Filip Pizlo
Term Paper, Spring 2001
PHIL240 - Social and Political Philosophy
Professor McBride
Hermeneutics, Interpellation, Eurocentrism, Economics and the Philosophy of Liberation
Society has grown, through processes that we don't fully understand, in such a way as to oppress the innocent majority for the benefit of the minority.  This statement, whether true or not, is discussed frequently; moreover, it is unavoidable when one attempts to study the current state of world affairs.
"The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor, and the Philosophy of Liberation", by Enrique Dussel, attacks this issue with arguments not usually seen by the North-American reader.  In this essay, I will attempt to explain, critique, and disassemble Dussel's philosophical presentation.  This will be done by 1) explaining Liberation Philosophy as it is presented in the book, 2) giving reasons for its importance, 3) showing how Dussel's book is inadequate in explaining Liberation Philosophy to the uninitiated, and 4) critiquing Dussel's methods of arguing by taking a nose-dive into his peculiar logic.
1) What is Liberation Philosophy as presented in "The Underside of Modernity"?
In this section, I will attempt a brief summary of Liberation Philosophy.  Many concepts that I will be referring to in the essay will not be summarized here; their summaries will be shown separately when needed.
Lets start off with a quote:
Without assuming the representation of a broad movement, the Philosophy of Liberation, which I have practiced since 1969, sets out from our particular regional reality: the increasing poverty of the majority of the Latin American population; dependent capitalism, which transfers value to central capitalism; the growing consciousness of the impossibility of an autonomous philosophy under these circumstances; the existence of different types of oppression, which demands not only a philosophy of "freedom" but also a philosophy of "liberation" (as an action, as a praxis, the starting point of which is oppression, and its goal, télos, liberty from such oppression as ancestral machismo, for example, in the case of women's oppression).  (Dussel, 20)
This definition, given by Dussel himself, is a good starting point for the exploration of this philosophy.  I will first elaborate on the essence of it, and then I will go deeper into the text to find more hints about what Liberation Philosophy is.
A key observation that needs to be made is that Dussel uses a multiplexed model of who is oppressed and who does the oppressing.  He introduces the general categories of "center" and "periphery"; where the center is (geographically) North-America and Europe, but more specifically consists of the political-authoritarian, economic-capitalist, erotic-machismo, cultural-imperialistic, fetishist religious "totality"; the periphery, never expressed as "all elements of W (the World) not in C (the center)", includes women (as sexual objects), Afro-Americans (as slaves), Native Americans (as victims of murder), children (being pedagogically dominated), Africa (as a whole, geographically), and Latin America (also as a whole, geographically).  Oppression itself (happening from the center onto the periphery) is seen as being coupled with the center, and therefore also multiplexed.  (I should make the further note that Dussel actually takes this concept of multiplexed oppression much further than I have cited here, and many more groups are included into the center and periphery.) (Dussel, 20-21)
A further point that Dussel tries to make is that the periphery is not in a state of oppression because it was left behind (or because it is underdeveloped, since that would suggest fault on the part of the periphery itself), but instead because it is the "underside".  What does this mean?  As the center moves forward, the periphery is used as the resource. (McBride, 77)  How is this possible? - or, why did this happen?  Dussel tries to show that history and contemporary philosophy (both of which he is more than adequately familiar with) gives us all the clues we need; "The Underside of Modernity" is hence an attempt to use philosophy to explain why 1) all current philosophy is inadequate in explaining the Latin American situation, and 2) Latin America is in such a horrid state of oppression.
Finally, it must be noted that Dussel uses Marx extensively.  This is central to his philosophy: that what Marx says is in fact applicable, and that the discussion of Marxism should not stop with the naive statement that "Stalinism failed".  He re-explores Marx and reintroduces us to him, almost deifying him, for the purpose of taking Marx's "Capital" and applying it to the center-periphery relationship.  This will be explored further in the remainder of this essay.
2) Why is Liberation Philosophy important?
One of the things that makes Dussel interesting is the importance of what he says.  I will attempt to show that Dussel's work is important by quoting Dussel himself, exploring reasons for importance in Dussel's philosophy, and offering ideas of how to link Dussel to the current state of world affairs.
