Liberation philosophy

Abstract

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.