Analogy and Communication

Abstract

Analogy makes possible the dialogue between people. This dialogue, at the intercultural level and from distinct ontological comprehensions of life, cannot be achieved from a univocal pretension of meaning. Analogy permits, especially at the rhetoric level of Political Philosophy, an adequate interpretation of such complex concepts as people, state or rights. A semantics of these concepts by similarity allows us to advance in the process towards a better interpretation of the other interlocutor’s expression though never reaching identity.

1. Introduction

Univocal communication is only possible when the meaning of the words or signs that it involves is abstract. In the case of human communication, when a human being communicates with another regarding their ontological, biographical, historical, personal world, the enunciation loses equally and to a greater extent its univocal quality, because the horizon of sense1 (the “comprehension of being” that M. Heidegger referred to, which is not identical to that of other such worlds) gives to each of the entities of the world a distinct sense2 (which is what one seeks to communicate within the context of an existential dialogue between persons), which leads certain philosophers to speak of an inevitable degree of incommunicability, because of the ontological incommensurability of the worlds that constitute the subject of the enunciation at issue. Here we would be then in the case opposite to that of a determined univocal character; which is to say that here we are confronting the virtually absolute equivocal character of incommunicability, even though the same word3 does not have the same meaning (which is why it is opined that the word uttered by the person who enunciates is incomprehensible for the listener, who seeks to achieve a univocal understanding, which is identical). To the contrary, I will argue here that there can be a communication through similarity, but which is not identical, of the same word in each of the worlds of the interlocutors involved, since the expression of one can have, in the world of the other a meaning which is distinct but similar4, and thus approximately comprehensible (which could increase mutual comprehension by means of a dialogue within the context of “analogical time”5).

And so, between the univocal character that presupposes a simplification of the semantic content of that which is communicated, and the equivocal character of that which is diverse without shared meaning, we must situate the use of analogy which has reference to the communicative reason that makes it possible for there to be greater flexibility, richness of content and the possibility of undertaking a dialogue between human worlds, cultures or realities which unfold diachronically within a temporal context: this begins with a minimum level of mutual comprehension and then can increase through the widening of the common semantic framework where the hermeneutical action of the word of the other gradually assumes more fully and deeply the meaning of the words and of the world of the other. Analogy comes closer to identity without ever fully coinciding, as in the case of the asymptotic line (moment 3 of the figure below which represents an impossible point of identity).

Clarification regarding Figure 1: The limits of a process of communication are marked by extremes (1) and (3), and it is between these that the similarity is achieved, around which communicative dialogue is practiced, as in the case of an asymptotic line (a) which represents the increase in analogical similarity, from 1 to 2 in c, but which never coincides with equivocal incommunicability (1) nor with a perfect degree of univocal communication (3). This advance in the “temporal dimension of communication” (b) does not arrive at a level of identity, although permits a greater understanding through the time of the dialogue through an increasing of “fusion of horizons” (of the kind analyzed by H. Gadamer, see Figure 5).

Neither the totally univocal character of identical, monosemic consensus that clearly and precisely encompasses all differences, nor the incommensurability of incomprehension as an impossibility of purely equivocal communication, but instead the polysemic analogical room of similarity which makes a consensus or agreement possible, but which nonetheless permits the tolerant respect of comprehension through the distinction of the Other.

I seek to counterpose here the logic of alterity centered around similarity and analogical distinction as an alternative to that of the logic of totality centered around identity and difference in the Hegelian sense. More concretely, this implies the confrontation of analogous reason with that of the univocal reason. This is more crucial than ever within the context of the need for analogous reason that is necessary in every inter-human act of communication, and especially as part of the intercultural planetary dialogue that is so necessary.

