Freedom is a self-determined space beyond any totality, defended against power’s ownership.

Evidence

Insight into this social concept of freedom (or autonomy) is not unique to Hegel, however, if we look to philosophical traditions outside Europe and North America. Argentinian-Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation has as its goal the need to articulate a concept of human freedom from outside the West’s power centers. Freedom, for Dussel, is the substance of a person with “all its uniqueness, its proper indetermination, its essence of bearing a history, a culture; it is a being that freely and responsibly determines itself” and so is always situated “beyond” what Dussel calls “the horizon of totality.” In insisting on a space of the self beyond any horizon of totality, Dussel goes one step further than Hegel did, explicitly defending the space of the self against any attempt of power to own and absorb it. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 475

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Dussel’s ‘horizon of totality’ and freedom as self-determination beyond it — a key concept for the data colonialism framework.
• XREF: Dussel’s liberation philosophy connects to decolonial thought (Mignolo, Quijano) and to how colonialism frames the self against extraction. — connects to: Power creates freedom, not the other way around. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 273; Freedom means choosing oneself within one’s world, not choosing the world itself.; Freedom is only real once it chooses its own finitude. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1176 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Power creates freedom, not the other way around. #contradicts (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 273
• Freedom means choosing oneself within one’s world, not choosing the world itself. #qualifies (0.75)
• Freedom is only real once it chooses its own finitude. #qualifies (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1176