1.a. Critical Theory

‘Critical theory’, in its more narrow sense, refers to Frankfurt School scholars such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and others who were more or less affiliated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt from the 1930s onwards. In its broader sense, it has also been used as referring to feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory and decolonial theory (Celikates and Flynn, Reference Celikates, Flynn, Zalta and Nodelman2023). Given the wide array of thinkers that the term ‘critical theory’ potentially refers to, it is obviously difficult to come up with a definition that satisfies everyone. Nevertheless, this subsection draws on a brief history of the concept of ‘critique’ to come up with an adequate working definition.

In early 19th Century Europe, the concept of ‘critique’, in its philosophical sense, was strongly associated with Kant’s critical philosophy. Kant derived the term from the Greek ‘krinein’, which means to separate or to distinguish. Kant’s project, as he outlines in his Critique of Pure Reason, is to separate or distinguish philosophy from both dogmatism and scepticism, which he compares to despotism and anarchism respectively (Kant, Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998). Dogmatism authoritatively imposes propositions without room for questioning; the reader is simply required to accept them. The epistemological danger is obvious: like the despot to which Kant compares it, dogmatist philosophy cannot rely on arguments for support and will therefore eventually resort to the use of force. Scepticism, on the other hand, amounts to the wholesale rejection of the possibility of knowledge, which, for Kant, is equally undesirable. Scepticism, after all, is self-refuting: how could we possibly know that nothing can be known?

Kant therefore outlines his philosophical project, which is to avoid both dogmatism and scepticism. For this philosophical approach, he coins the term ‘criticism’. The anti-dogmatism of criticism consists of the fact that it inquires into the conditions of (the knowability of) things – it does not stop at the phenomenal realm but proceeds towards its transcendental conditions. Whereas dogmatism claims to understand truth in itself and scepticism denies the possibility to know anything whatsoever, critique proceeds by inquiring into the possibilities of knowledge. Kant’s critical project is fundamentally about leading phenomena back to their conditions, conditions that (against the sceptic’s contention) can be known. This questioning of the conditions of the given is the most important characteristic of critical theory (cf. Horkheimer, Reference Horkheimer and Vogelmann2021). As is well known, for Kant, these conditions were inter alia the subject’s transcendental categories of understanding, through which he was able to distinguish (krinein) between the knowable and the unknowable.

Today, critical theory still stands in this Kantian tradition, insofar as its central project revolves around the inquiry into the conditions of (social, political, economic, historic, etc.) phenomena. The critical project was first radicalized by Hegel and Marx, who turned to the historical conditions of Kant’s transcendental subjectivity itself. Both argued in their own way that the rational subject was, in fact, the product of historical struggles, which explains why contemporary critical thinking pays so much attention to the analysis of power relations. The reason why critical thinking is nowadays more associated with Marx than with Hegel, however, can be explained by turning to a second characteristic of critical thought.

Critical thinking seeks to move beyond analytical description, into the realm of the normative. Although this normative dimension was already present in Kant,Footnote ¹ it is best exemplified by Marx, whose final thesis on Feuerbach has by now almost turned into a cliché. To paraphrase, Marx argues that the point of critical thinking is not only to interpret the world, but to change it. The precise relation between interpretation and change remains a fundamental point of contention in critical theory. Whereas some have taken Marx’s comment as a call to relinquish philosophy in favour of revolutionary activism, Vattimo and Zabala (Reference Vattimo and Zabala2011) have shown that interpretation, or viewing things in light of their historicity, can constitute a revolutionary act in its own right. For now, it suffices to underline that critical theory cannot be thought of in merely descriptive terms.

For a third and final characteristic of critical thinking, we turn to Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s classic work Dialectic of Enlightenment, the central thesis of which holds that ‘[myth] is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology’ (Horkheimer and Adorno, Reference Horkheimer, Adorno and Noerr2002, p. xviii). The book deconstructs the rationality/irrationality binary by showing how mythology and enlightenment are equally grounded in the effort to install the subject as master over nature by means of instrumental reason. However, in doing so, the subject inescapably repeats the natural violence that it was so eager to escape in the first place. By exposing the dialectic that relapsed the continent of enlightenment thinking into the barbary of Nazism, Adorno and Horkheimer underscored that rational thinking may be problematic in itself. This critique opened the door to decolonial scholars who challenge the supposed neutrality of contemporary scientific practices.

