The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor, & the Philosophy of Liberation

Until now, North American and European philosophies have been engaged in debates about the possibility of a postmetaphysical philosophy and the consequences of the linguistic turn for the assessment of modernity; they have done so, however, without departing from the narrow horizons of their respective nationalistic perspectives. In this incisive critique, Dussel demonstrates how most of thse philosophies have either failed to give historically faithful analyses of the genesis of the "myth" of modernity, or have never engaged in a serious questioning of their own Eurocentric presuppositions. He shows how North American and European philosophers have presupposed a no-longer-acceptable philosophy of history that has led them to fall into a "developmental fallacy," the belief that there is a linear sequence that moves from the premodern, underdeveloped, or on the way to industrialization, to the modern, developed, and industrialized.

Enrique Dussel is an Argentine-Mexican writer and philosopher, who has taught at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and as a guest lecturer at many universities in Europe and North America. The author of more than fifty books, his thoughts cover many themes including: theology, politics, philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and ontology. He has been a critic of postmodernity, preferring instead the term "transmodernity."