The Indigenous Dimension of the Intersocietal: Dussel, Exteriority and the Sámi People

Proponents of uneven and combined development (U&CD) as a theoretical approach to International Relations (IR) have presented it as providing the conceptual means for overcoming Eurocentrism. While the U&CD scholars have made valuable contributions to anti-Eurocentric IR scholarship, this article argues that U&CD has analytical limitations that impede its anti-Eurocentric potential. These limitations derive from U&CD’s reliance on the concepts of ‘development’ and the ‘whip of external necessity’, which require developmental ranking of societies and lock U&CD into a state-centric social ontology. To provide complementary conceptual resources to overcome U&CD’s analytical limitations, this article introduces Enrique Dussel’s liberation philosophy (LP), which can incorporate peoples other than states as agents and entities of global politics through its concept of ‘exteriority’. U&CD and LP are then jointly applied to analyse the relations between the Nordic states and the indigenous Sámi people to assess the approaches’ relative strengths and weaknesses and identify synergies between them. Based on this assessment, the article outlines the potential for synthesising a ‘thin’ version of U&CD with LP, by using the concept of ‘exteriority’ to reorient U&CD’s analytical focus towards people excluded by the states-system.

Ethics of Responsibility and Ambiguity of Politics in Levinas’s Philosophy

The destruction of man in the Shoah or Holocaust did not mean that Levinas argues in favor of turning away from the socio-historical reality to cultivate his own little garden. The deepest truth of subjectivity can be found in an alterity that calls for a socio-political responsibility. The political implications are rooted in different layers of Levinas’s thought. In his Talmudic comments, Levinas questions the reality of war as the truth of politics. But his explorations of subjectivity, ethical relationality and society allow to understand different political options such as contract theory (responsibility in the first person), liberation philosophy and human rights (responsibility in the second person) and the necessity of building a just society (ethics in the third person). Paradoxically, a just and equitable society ignores the uniqueness of the unique other. While organized responsibility is necessary, it introduces a new form of violence. In this article, we bring together the different layers in Levinas’s political vision and we explore its limits. A fundamental question is whether Levinas’s vision of politics is based on ethics or whether his ethics is a critique of politics.

Literature, philosophy in Latin American

Within the Latin American intellectual community, the relationship between philosophy and literature constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in its development. Much Latin American literature is characterized by profound philosophical concerns, focusing on the question of identity. From the time of the conquest and colonization of the American continent in the 1500s, a debate regarding the humanity of the recently discovered inhabitants began in Spain. This debate would prove to be one of the most revealing controversies of sixteenth-century Europe. At the point of colonial expansion, Europe projected a logocentric vision which would incite a unique Latin Americanist philosophical discourse relating to the question of identity. During the nineteenth century, philosophical discourse was formulated principally through literary expression. At first the quest for a cultural identity was the philosophical focus, although two conflicting positions were evident: the desire to achieve cultural independence from Europe and a yearning for Latin America to become European. This latter position inspired the urge to identify with European culture and from the mid-1900s, with the political and economic success of the USA. In the twentieth century, from the time of the University Reform of 1918, an academic philosophy emerged close to that of Europe and began to diversify the Latin American philosophical panorama. From the various philosophical stances which arose at that time, one that dominated the cultural arena, despite its occasional relegation to a secondary position in academia, was the urge to articulate a Latin Americanist philosophical discourse which would succeed in transcending its own frontiers through liberation philosophy, beginning in the 1960s.

Argentina, philosophy in

Philosophy has been present throughout Argentine cultural life since the beginning of Spanish colonization. Despite institutional ups and downs, the teaching of philosophy was a practically constant component of higher and even secondary education. The principal currents that shaped that teaching for more than three centuries were Scholasticism, French ideology, eclectic spiritualism, positivism and in the twentieth century, all of the contemporary manifestations, such as, Husserlian phenomenology, existentialism, analytical philosophy and structuralism. A permanent characteristic, nevertheless, has been that the political vicissitudes of the country affected educational institutions. In the nineteenth century, during the period of national independence and organization, public figures used philosophical ideas to analyse the problems of society and to make the political and institutional contributions that a country in formation required. Juan Bautista Alberdi and Domingo Sarmiento are, in this respect, two representative examples. In the twentieth century, the figure of the professional philosopher, one who is interested in philosophical research for itself, emerged and expanded. However, thought that reflected direct interest in the problems of the community and in the ethical demands of praxis did not disappear during this era. This can be seen in such thinkers as José Ingenieros and Alejandro Korn and more recently in what has been called liberation philosophy. Academic philosophy has made considerable progress. In the second half of the twentieth century, it has attained a high level of professional quality. In some cases, even original contributions have been made which go beyond assimilation or commentary about external philosophical influences. In Argentina, as in the rest of Latin America, philosophy began as a pure transplant brought by those who conquered the continent. Upon creating centres of higher education (either as part of the religious orders or with the character of universities), the philosophical teaching being practised in the Spanish universities of Salamanca and Alcalá was reproduced in the Spanish colonies. Argentine philosophy shares the same general characteristics and historical periods with the philosophies developed in other Latin American countries. In general terms, philosophy can be divided into three periods: the colonial period, the nineteenth century, or national period and the twentieth century.

Liberation philosophy

Philosophy of liberation emerged in Argentina early in the 1970s with the explicit intention of proposing a liberating alternative to the diagnosis of structural dependence offered by the social sciences (particularly the so-called ‘theory of dependence’). Some of the original intentions of liberation philosophy were to make poor and marginalized people the subjects, or authors, of philosophy and to collaborate in the process of distancing philosophy from academia and exclusively professional settings. Social conflict and pressing national needs were topics of debate at that time. All thought started with the recognition and assessment of the experience of alterity. Horacio Cerutti-Guldberg has proposed the phrase ‘philosophies for liberation’ as this kind of reflection deals with multiple philosophical positions and privileges the historical process over philosophy.