This very brief genealogy of critical theory, up to the first generation of Frankfurt School thinkers, allows us to work with a definition of critical theory that encompasses three facets. First of all, critical theory inquires into the conditions of things; it refuses to take them simply for granted and is, hence, anti-dogmatic. Insofar as it actually claims to know these conditions, it is also anti-sceptic. Secondly, critical theory practises critique not for its own sake, but in the pursuit of change in the broadest sense of the word. Thirdly, critical theory ventures into the heart of epistemology itself, problematizing rational thinking, especially in its instrumental manifestations, by exposing its possibly violent implications.

1.b. Decolonial Theory

It is not difficult or controversial to show that decolonial theory fits the above-mentioned characteristics of critical theory perfectly. Nevertheless, for the purposes of our argument, it is important to make explicit how decolonial thinkers put the above-mentioned characteristics into practice. To that end, we turn to the writings of Aníbal Quijano, the Peruvian sociologist who Mignolo and Walsh credit for having provided the groundwork of decolonial theory (2018, p. 23). Especially his two essays ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’ and ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’ have become classics in the field. Both essays develop Quijano’s concept of ‘coloniality of power’ (colonialidad del poder), which he uses to designate the lingering political, social and cultural domination of Latin America, Africa and Asia by Europe.

Quijano discusses the social classification of human beings into racial categories – or racialization – as one of the most distinctive moments in the formation of modernity. Quijano argues that the European colonial imposition of a supposedly universal paradigm of knowledge based on Cartesian subject-object dualism, which allowed for the reification and commodification of knowledge in the world market, cannot be understood without taking into account processes of racialization (2007, pp. 171–174). Eurocentric subjectivity, one could paraphrase Quijano, developed by means of negation of the particular non-subjectivity that was conceptualized as the non-European other. This resulted in a binary, dualist and Eurocentric epistemology, which was enforced parallel to the spread of European colonial supremacy across the globe (2000, p. 542). Quijano’s proposition that the contemporary paradigm of knowledge generation is, in fact, hegemonic by virtue of its origin in European colonialism – where hegemony is understood as the particular assuming the representation of the universal (cf. Laclau and Mouffe, Reference Laclau and Mouffe2001, p. xiii) – is commonplace in today’s decolonial discourse (e.g., Mbembe, Reference Mbembe2016, p. 33; Mignolo, Reference Mignolo2007, p. 450).

Quijano adds to this observation that the colonial dualisms (rationality/irrationality, civilized/barbaric, modern/traditional, etc.) are supplemented by an epistemic ideal of totality. This ideal depicts society as a closed, hierarchical arrangement of functional relations between the whole and its parts. It assumes a singular historical progression for the entire totality and a rationality that requires every component to conform to this overarching logic (2007, p. 176). According to Quijano, this totalitarian logic led to the creation of the current ‘world-system’, a totality characterized by the coloniality of power, capitalism and Eurocentrism (2000, p. 545).

This investigation into Quijano’s thinking suffices to conclude that his work places him firmly in the critical tradition: his assertions explicitly thematize colonialism as a necessary condition for modernity, in which European scientific and philosophical rationality played a key role, with the ultimate goal of changing the current world-system in the process of epistemic decolonization. Quijano outlines the particular process of change he has in mind:

This quote is important, as it underlines that Quijano does not object to rationality and universality per se, but only to their current configurations in the world-system. The key question is, of course, what this new rationality and new universality entail.

Although it is safe to say that decolonial theory, insofar as it elaborates the project outlined by Quijano, expands upon the existing critical tradition, it would be controversial to reduce decolonial theory to a mere subset of critical theory. That is because many decolonial theorists have underlined that classical (Frankfurt School) critical theory is insufficient to rely upon as a theoretical framework for carrying out the decolonial project. In fact, one of the most cited papers in decolonial scholarship, ‘Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-Coloniality’ by Walter Mignolo, opens by specifically inquiring into the relevance of the critical project for decolonial studies.

Mignolo echoes our observation that the essence of critical theory resides in the questioning of the given, rather than taking it for granted. He then goes on to state, however, that critical theory has to be ‘taken further, to the point and project of de-linking and of being complementary with decolonization. That is, as the foundations of the non-Eurocentered diversality of an-other-paradigm’ (2007, p. 485). The route he envisions to arrive at this ‘other paradigm’, Mignolo describes as follows:

Mignolo goes on to argue that critical theory of the Marxist type is insufficient to address today’s problems, because – generally speaking – the most fundamental differential in the contemporary world is not that of class, but of race. He points to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Anzaldúa’s concept of ‘border thinking’ as examples that can help take critical theory ‘to the negated side of the epistemic colonial difference: to the geo- and bio-logical negated locations of knowledge and understanding’ (2007, p. 487).