Dussel's first and most clear explanation is in the numbers: capitalism (and with it all currently accepted social models) failed for 75% of humanity (Dussel, 83), this 75% being in the South, which also "faces a structural crisis", and "millions of women and men in the periphery [are being precipitated] into a growing misery" (Dussel, 50).  As one reads "The Underside of Modernity", these numbers and facts are presented and re-presented at the beginning and end of every point.
What about Dussel's actual philosophy?  Does it venture reasons to the effect of its own importance?   Yes.  Take, for example, the second article of "The Underside of Modernity", titled "Reason of the Other: 'Interpellation' as Speech-Act".  Here, he shows that due to the four validity claims involved in interpellation (defined as the act of demanding something, as in a "call" or a "confrontation", from someone with whom a relationship is established; this relationship not usually being a deeply personal one - Dussel, 39, n25; here is an alternate definition from Webster: "interpellate, v. - to question (as a foreign minister) formally concerning an official action or policy or personal conduct"), Intelligibility, Truth, Veracity, Rightness (Dussel, 21), the periphery is incapable of asking the center for what is rightly theirs, because (as Dussel shows on pp. 24-26) this interpellation is not going to be seen as valid by the center.  Therefore, not only is the periphery suppressed, but it is incapable of getting itself out of its suppression of its own rhetorical means, leaving (obviously) either a sudden moral illumination on the part of the center (so unlikely that Dussel doesn't even entertain the idea; however, I will explore it slightly in the next section), or an uprising (project of liberation - Dussel's dream).  At least within his own domain, Dussel is making a lot of sense.
Take another example, from article five, "Hermeneutics and Liberation": in the fourth section, "From Hermeneutic Pragmatics to Economics", Dussel takes Ricoeur's hermeneutic philosophy to the next level by citing "the historical imposition, by force, of the Judeo-Christian Bible on the culture of the Maya" (McBride, 78) and reintroduces us to Marx's "Capital" by comparing it to Ricoeur's hermeneutics.  Both of these philosophical ventures are important to modern thought, because not only do they force us to see contemporary philosophy in a different way, but also to try to apply them in previously unexplored socio-geographic areas (periphery).
On the point of Marx himself, Dussel is quick to explain himself.  In another section, titled "A Philosophy of 'Poverty in Times of Cholera'", of the above mentioned article Dussel makes the following statement:
It is thus that Marx allows us, as philosophers of the periphery of the world system ..., to think a Philosophy of Liberation for the domination from the North-remaining critical of those philosophers of the North (not all, to be sure) who ignore all of these questions, since they confuse economic philosophy with Stalinism, thus washing their philosophical hands ... from the miserable fate of the majority of contemporary humanity.  (Dussel, 92; spelling mistakes fixed and italics removed)
If one has doubts about why Marx is important anymore, this can certainly serve as a worthy retort.  It can be seen that Dussel's insistence on Marx makes sense, and so does Dussel's analysis of him, because Marx gives us the ability to understand the pathetic situation of the periphery better than anyone else.  Hence, if our hearts are patient enough for sympathy with the South, our main ammunition becomes Marx.  (I will directly reverse the above statements about Marx in the last section, in order to formulate a critique of Dussel.)
But can we venture reasons for this book's importance without listening to Dussel himself?  Again, yes.  If Dussel's presentation of the misery of the South is even half-true, then we must (as a nation, or, better yet, as a world) deal with these issues: the push towards globalization which many of the world's leaders seem to be passionately interested in, the continuing domination of the world's resources by the our beloved U.S. of A., the growing issue of environmentalism, and the seemingly unrestrained corruption of governments in the periphery (using Dussel's terminology).  I will not attempt to prove that all of these issues exist, as that would take too long, and would not serve to aid the reader in understanding why Dussel is important beyond what I have already stated.
I will, however, expand upon the issue globalization, since this seems to be a very popular thing to talk (and riot) about.  And the general consensus seems to be, quite unfortunately, that globalization helps everybody.  This is ridiculous, from a Dusselian point of view, since it just opens the floodgates for oppression from the rich center to the poor periphery.  Keeping Dussel's thoughts in mind, I would like to show some opinions of globalization expressed in the conservative side of thought, and then respond with facts from a more liberal newspaper.