I will also explore below examples will illustrate the use of analogous reason within the context of contemporary themes that the world is grappling with: the possibility of interpreting the interpellation of the Other in the existential conditions of every day life, and given the intensified demands for this in critical contexts; the possibility of the intercultural dialogue referred to above, which is so necessary in order to overcome the univocal character of modern Eurocentrism, in order to open the path towards an epistemological decolonization, and the treatment of notions which have been asserted to be ambiguous, such as people within the context of political philosophy, whose ambiguity can be transformed into clarity through the application of the logic of analogy. This in turn makes it possible to focus on the multiple analogical distinctions that have a certain degree of similarity and analogized distinctions, and to highlight which of these are most significant, from which the distinct meanings of what has been analogied can be derived (which is much more than a “familiarity of words”).

2. How Analogy Has Been Forgotten in Modernity

If we undertake a historical review, we can see that that there were certain epochs when the use of analogy was more common and that in other moments it virtually disappeared. It had a great deal of presence from the pre-Socratics until Plato [2]. Plato in effect takes the term ἀναλογία from Heraclitus. But it is Aristotle who lays the basis for its definitive recognition.

Terminologically then analogy is Greek in origin, is principally used in mathematics, and then its use is broadened to other contexts, such as in the case of Aristotle (and from there it is then projected into other Hellenistic schools of thought). The Stagirite writes that: “being is said in many distinct ways” (τὸὂνλέγεται πολλαχῶς)6. This “is said” (λέγεται) situates us at the level of the word, the term, and of the denominative character of the linguistic. Nonetheless the concept of analogy, according to Paul Ricoeur, was marginalized by the linguistic turn [3], and this must be explained.

From the beginning I’d like to employ a figure (such as those that Charles Peirce customarily designed, with the assumption that each icon employed has a conceptual meaning); from my perspective this is the best way to synchronically represent the complexity of the question of analogy. This has to do with the diversity between analogy and the univocal character of identity.

In the first place, then, let us situate ourselves within the context of identity and difference so that we can compare it with the contrasting character of analogy and distinction.

Clarification of Figure 2. Identity encompasses within its horizons multiple semantic Differences (Df1: Difference 1; Df2: Difference 2; etc.). In mathematical conjugate signs it could be expressed in this manner: “Identity” is expressed as the Totality of internal Differences: Identity = Difference 1 + Difference 2 + etc. Difference has no fundamental alterity with respect to Identity. Within the context of communication, when one employs univocal words one gets tangled in tautology, since the horizon of Identity is the same as that for Differences. R. Jacobson’s model of communication presupposes this tautological identity in communication (the message codified by the communicator is decodified by the person who receives the message; there is no difficulty in decodification because both are assumed to share the same universe of meaning; the “pretension of intelligibility of J. Habermas also presupposes univocal identity).

The minimum components of the concept of the univocal are identity, understood in terms of the totality (whole which has been signified) and difference. We must therefore consider the moment of identity (Id) (in Greek τὸ αυτό7, in Latin identitas, in French identité, in English identity, in Germany Identität) as that which is common, and as the moment of the diversity implied by all Difference (Df) (the latter is expressed in Greek as διάφορα, in Latin differentia, in French différence, in English difference, in German Unterscheidung8). In Greek thought the identity attributed to its conceptualization of being was imposed over that implied by an analogical approach, although the “One” or “Being”, which could be framed analogically as to an entity (thing, ens in latin, Dasein in german), are as such (that is to say, in terms of their essence as “One” or “Being”) the same as themselves: univocal and identical. Being is not analogical, but rather can be said to predicate itself analogically upon the basis of the entity (in Latin we could express this as: analogia entis). The univocal self can be enunciated analogically in terms of ousía, of quality, quantity, relationship, etc. Thing (ens, Dasein) is not Being (esse, Sein), but is its distinctions; that is to say, distinctive modes of predicating the same: Being.

This logical terminology is also found in the ontologies of the Chinese and Hindustani dimensions of Asia (as those of the Upanishads, Lao Tse or Confucius), in part among the original peoples of the Americas (in the doctrine of Pacha in Quechua or Aymara among the Incas), and among many other peoples. These could thus be described as univocal universal traditions (and for example B. Spinoza could be included among these).

