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Thinkers

Enrique Dussel

Latin American · Latin America · 1934 to 2023

Argentine-Mexican philosopher who built a philosophy of liberation from the point of view of the poor and the colonised.

What it is

Enrique Dussel (1934 to 2023) was an Argentine-Mexican philosopher, historian and theologian, and one of the founders of the philosophy of liberation. This is a way of doing philosophy that starts from the side of the poor, the colonised and the left out, and asks what ideas and institutions look like from there.

He was born in La Paz, in the Argentine province of Mendoza, and died in Mexico City. For much of his working life he taught in Mexico, after leaving Argentina under threat from its military dictatorship.

The main ideas

  • Philosophy from the side of the oppressed. The philosophy of liberation judges ideas, institutions and history from the point of view of those who are poor, colonised or left out, rather than from Europe or the United States.
  • A critique of European-centred thinking. He challenged the habit of treating European philosophy as the whole of philosophy, and proposed transmodernity as a way beyond both modernity and postmodernity.
  • Levinas. The thought of Emmanuel Levinas was a major influence on him.
  • Theology as well as philosophy. He also wrote on theology, including liberation theology.

What it looks like in practice

Picture a student asked to read a standard history of philosophy that runs from Greece straight to Europe and the United States. A reader shaped by Dussel would ask who is missing from that story and why, and whose interests the story serves. That question is the heart of the approach. This is an illustration of the method, not a quotation.

Life and work

Between 1959 and 1961 he lived in Israel. After threats from the military dictatorship in Argentina he left for Mexico in the 1970s, and taught ethics and political philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He wrote more than fifty books and received several honorary doctorates. He also taught as a visiting professor at universities in other countries, so his ideas travelled well beyond Latin America.

Questions and criticism

  • Who speaks for the oppressed? A philosophy written from the side of the oppressed raises the question of how a philosopher can do that without replacing their voice with their own.
  • How far does the critique of the West go? He rejects European-centred philosophy but draws on thinkers such as Levinas and Marx. Where the line lies between learning from a tradition and breaking with it is open.

Close neighbours

His work belongs to the line of Latin American liberation thinkers, and it is often read beside Levinas and Marx.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 10 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Emmanuel Levinas · Dussel built his philosophy of liberation on Levinas' idea of the Other.
  • Karl Marx · Dussel wrote extensively on Marx and used him in his philosophy of liberation.
  • Paulo Freire · Both belong to the Latin American current that starts philosophy from the standpoint of the poor. (scholars disagree about this link)

Reacted against

  • Jurgen Habermas · Dussel argued in his exchange with Apel that discourse ethics leaves out the excluded and the poor.

Other Latin American thinkers

Sources we used

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