 For the conservative side, I'll use Thomas L. Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree".  In it, he says this about the motivations for globalization:
Yes, globalization is the product of the democratizations of finance, technology, and information, but what is driving all three of these is the basic human desire for a better life - a life with more choices as to what to eat, what to wear, where to live, where to travel, how to work, what to read, what to write and what to learn. (285)
The flaws in this statement are multifold.  Notice the phrase "what to eat" - what about those who do not have enough to eat?  Do they possess this "basic human desire" that results in globalization, Friedman wants us to believe?  Or are we talking about different "basic human desires"?  If there is more than one such basic desire, then I would argue that we should the one that pertains to the majority of humanity.  Well, we already see that 75% of humanity is in the periphery, a category of people who do not even have the choice of what to wear, where to live, or how to work.  If Friedman wants to explore human desires, perhaps he should be mindful of humanity as a whole and not anecdotes from the center.
	Lets look at some more statements in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree".  One particular section grabbed my attention: on pages 268 and 269, Friedman compares globalization, as it relates to those who lack the abilities to exploit it, to a Golden Straitjacket.  He seems to be telling us that once you get yourself out of the straitjacket, you will get gold.  I would argue that it's more complicated than that, and that such an analogy can be very misleading.  Dussel shows us that it's not about the periphery not knowing how to exploit globalization (in the analogy, not knowing how to get out of the straitjacket), but that globalization is there to exploit the periphery (see the summary above, or "Toward a North-South Dialogue" in Dussel's book for a more in-depth - however confusing - discussion).  This is a radically different concept from what the mainstream is pitching, and it's worth looking into.  Perhaps Dussel is a good place to start.
	While conservatives like Friedman are holding globalization up as something "golden" and full of riches for every girl and boy, the far left, without surprise, is attacking it.  I'll cite some arguments made by The Nation in order to boost Dussel's views and give clues as to why his philosophy makes sense.  To begin, here is a quote from a pre-riot issue inviting the WTO summit in December, 1999:
CLAIM #3: FOREIGN INVESTMENT AUTOMATICALLY RAISES LIVING STANDARDS.
Most developing-country governments are aggressively pursuing foreign investment by offering low taxes, repressed work forces and lax enforcement of regulations.  In a few countries, increased investment has corresponded with rising wages.  However, without strong labor protections, there is no guarantee that foreign investment will benefit the average person.  In Mexico, for example, direct U.S. investment jumped from $16.9 billion to $25.3 billion in the first four years of NAFTA.  And yet the impact on workers has been mixed, at best.  Some jobs have been created, but real manufacturing wages have dropped 23%.  Moreover, overall employment has declined, as locally owned firms are crippled by high interest rates set by the government to attract foreign investors. (pp. 26, 27)
From this quote it can be seen, if we believe The Nation, that the problems Dussel is trying to explore are real.  Moreover, these problems manifest themselves in clear statistics, something that nobody can deny.  The center's ignorance of these facts only strengthens Dussel's position.
	As a final argument in favor of Dussel, I would like to cite some facts based on a chart of countries' GDPs and corporations' sales (the chart can be found in the same issue of The Nation, page 25).  This chart had countries and corporations listed as one, on a list of top-100 "entities" based on either GDP or sales.  From this chart, it can be seen that the sales of GM, Ford, Mitsui & Co., Mitsubishi, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Exxon, Wal-Mart, Toyota, and General Electric exceed the GDPs of Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, and Peru.  The only other Latin American nations that made it on the list were Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.  However, the GDPs of Brazil and Argentina (which were juxtaposed on the list) are only double the sales of GM.  Such relationships, where corporations have (at least in a raw economic sense) more fiscal resources than the nations they invest in, are truly dangerous.  With all of these facts in mind, Dussel's importance is unquestionable.
3) Why is Dussel's book inadequate?
