Description
Book SynopsisArgues that European modernity has become inextricably linked with the experience of the warrior and conqueror. This title develops a powerful critique of modernity, and offers a critical response combining ethics, political theory, and ideas rooted in Christian and Jewish thought.
Trade Review“[T]his is an innovative, passionate and provocative work that carefully synthesizes excellent close readings of several important thinkers.
Against War is a significant contribution to the liberationist tradition and should attract attention across philosophy, theology, and ethnic studies.” -
Mark Kjellman,
Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory“
Against War is a tour-de-force study in ethics and the philosophy of liberation that brings together the European Jewish, Afro-Caribbean, and Latin American undersides of modern thought. Nelson Maldonado-Torres does this not for the sake of articulating an intellectual historicism or textual mastery but for the sake of illuminating his own theory of critical epistemic normativity. This long-awaited work, written by the best critical theorist of his generation in Caribbean and Latin American thought, is groundbreaking; it properly takes the ‘decolonial turn’ to another level as it inaugurates what the author aptly coins ‘decolonial ethics.’ I expect this work to receive much well deserved study for generations to come. It is a triumph.”—
Lewis R. Gordon, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Judaic Studies, Temple University
“
Against War is a treatise on a new type of ethics: decolonial ethics. As we associate discourse ethics with Jürgen Habermas, the scholarly community will soon associate decolonial ethics with Nelson Maldonado-Torres.”—
Paget Henry, author of
Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy“[T]his is an innovative, passionate and provocative work that carefully synthesizes excellent close readings of several important thinkers.
Against War is a significant contribution to the liberationist tradition and should attract attention across philosophy, theology, and ethnic studies.” -- Mark Kjellman * Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory *
Table of ContentsAbout the series ix
Preface xi
Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Titles xvii
Introduction: Western Modernity and the Paradigm of War 1
Part I. Searching for Ethics in a Violent World: A Jewish Response to the Paradigm of War
1. From Liberalism to Hitlerism: Tracing the Origins of Violence and War 23
2. From Fraternity to Altericity, or Reason in the Service of Love 51
Part II. Of Masters and Slaves, or Frantz Fanon and the Ethico-Political Struggle for Non-sexist Human Fraternity
3. God and the Other in the Self-Recognition of Imperial Man 93
4. Recognition from Below: The Meaning of the Cry and the Gift of the Self in the Struggle for Recognition 122
Part III. From the Ethical to the Geopolitical: A Latin American Response to Coloniality, Neoliberal Globalization, and War
5. Enrique Dussel's Ethics and the Philosophy of Liberation 163
6. Enrique Dussel's Contribution to the De-colonial Turn: From the Critique of Modernity to Transmodernity 187
Conclusion: Beyond the Paradigm of War 237
Notes 255
Bibliography 313
Index 335
