Enlightening Global Communication: Liberation Philosophy and the Intercultural Stand of the ‘Other

Abstract

Based on historical records the second half of the twentieth century can be marked as a point of departure for a substantial movement on the topic of liberation across the world; liberation which is contained within a contentious critical popular voice of change on the prevailing and broad political structure of the world. In this period, in different corners of the world people were in protest and war to gain their long lived anguish of being free from the colonial culture of subjugation and exclusion. Although some of the revolutionary movements of this era tended to have economic, socio-cultural and other manifestations, the ultimate anomaly of all these questions were rooted in the ontological and practical premises of liberation, i.e. the enlightenment of the ‘Other’, the negation of an enforced hegemony, and the reformulation of an intercommunicative just and rational global history of humanity. The key concern of human redemption calls for self-realization as both a particular and universal being by means of methodic politicization. In this paper I sketch the main arguments of liberation theology and Enerique Dussel’s liberation philosophy which work for the reconstruction of intersubjective and intercultural communications on the basis of dual redemption in one, which is, emancipation of the ‘Other’ as an initial and the emancipation of humankind as an end.

Keywords: ‘Other’, enlightenment, exteriority, intercultural communication, universality, trans-modern pluriverse