Dussel's "The Underside of Modernity" can be a very difficult book to read (it was for me), and its arguments can be hard to swallow.  With this in mind, I will try to show that Dussel's book is "inadequate" (in it's outreach and applicability - critique of arguments is found in the next section) by citing William McBride's review essay, "Enrique Dussel and Modernity's 'Underside'" and then going further by pointing out specific things that are left unexplored in the "The Underside of Modernity", and discussing the unfortunate lack of Dussel's own arguments in the book.
William McBride's "Enrique Dussel and Modernity's 'Underside'" attacks the translation of the book; here's a quote:
Relatively little of Dussel's extensive writing is yet available in English translation, and so the present volume is welcome simply because it exists, despite its several disappointing aspects.  The translation too often preserves Spanish idiomatic constructions, and the level of proofreading is quite low, features with obviously distract and detract from Dussel's message. (McBride, 77)
We, the English-speaking readers of Dussel, as has been stated throughout this essay, must be careful before entering into any critique, precisely because "relatively little of Dussel's extensive writing is yet available in English".  However, "The Underside of Modernity", at least as we see it, is unusually difficult to read because of its bad translation.  This really is ironic, considering that a good portion of what the book is trying to say is that people in the center and people in the periphery are unable to engage in full communication with each other, partly due to language barriers (see my discussion of the second article of the book in the second section of this essay, above).
	McBride continues:
The chapters in Part One are rather uneven in content, since most of them are addressed to one or another of the four contemporary thinkers named in the subtitle, and the respective circumstances of their original composition were quite disparate.  Part Two contains responses, of very uneven length, by only two of the four, together with a final reply by Dussel. (77)
Anyone reading "The Underside of Modernity" should be made aware that this is not a book on One Thing, but rather a collection of works that attempt to show how that One Thing (The Philosophy of Liberation) relates to Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, and Taylor.  Hence, the reader should have a knowledge of the Philosophy of Liberation and of Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, and Taylor, before diving into this book.  This will be justified more thoroughly later in this section.
Taking a break from the points raised by McBride, I shall consider one of the things that Dussel seems to have forgotten to mention.  Even though he goes very deep into the modes of thought in Europe and North America (the center), he does not examine how the center manages to act in such obviously immoral ways, and what the center did to put itself in the "central" position.  Dussel shows the reader what is wrong, and even to some extent how to fix it, but does not really give credit to those in the center (not just geographically, but economically, politically, racially, ethnically, etc., such as myself, and possibly the reader of this essay) who see (without his help) the problems inherent in (our) central society, wish to fix them, and in doing so, wish to find within ourselves the reasons for the problems to begin with.  Frank Zappa once said, "I'm not Black, but there's a whole lots of times I wish I could say I'm not White".  Well, I'm not saying that I'm "peripheral", but do I like being "central"?  I doubt that I am the only one signing with Zappa on this issue. This can be put another way: because of my religious beliefs, my experiences, and the way I've been raised, I sympathize with Dussel, but I don't know how I fit into his philosophy.  Unfortunately, Dussel offers little (if any) help in this matter.
The last major argument is that of, quite simply, over-quoting.  Dussel's arguments in this book seem like they are related more to Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, and Taylor than to Liberation Philosophy itself.  Also, entire sections are dedicated to the study and analysis of Marx, with few original arguments given.  This can lead to confusing conclusions that are difficult to grasp for anyone not intimately familiar with Dussel's writing style, his philosophy, the four philosophers in the subtitle, and Marx.  I'm not advocating that Dussel should "dumb down" his arguments - I just think that if he focused on his own arguments more than those of his contemporaries, his points would be more clear, easier to swallow, and more appropriate to a wider audience.
4) Where do Dussel's arguments fail?
This last section is meant to introduce the reader to some of the methods by which Dussel argues; this will be done by criticizing his arguments.  I will start with the two Schemas on pages 86 and 87 of "The Underside of Modernity" (first explaining the philosophical concepts associated with them), then I will criticize his use of Marx, and then I shall unveil flaws in some arguments made in "Toward a North-South Dialogue".  I will end by relating these criticisms to my statement that Dussel over-quotes, showing that Dussel should focus on creating original arguments more than relating already-made arguments to each other.