The framing of the issue shifts with the Semite world which understands Being itself from an analogical perspective (analogia essendi) which is predicated the Being between a creator of the universe and those who have been created. Philo of Alexandria confronts this difficulty: the creator is and predicates Being, and the same thing occurs with creatures that are, which are entities (things, entia), and Being is also predicated as to these. Now “being itself” is expressed in two ways: in terms of the eternal, creator Being, and in terms of the being of the entity (ens), which has been created. A new comprehension of being itself has been mediated. Because of this a tension appears between two poles: the created and the creator; which is to say between the created totality (A), and the alterity of the creator (B); this analogy is situated within the horizon of the sacred (not necessarily that of the religious).

Clarification of Figure 3. A: ontological totality, with univocal character and univocal identity. B: exteriority, understood as trans-ontological alterity of the Other.

It was the Acadian, Babylonian, Palestinian, peoples, with influence in Egypt, together with the Phoenicians, Hebrews, Christians, and Muslims who resolved this dilemma through their exploration and deployment of the logic of analogy. This issue had not been studied with precision in Indo-European Eurasia nor in the original civilizations of the Americas, although there are clear indicators of its existence.

It is because of this that the Semites transformed the doctrine of the analogy of the entity (analogia entis) into an analogy of being itself (analogia essendi).

The Christian philosophers of the first centuries A.D (the so-called “Fathers of the Church” from the school of Alexandria), and later the Arabs (from Al Kindi in Aleppo in the 9th century A.D), seized upon analogy in manner radically different than that of the Greeks who preceded them. This thinking experiences the being of those who have been created (mediated through the proposition of a radical act of ex nihilo creation, described as such in Latin since Tertulian [4]; and as ouk ex ontos: οὐκἐξὄντων in the Greek of the Seventies which was translated from Hebrew: “from non-being”9) as something “distinct” from the eminence (eminentia) of the being of the creator. It can thus be understood that when the Hellenic logic within Judaeo-Christian thought is accepted in the Eastern Mediterranean after the 2nd century A.D, the new logical configuration of the “analogy of Being” itself (analogia essendi).

The handling of this analogy culminates in Byzantine philosophy, which comes to be employed by Muslim Arabs as in the case of Avicenna (or Ibn Sina) (from Samarkand to Bukhara), passing through the Baghdad of Al´Farabi and Fatimid Cairo, until Averroes (or Ibn Rushd) (in the caliphate of Cordoba and in the Berber city of Fez by Maimonides), and arriving very late during the Latin-Germanic Middle Ages in Paris in the 13th century, through great teachers such as Thomas Aquinas, and culminating ultimately in Duns Scoto.

A new creative phase of analogy emerges during modernity, during the era of the Renaissance through the philosophies of Thomas de Vio Cayetano and Silvestre de Ferrara up through Juan de Santo Tomás in 17th century Spain.

Let us review in summary what we have covered thus far.

Clarification of Figure 4: Sm: Similarity; Dt1: Analogical Distinction 1; Dt2: Analogical Distinction 2; Dtn: other analogical Distinction. In mathematical conjugate signs “Similarity” could be expressed in terms of the common traits or coincidence between distinctions that have been analogized in the following manner: “Similarity = analogical Distinction 1 ∩ analogical Distinction 2 ∩ analogical distinctions n. To the extent that communication increases the similarity (Sm), this is filled with increasing meaning and sense, without losing the diversity10 of the peculiar analogical distinctions (Dt1, Dt2, Dtn) of each of the analogized components.

The logic of analogy differentiated between various kinds of analogy, for example between that of intrinsic attribution or proportionality, each with various internal subdivisions. It is perhaps during the 16th and 17th centuries that this doctrine achieved its greatest levels of complexity11. I cannot go into this in full detail given the dimensions of this writing.