This border thinking, Mignolo underlines, ‘delinks’ (from Quijano’s concept of desprenderse; Mignolo, Reference Mignolo2007, p. 453) from the Totality (i.e., totalitarianism) of Western epistemology, the Frankfurt School and postmodernism included (2007, p. 493). Mignolo insists that the decolonial project is ‘beyond’ classical critical theory because it explicitly departs from ‘the experience of humiliation and marginalization that have been and continue to be enacted by the implementation of the colonial matrix of power’ (2007, p. 492). What Mignolo advocates here, in short, is the localization of critical discourse in the periphery, i.e., taking up the particular perspective of the marginalized. This ‘obsession’ with localizing discourse in the margins has, in fact, been present in decolonial philosophy since Dussel’s early formulations of liberation philosophy (2022, p. 49). The concept of localization is deeply intertwined with the decolonial concern for alterity, as we shall see in the following section.

Mignolo envisions border thinking as an operation that mobilizes colonial and imperial differences as mediators to establish the connection between various excluded and marginalized perspectives. The aim of this border thinking is to delink from hegemonic universality and replace it, in line with Quijano’s decolonial project, with a new rationality and a new universality, or rather, to use another concept of Dussel, a pluriversality (2007, p. 498). As we have seen, Mignolo insists that this border thinking is critical. But what could he mean by this? Let us review two options.

1.c. Decoloniality between Scepticism and Dogmatism

If Mignolo is using the term ‘critical’ in the classical sense outlined above, this would imply that critical border thinking is either an extension of, or largely compatible with, existing critical theory. This would, however, contradict the necessity for radical change that Mignolo’s concept of ‘delinking’ calls for. Alternatively, one could assume that Mignolo accords a different meaning to the term ‘critique’, one that comes in sight through processes of epistemic decolonization. From the standpoint of classical critical theory, this would however raise the question whether these processes of epistemic decolonization are not themselves dogmatic or sceptical. If the critique, to which epistemic decolonization ought to be subjected, is itself the product of that very process, what guarantees do we have that this process will not lead us down the path of dogmatism or scepticism?

With this question, we arrive at the central tension of this paper, namely the call to ‘shift the geography of reason’ in an effort to do justice to alterity on the one hand (cf. Gordon, Reference Gordon2011), and the requirements of critical thinking on the other. As we have argued in this section, it is evident that discourses of decolonization draw extensively upon the critical tradition. They rely on this tradition to analyse the power structures and historic conditions that lay behind contemporary epistemic discourses. In this regard, they are critical in the classical sense. At the same time, however, decolonial theorists like Quijano and Mignolo advocate going beyond the critical tradition by means of epistemological decolonization, because Eurocentric critical thought allegedly continues to be versed in coloniality. Hence, they argue that critical thought as we know it is incapable of genuine interaction with marginalized epistemologies. Going beyond the critical tradition, in turn, implies foregrounding – by means of border thinking – perspectives that have been marginalized and racialized by the colonial matrix of power. As we will explain shortly, this is the result of the decolonial concern for alterity.

The tension we draw attention to stems from the fact that a concern for alterity is not ipso facto critical. In fact, this concern could be outright dogmatic, when one grants validity to viewpoints only because they are excluded. Some perspectives are, after all, excluded from contemporary epistemic discourses with good reason, for example, because they are deeply rooted in sexism or racism – perspectives that decolonial scholars are themselves, it seems, eager to exclude as well. Some decolonial scholars would, in a critical move, respond to this point by calling attention to the fact that the current academic standards, which we use to evaluate epistemic practices, are by no means neutral: they are historically conditioned by colonial structures, and therefore require changing.

At the same time, however, an overly critical stance could obstruct decolonial aims as well. Namely, by considering all knowledge as being conditioned by coloniality, the critical stance risks ending up at the sceptical (or relativist) position where epistemology is reducible to politics, economics, societal actors, etc. Apart from the question how, in such a perspectives, one can account for one’s knowledge of these colonial conditions in a way that does not expose the coloniality of that very knowledge claim, it is also difficult to explain how different epistemic practices are possible if there is ‘no outside’ (or alterity) to coloniality (cf. Mignolo & Walsh, Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, p. 108). What is required, therefore, is an epistemological framework that explains how the transformation of knowledge configurations is possible, without abandoning either critical thinking or the concern for alterity. In the following section, we will discuss how Dussel takes up this task.

