Description
Book SynopsisUntil 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.
Trade Review"... an exciting breakthrough in the rethinking of Western Eurocentrism ..." -- Fredric R Jameson, Duke University "Dussel's insistence on the ethical-political centrality of widespread human misery, and on its economic basis and global scale, is a much needed antidote to the recent tendency to forget or ignore it. Anyone interested in critical theory should find this a challenging and rewarding book." -- Thomas McCarthy, Northwestern University