The essential logical components of the analogy are two, and can be described as (a) similarity (Sm) designated in Greek by the word ὅμοιος, similitudo in Latin, Ähnlichkeit in German, ressemblance in French, similarity in English, and (b) Distinction (Dt) which does not have such a common equivalent in Greek nor in German12 (although in the latter we could eventually decide upon Verschiedenartichkeit as the closest equivalent), but it does have a uniquely Latin expression through the word distinctio, which in both French and English is distinction.

All of the secret and utility of analogy can be found in making an effective use of practices of communication between diverse worlds (be they singular or collective) and within the context of rhetorical confrontations where it should be understood that words (phrases, sentences, “linguistic games” [speech acts], etc.) must be elected and the meaning of the expressions of Other/s must be interpreted conveniently for the purposes of mutual and adequate comprehension as part of the communication which is desired. Diversity then must be clearly distinguished from (a) a polysemic similarity (Sm) and from (b) from a monosemic identical character; from (c) an analogical distinction (Dt) (which has similarity to the remaining distinctions), and from (d) a mere difference (Df) (directed at that which is diverse within a horizon of identical dimensions). On the other hand, the diversity of distinctions (together with that of other distinctions) is not equivalent to mere equivocal ambiguity, which for its part should not be confused either with the diversity of analogical similarity nor with the “familiarity of words” referenced in Wittgenstein’s linguistics13. A purely non-identical character which is not different and which does not have analogical distinction either is the absolute diversity: the equivocity. The equivocal is more diverse (sharing the same word, but not its meaning) than the distinct is from that which is similar. The distinction has more in common (with other distinction) than the difference is from that which is different, when it is situated within a horizon of the identity14.

The studies and uses of analogy, then, travelled a long path from Plato or Aristotle until Hegel himself in the 19th century or Max Müller in the 20th, although their content underwent a series of historical transformations. During the stage of Indo-European Eurasia this process was determined by certain ontological limits. Within the context of this framework of thinking in general, and among the Greeks in particular, being was predicated analogically in terms of entities as I have noted previously, but being itself was not analogical, but univocal, since it was itself predicated on being identical.

Authors from the modern period in Northern Europe will employ analogy secondarily, as to fragmentary questions, in their logical reflections- both Kant and Hegel [7], but it will not be a hegemonic philosophical question as widely debated as it was during the so-called Middle Ages, since secularization set aside the relationship between the creator and those created, and with that the “analogy of Being” itself.

The problem will be reborn with Franz Brentano15, and within the renovation of the Neo-Scholastic School, which was relaunched in Freiburg and Louvain, especially among thinkers who situated themselves within the horizon of predominantly German ontology such as J. Maréchal [9], J. Lotz ([10] pp. 35–108), K. Rahner [11,12], E. Coreth [13], B. Lakebrink [14], G. Siewerth [15] or E. Przywara [16], who developed the concept of analogy in the 20th century. But this will continue to be a secondary strain of thought that will not penetrate into the center of the discussion regarding the linguistic turn of the Vienna Circle [17]. This is ultimately due to the fact that Central European or Anglo-Saxon thought, since the Enlightenment, has been situated within the univocity of identity/difference, in part as a result of the increasing process of secularization (wherein the Being of the creator disappears from the horizon of philosophical reflection). Analogy as a result became irrelevant within the philosophy most studied by the European and North American philosophical community.

3. From the Analogy of the Entity (Analogia Entis) to the Analogy of the Word (Analogia Verbi)

The point of departure of the relationship is very divers when being or entity is what refers to word (a), which is when the word is the point of departure of the reference to the being or entity (b):

(a)

Reference of being or think → to the word

(b)

Reference of the word → to the being or the think

Everything I have said until now expresses the relationship (a): from being or entity towards the word; which is to say, the word signifies, W expresses, manifests the thing to the being or the entity. The relationship at issue is one regarding the construction of meaning. But now I will seek to undertake an inverse, rarely travelled path among ancient and contemporary authors who address analogy, which is represented by relation (b).