2.a. The Analectical Method

Let us turn to the works of Enrique Dussel for some insights into this matter. Dussel was not primarily a semiotician (e.g., Mignolo) or sociologist (e.g., Quijano), but first and foremost a philosopher and theologian. As a theologian, Dussel was especially involved in liberation theology, an authentically Latin American approach to theology which started out from a preferential option for the poor (Gutiérrez, Reference Gutiérrez, Inda and Eagleson2014, pp. 69–70) and whose adherents were engaged in (and persecuted for) their involvement in liberatory struggles across the continent. Although Church leaders such as Joseph Ratzinger (Reference Ratzinger2004, pp. 483–485) notably deemed liberation theology a Marxist rebranding of Catholicism and, hence, at odds with Church doctrine, liberation theology’s critique of the concept of ‘development’ would prove a highly influential precursor for contemporary decolonial movements (Mignolo & Walsh, Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, p. 142).

The (partially) theological origin of the Latin American decolonial movement explains the particular attention it has always paid to the topic of alterity (and the theological concepts that, conceptualized as the Absolute other – God – come with it). More precisely, one could say that decolonial philosophy, such as Dussel’s, and liberation theology share one fundamental aim: rendering the ‘other’ concrete. The other should not be abstracted ‘away’ into some noumenal realm, nor interpreted as a mere instantiation within a larger global narrative, but should be thought through its historical, political, economic situatedness. Dussel, especially in his later works, takes up this task through a rereading of Marx through Levinas and of Levinas through Marx (Allen & Mendieta, Reference Allen, Mendieta, Allen and Mendieta2021, pp. 8–9). In doing so, he seeks to leave room for both radical critique and radical alterity.

Dussel is especially interested in the ethical dimensions of Marx’s thought and has repeatedly criticized the Western Marxist tradition from Lukács onwards for having overlooked this aspect of Marx’s work (2013, p. 398). That is why, from the end of the 1960’s onwards, the focus of Dussel’s work has been on reading Marx not solely as a critic of ideology and political economy, but as the precursor of a critical ethics as well (2013, p. 398). Dussel’s critical ethics, as an attempt to reconcile critique and alterity in the decolonial discourse, can best be explained by an examination of Dussel’s concept of ‘analectics’.

In his early work, for example Philosophy of Liberation, analectics (from Greek ‘analogos’, meaning ‘beyond logic’ but also ‘analogous’) is presented as a philosophical method that contrasts with the dialectical one. Dussel describes the latter in Levinasian terms, as the movement of totality, the ‘expansion of “the same” that assassinates “the other” and totalizes “the other” in “the same”’ (1985, §2.5.4.3). The dialectical process Dussel has in mind interprets every other as an instantiation of the same. An everyday example of this would be the interpretation of other cultures using the same concepts of one’s own culture. The dialectical process overcomes all differences, but comes at a double cost. First of all, by reducing the other to an instantiation of the same, one annihilates an irreducible alterity – for example, by ignoring fundamental cultural differences. Second of all, this process renders genuine change impossible, as the totality of sameness incorporates every alterity and does not allow itself to be radically challenged or changed by this otherness.

For Dussel, genuine change can therefore only occur in, what he paradoxically refers to as, ‘the exteriority of internal transcendentality’ (1985, §4.3.7.5). This interior transcendentality echoes the Marxist notion of the proletariat being both inside and outside of the capitalist system. For Marx, the paradoxical place the proletariat occupies in the capitalist system is the reason why change can only come from them. Analogous to this train of thought, Dussel envisions analectics as a philosophical movement that supports this internal exteriority by departing from an affirmation of it (1985, §5.3.4). In other words, it is only by means of affirming alterity that true liberation can be achieved (1985, §2.6.5.3). In a different essay, Dussel criticizes the first generation of Frankfurt School thinkers for not having thematized the disruptive affirmation of alterity that Dussel finds in Levinas (1985, §5.3.3; 2022, p. 63–64). Dussel argues that this is precisely the reason why classical critical theory has not been able to develop an ethics in the fundamental meaning of the term.