The fifth article, "Hermeneutics and Liberation" deals with the philosophy of Ricoeur (who was Dussel's teacher in Sorbonne during the early sixties - Dussel, 74), and tries to show that Ricoeur's hermeneutics doesn't go far enough and that it needs to be given a practical application.  The application that Dussel seeks is of course economics, in the following way:
The production of the text (to go directly to a final moment of Ricoeurian hermeneutics) is analogous ... to the production of the product/commodity.  The "text" and the "product/commodity" retain independence or autonomy vis-à-vis the producer ... The interpretation of the reader of the text (Ricoeur) is analogous to the use/consumption of the user/consumer of the product/commodity (Marx).
Alienation before a text would consist in that, in "the self-understanding before a text," understanding would be alienating, strange, against the ethical interests of the reader.  (Dussel, 85)
Next, Dussel gives a hermeneutic situation involving a conquistador with a bible, forcing a Mayan with the Popol-Vuh (his/her sacred scripture) to read the bible.  He quickly shows that Ricoeur does not carefully consider this situation, and claims that this is where the Philosophy of Liberation steps in (Dussel, 86).  Then, he makes the analogy between this and the Marxist model of the capitalist with the capital, the worker with the product, and the worker being forced to produce capital for the capitalist.  Yes, the two graphs look similar, but do they have anything to do with each other?  I will begin by explaining the basics of graph theory necessary for the games I am about to play.
	Graph theory is frequently used by logicians, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists to describe models and problems.  A graph is a set of vertices and edges, where (for our purposes) the vertices represent concepts and edges represent relationships.  We will be using directed graphs, where the edges are one-way (directed), therefore representing one-way relationships.  I would contend that what Dussel is doing on page 87 with Schemas 1 and 2 is establishing an isomorphism.  In logic, an isomorphism between two graphs is a function that makes one graph look like another; the existence of an isomorphism between graphs A and B indicates that A and B are isomorphic, that is, they have something in common.  (The concept of isomorphism appears throughout mathematics, and is usually defined in more general terms.)  I would say that Dussel offers an isomorphism, f, from Schema 1 onto Schema 2.  Hence, f would look like this: f(conquistador)=owner, f(Bible)=capital, f(Mayan)=producer, and f(Popol-Vuh)=product.  One simple way of seeing this isomorphism at work is: for x, where f(x)=y, replace x in Schema 1 with y (from Schema 2) - this will effectively make Schema 1 look like Schema 2.  (The definitions used here may not be applicable elsewhere, because I have simplified them for use on Dussel.  See "The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics" for the more generalized definitions.)
Just because these two directed graphs are isomorphic, doesn't mean that there exists any likeness in meaning, because, working with pure logic, an isomorphism translates one graph into another in a purely abstract sense, not taking into account what the vertices and edges actually represent.  Hence, I can draw numerous graphs that look like Dussel's, but that are not related at all.  The existence of such a counterexample should become apparent as I explain my reasoning; however, due to the fact that such a counterexample would most likely be completely ridiculous, I will not offer one here, and leave that up to the reader's imagination.
The issue of isomorphisms being purely abstract translations is nothing special; it results from the nature of graphs themselves.  Translating something as complex as a historical anecdote of a Mayan and a conquistador, or a model of Capital into a graph inevitably results in a loss of information.  A picture may be worth a thousand words, but labels with arrows between them are certainly worth much less.  The fact that Dussel had to explain, on pages 86 and 87, just below the graphs themselves, what the graphs actually represented, means that the graphs were inadequate representations of the data (or model, or situation, in this case); this proves my point.
Hence, going back to the possibility of a counterexample, we can begin to see glimpses of a rigorous argument against Dussel's analogy.  Is it possible to draw a graph that looks like Schema 1 or 2?  The use of the human imagination can yield an infinite number of possibilities here.  For example, we could shuffle the labels on the Schemas around, coming up with suggestions that the producers are dominating the conquistadors, and that the owners are forced to read the Bible.  I will not take this aspect of my argument any further, since the "infinite possibilities" suggests an infinite waste of time on the reader's part.
