Having performed in the previous entry for a description of some of the main ideas of Enrique Dussel Ethics of Liberation, in this entry we will focus on some comments on the text. The first is laudatory, the second most critical.
As to found an ethics material, content, without falling into the naturalistic fallacy
The founding moment of the Ethics of Liberation is an ethical material. Now, since Hume has stated that you can’t pass without more than a judgment of fact to a value judgment (from an is to an ought) that step has been, at least, controversial. An ethics of content would require a first step of faith, of simple acceptance of a value, which cannot be defended rationally (readers sociologists will be able to remember all the references to Weber in this regard).
That is what denies Dussel, without on the other hand deny that effectively you can’t just pass a statement of fact to a duty to be. There is No way to deduce ‘shunt-logical-analytical, normative judgments’ (paragraph 73). But that doesn’t detracts from the fact that it can support an ethics material.
Dussel part, it’s a refrain that repeats at the beginning of each chapter, that ‘it is an ethic of life’ (par 1). And it is life that allows you to substantiate without requiring a deduction analytical. It is essential that the living have enrolled, and here is Dussel that is entry is a that is prior to the act of theoretical, a duty: The of to continue living. There is one fact, which is that you can’t live without having a few drives attractive or rejection.
We are faced with an important novelty: the exercise of the system of affective-evaluative (to assess prior to the same “value judgment” explicit and abstract, and even from the same subject or predicate of the “trial of fact” of instrumental reason) is a constitutive moment originating in the same act of abstraction theoretical-practical and empirical excellence of the label (paragraph 63)
Then, we are faced with a must-be recorded in the very fact of being alive. This allows then to pass the judgment of fact (‘I thirst’, is the example of Dussel) to a duty (‘I drink’). The trials are different, I’ve added something at the put the duty, but that you add (that put the fact of duty) is not something irrational or arbitrary. The above is not yet the ethical duty (it is a practical truth), but as the trail begins. Dussel emphasizes (paragraph 108) that in humans the requirement of self-preservation (which is the truth already mentioned) is transformed into an ethical duty by the circumstance that the instincts are not so immediate:
But between the “safety” of instinct [that is, of pure practical truth, ‘I have to drink’] and the pure “arbitrariness” of a freedom without limits [all ethical judgment is a choice, and an irrational between ultimate values], the ethical “part” a behavior regulated by duties, obligations, demands rational (that have as a parameter material, the border that separates the life of death) (para 108)
Later Dussel specific time step as the move from statements to practical as if X stops eating, it dies; the ethical duty of X must continue to live, the middle with the phrase, “ethics: ‘As autorresponsable of your life should not be left to die” (par 110). That duty is not a deduction and analytic statement handy, but Dussel emphasizes that this duty (that type of homework) is a universal principle; and that it is essential for the continuity of life, and then it is necessary. A principle of universal and necessary is a rational principle.
Then, then, without falling into the naturalistic fallacy it is possible to found an ethics that is universal material.
It is important to emphasize the force of a statement as the previous one. Dussel is not the only one who has attempted to make that step to substantiate an ethical material, and it is not the only one who tries to do this from life (from the circumstance pragmatic who does not follow an ethic of life disappears). And yet few have done so while respecting the intuition of the naturalistic fallacy; and few have succeeded in separating-and see the need to substantiate both – the practical judgment of ethical duty. Many believe that the basis of the practical judgment has already completed the discussion. The universality and necessity of the principle, and the fact show that this is not a judgment of fact, requires greater articulation -and Dussel delivery.
It may be that the argument is not convincing to all (is there a philosophical argument that achieves this?), but clearly we are in an argument more than decent.
The absence of freedom in the midst of the release
If one reviews the table of contents of the text of Dussel the entrance of release, obviously, is important. It also appears liberalism. What does not appear is freedom.
Now, the difference has its relevance. The release is an act (we are freeing ourselves, are freed), freedom is a state (I’m in it, I’m free). The Ethics of Liberation is an ethic of critique, a situation, an awareness by the victims, and how to produce the new (the development of human life, which is ultimately the core of this ethic). But it says a lot about how to live in a state of freedom, that is, after the release. Has a lot to say about how to react (such as taking responsibility, to use his words) in front of the fact that there are victims; there is not much to say with regards to the situations when there are not. Or to put it another way: Dussel identifies that a good part of the ethical are, finally, to speak between equals; and the argument of Dussel is -essentially – to give an account of the other (who is out of the system, of whom -precisely – is uneven). But then the ethics of the release, what it tells us of the situation among free the same?