That is not to say that Dussel’s philosophy of liberation is a mere reiteration of Levinas’s ethics of alterity. Already in his early work Method for a Philosophy of Liberation, Dussel provides a critique of Levinas. Dussel explains that the alterity that Levinas speaks about is so absolute that it veers towards equivocity. In other words, any meaningful discussion of this other becomes impossible (or unethical) because every concept profanes the other’s otherness. The consequence of this, Dussel argues, is that Levinas could simply never envision this other to be an Indigenous American, an African or an Asian (1974, p. 181). Levinas’s ethics simply doesn’t allow for a rethinking of the history of philosophy from its ‘underside’, namely the Latin American periphery, because any determination of the other automatically constitutes a violation. This leads Dussel to the conclusion that, where the first generation Frankfurt School disregards otherness (or alterity) in favour of critique, Levinas disregards concreteness (or critique) in favour of alterity, which makes ethical discourse and action impossible. The analectical method is precisely intended to reconcile the Frankfurt School’s materialism with Levinas’ transcendence, critique with alterity, theory with praxis, logic with ethics.

The concrete goal Dussel has in mind for his analectical method, as mentioned in the introduction, is localizing discourse. For Dussel, philosophy is not only about propositions (enuntiationes) but also about the place where those philosophical propositions are articulated (locus enuntiationis). Before philosophizing, it is worthwhile to reflect on questions of location: who am I and from where do I speak. This should not be understood as a capitulation to relativism. For Dussel, the challenge has always been to think how, from a particular context (e.g., the Latin American periphery) philosophical insights with global validity can emerge (2022, p. 59). The aim of the localization of discourse is to foster an intercultural philosophical dialogue that helps modernity transform into what Dussel calls trans-modernity. In line with Dussel’s analectics, it does so by starting from an affirmation of the outside (alterity) of the dominant academic institutions (2022, p. 311).

In short, Dussel’s analectics presents us with a transformative view of liberation, not as anarchy but as the creation of a new order incorporating elements of the existing world (1985, §2.6.3 ff.). This transformation may include destructive moments but is ultimately constructive, as it emphasizes ideational organizing and institution-building akin to some forms of democratic socialism (Martín Alcoff, Reference Martín Alcoff2017, p. 19). This is reflected by the interdependency of dialectics and analectics; dialectics critiques beings by relating them to their conditions, revealing possibilities for resistance and change by uncovering the potential for alterity to emerge. This way, Dussel conceptualizes his critical ethics as an alternative to blind faith or irrationality (2013, p. 206). As a philosophical method, analectics reshapes traditional logical categories by replacing strict identity (A=A) and difference with a logic of analogy based on similarity and distinction. According to this hermeneutic logic, concepts are never fully demarcated and meanings continually diverge and converge.

We will end our discussion of Dussel’s analectical method with the remark that the concept of ‘analogy’ was historically used by medieval philosophers to meaningfully discuss God while respecting the ontological distinction between the finite and the infinite. This makes it not all that surprising that Dussel, too, engages in theological vocabulary to describe his analectical method, which departs from the ‘revelation of the Other’. At times, Dussel’s wording makes it seem as if the reconciliation between critique and alterity simultaneously signals a reconciliation between philosophy and theology (or reason and faith, for that matter) as well. Take, for example, Dussel’s assertion that the affirmation of alterity requires a foundational faith (fe), in which the other is trusted (in Spanish: con-fianza) and their words taken to be true (für Wahr halten; 2020, p. 66). In his Philosophy of Liberation (Reference Dussel, Martinez and Maryknoll1985, §2.4.7.3–4), Dussel states:

It should be reminded that this faith, which forms the starting point of the hermeneutic process of (intercultural) dialogue that allows the progression of mutual understanding instead of falsification of each other’s positions (Dussel, Reference Dussel2020, pp. 69 & 76), is both the condition of and conditioned by the current system which it seeks to criticize. Despite Dussel’s occasional misreading of Derrida (e.g., 2022, pp. 187–226; 2004b, p. 330; see Garbarino, Reference Garbarino2020) and at the risk of trafficking in Eurocentric vocabulary, we remark that Dussel’s position comes close to that of deconstruction, as his analectics revolve around the idea that conditioning is only possible from some sort of unconditioned revelation, but that this unconditioned revelation, in turn, depends on conditions in order to reveal itself. This paradoxical formulation might help better understand the relation Dussel has in mind between dialectics and analectics: the latter does not exclude the former, but rather presupposes and transforms it – by affirmation of the other. The faith Dussel speaks of is therefore neither a blind faith nor an irrational one, as the other can at most be unconditioned ‘to some extent [en alguna medida]’ (Dussel, Reference Dussel1974, p. 200).Footnote ²