I will, however, attack the analogy some more.  Dussel suggests that the dominating relationships between owner and living labor, conquistador and Mayan, Bible and Popol-Vuh, and capital and product, strengthen the analogy.  Well, in order to make a counterexample here, we would only have to produce a four-vertex directed graph, consisting of two independent pairs of vertices, each pair having a dominating relationship represented by an edge.  The rest is just a matter of adding the proper edges required to construct an isomorphism.  The relationships represented by those edges could be anything, because the vertices themselves could be anything.  For example, the vertices could be cities and the edges could be roads.  We could come up with a valid counterexample just by looking at a map, and finding two pairs of cities, where within the pairs, one city is a state capital and the other is insignificant (hence a dominating relationship), and there are roads connecting all four cities in a fashion seen in Schemas 1 and 2.  Enough to pull the foundation out from under Dussel's argument?  I would say so.
Dussel of course gives us more constraints than that, but those constraints rest on the assumption that the production of a text and the production of a product/commodity are related.  Is this so?  Dussel does not give arguments for that point, instead resting those constraints on the analogy itself (hence creating a circular argument), so I do not feel that I should have to give arguments against them, since I have already shown the analogy to be flawed.
Lets step out of graph theory and move to a more general argument.  Marxism comes into the picture almost out of nowhere, and this is something that happens quite frequently in "The Underside of Modernity".  One might ask, why Marx?  "The systematic return to Marx which I undertook at the end of the decade of the seventies was due to three facts" (Dussel, 83).  Those facts seem to be "the growing misery of the Latin American continent", "in order to be able to carry out a critique of capitalism", and "because liberation philosophy had to construct a firm economics and politics" (Dussel, 83).  These three facts don't seem to answer the question adequately, and here's why: the growing misery of Latin America does not necessarily have any relation to the misery of the working classes that Marx saw (so using Marx might be misleading); a critique of capitalism from a Marxist standpoint may not be wise, since as far as we can tell, Marxist philosophy was a total flop (furthermore, the argument that capitalism "failed unquestionably for 75 percent of humanity" (Dussel, 83) does not necessarily mean that it failed for the reasons cited by Marx, or that it failed of its own doing - it may be that other factors were at play, such as corruption, for example; in any case, Dussel needs to elaborate on this); and, if Liberation Philosophy needs an economics and politics, why should it be Marxist economics and politics? why not something else? - yes, Dussel tries to answer those questions with the previous two facts, but if my conjecture that those facts are inadequate is correct, than this third fact also becomes inadequate.
What's more, Dussel pushes aside all conventional ways of seeing Marx:
Instead of studying the European commentators of Marx, I imposed on myself the task of an integral re-reading, in university seminars.  My first point of verification was to discover the abandonment of the serious, integral, creative study that the investigations on Marx had suffered at the hands of the "great" European-North American philosophers (in recent years Marx has not been taken seriously).  Some "marxiologists" edited too slowly some of his works-at the Marxist-Leninist Institute, in Berlin as well as in Moscow.  Marx was agreeable to neither Capitalism nor to Stalinism.  (Dussel, 83)
Dussel certainly knows Marx, and I won't take that away from him.  But his interpretation of Marx does not have to be the best one; it's reasonable to assume that there exists a better interpretation.  I would submit that Dussel could have at the very least related his interpretation to that of others, instead of throwing the other interpretations out in the beginning.  Or, he could have offered more reason than what he stated above for his "integral re-reading".  This is not intended as a clear strike against Dussel, but the point is that Dussel should be more clear, since relating his interpretation to that of others could at the very least clarify how his interpretation differs, which would not only spark a more interesting debate, but would make a "European-North American" reader feel more at home.
Leaving the general issue of "why Marx?" behind, lets consider some more examples of Dussel's over-stretched arguments.  Before diving into Dussel's misuse of Karl-Otto Apel, I shall attempt to explain a bit about how Dussel sees Apel.  Apel, who's thought Dussel finds to be "extremely healthy for Latin American philosophy" (Dussel, 49), introduced the concept of a transcendental "communication community" in which argumentation is done.  He extends this to create a sort of ethics.