In effect, within the context of a secondary and neglected current within German Idealism, an author passes from the “System of Identity” (it is notably clear here how this is denominated as a system of that which is Identical, which is to say one which is univocal) to a metaphysics of liberty (whose first steps were taken in 1809), expressed as a doctrine of the will, and which is manifested fully in his university lectures in Berlin in 1841 in terms of a critique of Hegelian thought. I am referring to F. Schelling in his Vorlesungenüber die Offenbarung. This is where he expounds the horizon from which can be understood what we might refer to in the first instance a doctrine regarding the analogy of the word: the analogia verbi. The problem is no longer situated from the perspective of the “analogy of being” (analogía essendi) (a), but instead begins to be thought of in terms of the “analogy of the word” (b)16.

The point of departure for the new implanting of analogy has its origin in alterity. Alter speaks to us of the Other which transcends the totality of our own world (“world” in the Hegelian sense for Schelling, or the existential Heideggerian world understood in terms of the kind of ontological horizon that E. Levinas sought to explore17). Nonetheless Levinas tended to situate the Other as an “absolutely Other”, as a transcendentality that appeared to revere and accept the infinite distance implied by the equivocal character of the Infinite. By discovering the priority and superiority of alterity he seems to situate himself in the face of the incomprehensible, the incommunicable, the sacred which he interpellates. Because of this, upon reading Levinas’ work, the question was awakened in me as to whether the interpellation of the Other can be comprehensible, decipherable, or susceptible of interpretation, which would demand a certain similarity between the to say (le dire of Levinas) which is interpellated in terms of what has been said (le dit) from the perspective of transcendent alterity and of that which is decodified and interpreted by the person who listens; which is to say the possibility that the listener will capture the meaning that is intended, by the one who listens, who hears, who has “ears to hear” a truly meaningful meaning (that is to say that the one who hears who is obedient can capture, understand, decipher the meaning of the word uttered by the Other). And it was at this moment, to contextualize the absolute transcendental equivocal character of the Other, emerged the necessity to retrain again to the “logic of analogy”: the Other, meta-physical, ethical, real, interpellates with words that can at least be understood derivatively or interpreted in some way: which is to say can be attained initially18 by undertaking a hermeneutical interpretation by means of similarity with what is said (le dit de Levinas) by the Other from the perspective of what that person, as the mere presence of the naked corporality said (le dire). It is the ¡Ecce homo! prior to all words. The word of the Other has as its meaning a certain semantical distinction from the words of the world of the listener, but thanks to analogy (which is neither univocal nor equivocal) one can come closer to its meaning19 through similarity: commonly held. F. Schelling expounded the a priori necessity of “revelation” (Offenbarung: the Word expressed by the Other in the face of the obedient listener) as a source of a posteriori knowledge, which preferably refers to the Absolute. Levinas broadens the phenomenology of revelation as an epiphany which takes into account the anthropological revelation of the Other, and especially of the Other as an existence which is situated within the greatest alterity possible of the listener, in the case of the destitute, of those who are suffering, of “the widow, the orphan, the poor, the foreigner”, all of these being expressions present in the Semite Code of Hammurabi 3700 years ago20.

The first expressions as to the Other, the oppressed, the excluded, and as those who have been negated, are indecipherable interjections, which are not yet comprehensible, not yet words, proto-words, cries “-¡Ayyyy!”; the cry of pain of the one who suffers, the pain of the one who suffers, which unfolds in the distinct interpellating expositions of the tortured, of the crucified slave (like Spartacus or the founder of messianic Christianity), of the woman dominated by sexism, or the indigenous person martyred by the conqueror in 16th century Latin America, or the wage worker exploited by modern European capitalism or in the colonial world of the Global South, etc.

Once we situated ourselves at the anthropological level (not as to the Infinitoe21 but with respect to human beings), in the face of revelation (Schelling’s Offenbarung) and of the “word of the Other”, and seeting forth from this word as a point of departure, in search of its meaning (as reflected in relationship b, above: from the word towards the being, towards meaning: analogia verbi), analogy takes on a central relevance, because the majority of meaningful existential expressions in daily life, and in particular the dialogue that is established between distinct interlocutors and diverse fields of action or praxis (be they political, economic, gender-related, etc.), all obviously employ analogy and not an identical character which is univocal.

