To understand this book, one needs a knowledge of Marxist and capitalist economics, and familiarity with Christian theology and the major philosophers of the Western world and their Latin American interpreters. The reader must connect the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, Karl Mannheim, Herbert Marcuse, Karl Marx, and Max Weber with Frantz Fanon’s theory of Third World liberation, Leopoldo Zea’s belief in liberation as the major Latin American philosophy, Augusto Salazar Bondy’s search for the origins of liberation thought, and Enrique Dussel’s contention that populism is synonymous with liberation. The author, a philosopher, accentuates the works of those for whom theory, not praxis, is paramount. He presents the writings of these (often obscure) thinkers in a loose style which includes an excessive use of quotations.
In seeking to identify a philosophy of liberation Cerutti asks whether almost five centuries of foreign control, economic dependence, and retrograde thinking have created a culture of domination and a preoccupation with liberation. He points out that a sense of historiography, a knowledge of political economy, a comprehension of the effects of science and technology on political power, and insight into the role of culture in society can lead to a philosophy of liberation that historians can use as a tool of analysis.
Cerutti focuses on Argentina while trying to explain the state of the philosophy of liberation in Latin America, which he divides into two schools. The populist school includes peronismo, emphasizes protest as a part of the Latin tradition, and is basically anti-Marxist and nonrevolutionary. The school critical of populism embraces historical materialism. Cerutti stresses the thinking of Argentina’s Enrique Dussel, who states that a basic incompatibility exists between European Marxism and the Latin tradition, and that a compromise has emerged in the form of criollo socialism, which seeks to convert, not destroy, the bourgeoisie.
Cerutti views dependency paradigms as manifestations of liberation philosophy. He shows that dependency theories are heuristic devices that concentrate on imperialism and nationalism. He also clearly illustrates the differences between diffusionist and dependency models.
Cerutti’s best chapter relates liberation theology to liberation philosophy. He views liberation theology as utopian, and as a way station on the Christian road to reconciliation with global historical reality. He finds dependency thinking in liberation theology, and notes that liberation theologists reject the diffusionist model, and accept class struggle as a part of the process of eliminating dependency. They regard liberation as an earthly as well as a spiritual goal; understand the conflicts between idealism and materialism; and conceive of Christianity as part of Latin America’s revolutionary ethos, as exemplified by Cuba’s support for the Sandinistas’ unique Christian-socialism.
The author claims that his work is not original and that he is content to reelaborate and integrate the ideas of others. If nothing more, his astute observations about the philosophy of liberation help liberate philosophy.