There are two possible answers to the interior of Dussel to do this. The first is to remember that the release is permanent. There is No final state to which access (there is no kingdom of freedom to Marx). This is a permanent development: When you create the new system to take account of the ethical duty to the victim, it returns to produce a situation that can create new victims, and that then requires your self-improvement. Utopia is not attainable as such, it is a goal to which approach (Dussel uses to Hinkelammert in this regard, see paragraph 185 in particular), and this distance ensures that there is always a task of liberation. The second is that the ethics of peer-to-peer freedom, to the interior of the system, is a task already made: it has taken a good part of the literature. Dussel does not negate their validity or relevance, but that, at the end of the examination of the discussion of the categories of the ethical to the interior of a system, tells us:
We have concluded and an initial description of the foundation of Ethics (the “Ethics I”), in which the majority of the philosophers to finish their analysis. We are only what we have begun. We have built the foundations of an architecture where we will meet the development the building, the criticism of an Ethics of Liberation, in which initially we will use the second part (paragraph 203)
However, both responses are, I believe, insufficient. On the one hand, if we are always in the release (i.and there are always critical duties towards the victims of the system), also we are always in freedom (i.and we are always in situations of ethical peer). And it’s not enough to say that for the second it is sufficient in the philosophical tradition is sufficient (i.and that there is already an ethics of freedom), because that would imply that the ethics of liberation has nothing to say to an ethics of freedom. Moreover, given that the victims are the other (outside the system), do the lives of those who are victims do not have anything to say about freedom?
The discussion above appears more relevant in relation to the position of the victims. Chapter 5 of the text (the second chapter of the second part,the constitution of the validity for the community of the victims of the ethics of liberation, the equivalent at the time of the formal ethics, in the foundations) ses a discussion of the discussion of the constitution of critical consciousness on the part of the victims. Dussel uses as a paradigmatic example to Rigoberta Menchú, and how to generate a critical consciousness.
Now, one can observe that the principle material of the ethics of liberation (which we discussed in the previous entry) speaks from a subject other than the victim -speaks of the duty to care for the victim. It is only when speaking of the constitution of the community that the victim speaks for itself. But then not all of it speaks of the victim of the ethics of liberation -not in the whole of his speech, a victim recognized as victim. What is worse, is the victim of the category that corresponds? (always has a hint of something that acts): the one Who takes consciousness of itself is an actor (an actor excluded) but an actor. And then, there are categories of victim which best give an account of the condition of the actor (and which also takes self-awareness). And this without getting that, how do you define that a particular speech of these actors is to take awareness? (because not all of them have the same opinion). This is to be done, says Dussel by argument -but it may not be the same model of argument from formal ethics (which assumes equal).
The statement analéctica (beyond the horizon of the world and of the community of communication, hegemonic) is the fruit of “reason ethical-preoroginaria”, whose first subject is the Other dominated, or excluded from, that is re-known together as the Other affected: Rigoberta, the people american indian (paragraph 286)
But, what if it is not recognized as the other excluded? If the awareness is to take consciousness as a victim, discovered as a victim, then the outcome is already pre-determined: that the victim actually becomes the other reviewer has to reach the conclusion that the ethics of liberation as you suggested.
Will not be, precisely, in that moment-in the constitution of a subject who speaks and argues, and that is excluded from the community of subjects in their own right to speech and the argument – when it should appear with clarity, the discussion of freedom. Because that time, that is the starting point of any self-liberation, requires exercise of freedom as such, and because it is a time to be free (that is something between us, Salazar already emphasized in Husbandmen, labourers and proletarians)
The absence of freedom then appears as a problem. The ethical to the interior of the system, the ethics of the same, although they may not be sufficient (i.and it is not that the ethic of freedom has already been answered), can be something more than something to overcome. Because there there also put as an idea (and practice) the fact of freedom. Without thinking about what that implies freedom, any discussion of the release is truncated.