That which H. G. Gadamer referred to as a “fusion of horizons” is precisely the process of an increase in similarity which begins, at the first moment, from a level of greater or lesser incommunicability or incomprehension in communication (such as that defended by certain Anglo-Saxon communitarian thinkers [20]), and can increase through the intensification of similarity made possible by dialogue, although it will never attain a fully identical convergence between its interlocutors (this is represented by arrow a of Figure 1 at the beginning of this text, which indicates the passage from 1 a 3).

Clarification of Figure 5. (Sm) The analogical similarity that increases gradually as those engaged in dialogue assume the world of the Other. (Dt1 y Dt2) Points of departure of the mutual revelation which unfolds from the perspective of its exteriority (secret, mystery). Although Dt1 y Dt2 remain distinct (not different in terms of the identity that would seek to dominate them, but rather analogically distinct, which permits them to remain themselves within the overall convergent framework of similarity) increase their community in dialogue (the community in this context is that which they have in common, as peers).

The analogical “fusion of horizons”22 of the worlds of those engaged in dialogue permits those who participate in the community of communication to be themselves and to be distinct, all the time becoming more of a community in similarity (in pluriversal truth), beyond the equivocal character of the indifference of the Other and one step prior to their domination by an imposed supposedly identical character (where one of those in dialogue has been subsumed by the oppressor who imposes their identical, univocal truth, with a universality claim)23.

It is because of all of this that the logic of analogy demonstrates its essential character within the context of experiences of dialogue in the most diverse dimensions, from the perspective of the concrete horizons of singular persons, but especially within the framework of community-based and social processes, as well as those of an economic, political, gender-related, racial or similar character, in which we are embedded and engaged.

4. Faith-Based Analogy (Analogia Fidei) [27], pp. 156–174

A metaphysical experience (which I have frequently expressed in written form as a meta-physical one in order to underline its differentiation from the mere metaphysics of ingenuous realism), which for E. Levinas is in fact suffused with ethics as such, with its origin in a face to face experience (which in Hebrew is expressed by panim el panim: פניםאלפנים) between the visage of one person and that of another without any intervening mediation, situates us before the problem of a analogia fidei (an analogy ground in faith or which is faith-based) which involves a more complex level of development than that of an analogia verbi (verbal analogy). At the origin of dialogue or of daily existential or personal communication, when those who are in dialogue do not yet know each other, when the Other expresses his or herself initially (the first epiphany) or revelation (or the word of the Other understood in terms of a communication grounded in intimacy that must express its mystery, its self-identity, what it is most intimately, and which is not frequently exposed24 for fear of its use against the person who reveals it), all of this cannot be fully deciphered. When the Other is revealed and renders account as to something secret within their world, the person who receives that trembling utterance can only capture a portion of the semantic content which has been expounded. This does not involve a concept which can be immediately interpreted in a univocal manner by an interpellated listener; it is not possible under such circumstances to decipher the semantic content of the word that emerges from the world of the Other; what is experienced involves only an initial approximation.

If a person in need says to their interlocutor: “I am hungry, feed me!” does their hunger have the same meaning as the hunger of the one who has been interpellated? Does the interpellated have the certainty of meaning that this hunger provides an honest grounding for an ethical interpellation? Is the plea for food because this person does not want to work, or because they are a professional beggar and is deceiving those they interpellate? And if the person who has been interpellated hears these words and decides to feed the one who has plead for this, will they be fulfilling justice in this way or promoting vagrancy on the part of the beggar? If the listener does not have empirical certainty as to the accidental or structural necessity of the poverty at issue, can their act in giving alms under such circumstances be considered just?

