Philosophy of Liberation

Dussel's systematic statement of the philosophy of liberation, written in numbered sections after his exile from Argentina to Mexico. It begins with history and geopolitics, arguing that modern European philosophy was produced from the centre of a world system and took its own perspective as universal while the periphery was excluded. Drawing on Levinas, he contrasts the 'totality', a closed system that justifies itself, with the 'exteriority' of the Other, the poor, colonised or oppressed person whose face makes a demand on that system. He then applies this framework across several levels of human relation, including politics, erotics and pedagogics, and to economics, before discussing method, which he calls analectical rather than simply dialectical, and the role of philosophy in liberation.

It is the most influential systematic work of Latin American liberation philosophy and an early statement of ideas later central to decolonial thought.