Singer and Mishler’s views on speciesism. Second, what happens when we think of humans who do not possess the ‘superior’ cognitive faculties. That is, humans who have severe cognitive deficiencies and thus are not able to think of their thinking, who are not able to realize that their pulsations are linked to death, and thus are not able to be responsible for themselves, let alone for others. I am thinking not only of people who are mentally disabled, but also children under a certain age, and elders. If we take Dussel’s Criterio extremely literally one could argue the following: 

We are obliged to kill all elders once their cognitive faculties are diminished because: (1) since they do not possess ‘superior’ cognitive capacities they are no longer human; (2) they are granted ethic responsibility; (3) taking care of them is extremely resource intensive, and if we think of future humanity, it is better to use those resources in a more efficient way.

One specification is of utmost importance. The Criterio is not a sufficient principle. It is necessary, but it requires other principles working with it dialectically in order to be applied. Thus, such an example would not stand for a correct application; this is a mere problematization. Returning to the problematization, it is clear that constituting human essence in cognition is problematic, and this has been exposed by Singer since the 80s. 

Third, and lastly, I do not reject that we have responsibility over our life and the lives of Others. But such cognitive responsibility is an evolutionary coincidence or miraculous gift. That is, humans did nothing to earn the capacity to be ethically responsible. Both benefits and burdens that flow from luck are never deserved. Equally so, non-human animals having no ethical responsibility because of their luck is not deserved. 

The question, which I hope to answer, is: how can we build upon Dussel’s project of a liberation ethic that attacks both the particular-universal dilemma and the form-matter dilemma, while also solving the above-mentioned problematizations (colonizer attitude, humans with no ‘superior’ cognition, and luck-based benefits)?

References

1. As Benhabib’s  situatedness. See Benhabib, S. (1992). Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics.  ↩︎
2. Dussel, E. (2011). Ethics of Liberation. In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion, p. 15. ↩︎
3.  Ibid, p. 132.
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4. Maturana, H. R. (1985). The mind is not in the head. Journal of Social & Biological Structures, 8(4), 308–311. ↩︎
5. Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes Error Emotion Reason and the Human Brain ↩︎
6. Edelman, G.A. (1992) Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind ↩︎
7. Dussel 2011, p. 98. ↩︎
8.  Ibid, p. 134. ↩︎
9.  Ibid, p. 138. ↩︎
10. Ibid, p. 132. ↩︎
11. Ibid. ↩︎