2.b. Dussel’s Concept of Life

Dussel grounds the myriad tensions in his thought (critique/alterity, philosophy/theology, reason/faith) in an unconditional revelation. As we will discuss in this subsection, this unconditional revelation should be understood as life itself. Dussel’s concept of life becomes more tangible when placed in the context of his ethical reading of Marx. According to Dussel, Marx views ‘living labour’ (trabajo vivo) as endowed with absolute dignity and as the absolute source of all value (2020, p. 88). Capitalism, by contrast, is criticized as the ‘idolization of death’ (2020, p. 111) as it appropriates and renders lifeless the value it extracts from the living community.Footnote ³

The living community, for Marx and Dussel, is external to the capitalist system. In order to make this externality more concrete, Dussel points to Marx’s well-known writings on fetishization, which Marx contrasts with critique. Dussel draws attention to the fact that critique always retraces relationships, while fetishization continuously seeks to abstract from them (2020, pp. 92–93). This gives us an essential indication of why life, as living labour, is external to capitalism: because the former is rooted in the relationality of the community, whereas the latter negates that relationality. This means that liberation can only be truly transformative when it is rooted in the relationality of life itself. In his later work, Dussel formulates this in his liberation principle, stipulating ‘the deontological moment or ethical-critical duty of transformation as a necessary condition for the reproduction of the life of the victim, and as an expression of the feasible development of human life in general’ (2013, p. 419). The aim of all liberation, therefore, is a transformation (i.e., de-fetishization) of existing structures for the sake of the exteriority of the other as a concrete living relational being.

Not only capitalism finds its ‘source’ in life: philosophy does so too. In fact, Dussel traces the universality and rationality of philosophy back to the concreteness of everyday life. It is, after all, from concrete life that the ‘universal core problems’ (núcleos problemáticos universales) of philosophy emerge, which are the fundamental questions that every human being faces when confronted with the ‘totality of the real’. These questions are strongly connected, Dussel argues, to questions of reproduction and development of human society. The universal core problems concern, for example, questions surrounding human subjectivity, nature, freedom, ethics, etc. In other words, the universal ‘whys’, as Dussel refers to them (2009, p. 500).

The universal whys lead to a formal concept of universal rationality. Dussel conceptualizes this universality as providing reasons in support of assertions that deal with the universal core problems of life (2009, p. 501). This leads to the conclusion, he argues, that the often assumed break between logos and mythos at the origin of philosophy makes no sense, as mythology is already a way of rationally responding to the core problems of humanity. The transition from mythos to logos is more a gradual process, in which terms gain in univocal precision, but lose a richness in meaning (2009, pp. 501–503).

Dussel does not favour one over the other. In line with his analectical method, he acknowledges that philosophy depends to some extent on precise terminology to function, but always and necessarily has to depart from the ambiguities of concrete material life. It is at this point that he sees a role carved out for the philosopher. The philosopher is the liminal being that traces the array of conceptual structures and categories that have been articulated as a response to life core’s questions back to material life itself. Dussel speaks of ‘ordering’ the responses that have been provided to life’s core problems, a task fulfilled by philosophers throughout space and time. He points to examples from the sociology of philosophy: the ‘schools of life’ in ancient Greece, the calmécac of the Aztecs, the sage communities in ancient Egypt, etc. (Dussel, Reference Dussel2009, p. 503). Simply put, their task has to been to trace back the particular to the universal and find the one amongst the many.

Let us briefly recapitulate the path traced so far. The first section outlined that decolonial scholars take a lot of inspiration from critical theory, but also argue for a departure from it. This raised the question whether this also implies a departure from critical thinking towards dogmatism or scepticism. We answered this question by turning to Dussel and his efforts to reconcile critique with alterity through his reading of Marx, which informs his decolonial critique of global capitalism. Dussel’s reading, nevertheless, foregrounds the ethical aspects of Marx, retracing both economic and philosophical systems to their common origin in concrete communal life. This critical ethics, like his analectical method, neither favours critique over alterity nor alterity over critique, but seeks to put them into relation by showing how critique is only possible by establishing a relation with alterity.Footnote ⁴ Conversely, the other can only become manifest in its otherness through this critique.

This means that alterity is both the beginning and the end of critique, so to say, and critique is the beginning and end of alterity. Dussel entrusts philosophers with the task of criticizing economic, political and philosophical system by thinking them from the lived exterior relations that support them (which, as we have seen, takes its lead from Marx’s de-fetishization). The critical ethics Dussel has in mind is, therefore, first and foremost an ethics of relationality. In the third and final section, we will examine the concept of relationality further.