Dussel attempts to show that the idea of arguers in Apel's "communication community" can be compared to workers in his own "life community" (something he apparently formulated in the past; it can also be known as the "community of producers" - Dussel, 54; this is taken out of Marx's philosophy, which Dussel shows on pages 56 and 57).  Since Apel's arguers (or speakers, as they are sometimes referred to) should have equality (no domination) in order for the community to be "ideal" (an "ideal communication community" being one where truth can be agreed upon) (Dussel, 27), and Dussel's (Marx's) workers (producers) should have equality (again, no domination) in the "life community" in order for that community to be ideal, Dussel seems to feel free to use Apel to analyze labor.  Here is an example of how he does this:
Who works can be led to recognize or be convinced through self-reflection that, inasmuch as producer, he or she has necessarily already recognized an ethical norm.  This ethical norm can be made explicit in the following manner: who works has already attested in actu, and with that has recognized, that practical reason is responsible for human action; that is, that the claims to justice can be and ought to be satisfied through acts-of-work, which are not only technically adequate, but also practically just.  (Dussel, 58)
In this quote, the words "argue" and "truth" are replaced by "work" and "justice", respectively.  Dussel then concludes from this corruption of Apel's text that an ideal "life community" must be presupposed in order for work to be just.  I won't dispute that conclusion, but I find the means Dussel uses to be inadequate in their rigor and logic.  Dussel did not manage to prove to us that his take on Marx and his take on Apel are equivalent, hence his use of a quote from Apel to justify his claim relating to Marxism is not valid.  It should be noted, also, that one could argue that absolute equivalence would have to be established between Marx and Apel in order to perform this word-replacement trick, since it assumes that the context of what Marx and Apel are saying is the same.  But we know that the context is not the same, because Marx speaks of economics and work, while Apel speaks of communication.  Certainly, Apel himself extends communication to a broader ethics, but that still does not necessitate an overlap with Marx.  Furthermore, Marx and Apel wrote in different times during history, used different rhetoric, and had different ends to their projects.  With this in mind, it becomes apparent that replacing words in Apel's text is a sloppy technique of formulating an argument.
	What is to be learned from these critiques?  Simple: in each case, we see Dussel trying to make an argument that actually makes a lot of sense, but he does this in a way that is too sloppy to be fully appreciated.  Is it necessary to use Ricoeur's hermeneutics in such a direct way in order to show its parallels to Capital?  And, is it necessary to replace words in Apel's statements to show the ethics necessary in a life community?  What about Marx?  Should he be used as extensively?  Dussel could have expanded on all of those concepts with his own, original, and hopefully more logical arguments, thereby possibly clearing him from these criticisms.
	Conclusion
	William McBride begins his review of Dussel by saying "My ultimate 'take' on Enrique Dussel, since I first encountered his aura, peripherally (pun intended), at the 1985 Inter-American Congress of Philosophy in Guadalajara, Mexico, is that he is one of those rare philosophers who would have had to be invented, if, by misfortune, he did not already exist" (76).  I hope that with this essay, I not only gave enough information about Dussel in order for the reader to understand McBride's pun, but also to demonstrate why he is rare, and why we would have to invent him had his existence not been a fact.  Dussel is strange, he is unique, and he carries on his shoulders enough knowledge to haunt us with his strangeness and uniqueness for a long time to come.  Maybe that won't happen, and maybe all of these issues will blow over, but, seriously, would philosophy be as much fun without him?

Works Cited
Dussel, Enrique.  The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor, and the Philosophy of Liberation.  Translated by Eduardo Mendiata.  Humanities Press International.  1996.
Friedman, Thomas L.  The Lexus and the Olive Tree.  New York.  1999.
Merriam-Webster.  Collegiate Dictionary.  10th Edition.
McBride, William.  Enrique Dussel and Modernity's "Underside".  "Review Essays".  Pp. 76-80.
Nation, The.  6 December 1999.  Pp. 25-27.
Nelson, David.  The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics.  2nd Edition.  Penguin Books.  1998.
Zappa, Frank.  "Trouble Every Day".  Freak Out!  Rykodisc.  Remastered in 1987.

Filip Pizlo

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