Here we stand in the face of an act of daily existence which has a great deal of density. Anyone who responds to a supplicating plea of interpellation on the part of an Other, who has before them only the empirical presence of the poor that is revealed primarily through their visage and by an “utterance” (without necessity yet of characterizing it as something that “has been said”), cannot demand proof under these circumstances to mitigate their responsibility of fulfilling the duty of feeding the hungry. In this case, we should therefore “take as true” (fürWahrhalten) the word of the other, and feed the hungry upon the basis of our faith, and of the con-fidence that is awakened by the veracity that is manifested (a phenomenon), which appears phenomenologically and becomes apparent through the visage of the Other that presents itself as the epiphany of a human being (not the mere phenomenological apparition of some-entity, not a thing) through the mediation of a supplicating word. The feeding of the poor has its origin in a faith-based (with-faith) action which is not undertaken upon the basis of proven empirical knowledge as to the needs of the Other, but instead because the actor believes in that person, and because of this attributes validity to the word which is believed to be true which occupies the place that knowledge as to an empirical fact would otherwise fill (which can be confirmed a posteriori through proofs which would make it possible to conclude the existence of a truth as to the content of an interpellation, so that an act of authentic justice can be fulfilled). Meanwhile it is faith which provided the sufficient foundation (ratio) for this action. And so this is how food is donated from and upon the basis of the word of the Other due to an ethical urgency. Which is to say, upon the basis of an empirical fact which has been not fully proven and is not known, but is founded upon an act of will that moves or exerts an imperative force upon practical reason so that this action, this alms can be carried out25.

Medieval philosophy described faith or the act of belief as an act whose foundation was an act of will, which constituted the origin or motivation of a decision whose unfolding enabled the possibility of a cognitive act (assentire) which will later (a posteriori) reach the interpretation of what has been said by the person who is interpellating, and as to which the interpellated person did not initially have full knowledge as to the full univocal content or meaning of that which future knowledge, and this passage from (consentire) to intellection would provide, due to the urgency of the situation:

“Assent (adherence) properly belongs to the intellect [intellectus]; while consent belongs properly to the will (voluntatis), because consent etymologically is founded upon the ability to feel-with-others”26. “Belief does not have a cognitive grounding unless it is based first within the realm of will and its imperatives”27.

Which is to say, that will, impelling belief in an Other, in their person, imposes the content of the enunciated word upon the cognitive act; and also thereby substitutes the evidence of the possible demonstrative evidence (from that which has been said and is not yet verified) through a decision which has been willed and mobilizes action; and which moves or motivates intelligence through an act of will which accepts the content of the word upon the basis of the confidence deposited in the Other as a sufficient foundation for undertaking the corresponding praxis which is required.

This also means that if one does not have a full conceptualization through the one who has been interpellated in the meaning of the word proferred by the interpellating Other, there would not either be the possibility of carrying out an action at their service that is urgently needed. A prior form of verification, or proven conceptualization of the truth of the word and of the veracity of the needy supplicant would be necessary to take action. In the case of a rational act of faith reason is impelled instead to break the impasse of the impossibility of action without having achieved full knowledge in identity, grounded in a foundation similar from that of mere univocal knowledge in action. In effect, voluntary affective motivation based in the love-for-justice inherent in the limbic system over that of the neocortical system (as a neurological brain specialist would put it [24]), mobilizes the one who has been interpellated through faith expressed in belief of the other from the perspective of the recognition of their dignity (which is given a hierarchical rank in this context within the context of an intersubjective love grounded in alterity), which impels the intelligence to accept the Other’s word as if its truth were already proven. So let me reiterate here. One who receives the revelation of an Other from the opening up of their subjectivity undertakes an action because they believe, because they have faith in the word of the Other in the face of the impossibility of verifying (in the first instance) the truth of what has been revealed. I will describe here the logic that explains this as analogia fidei, because it is faith in the Other that permits its acceptance as reason (Grund) or the foundation of this act, prior to the full grasping of the concept contained in the word of the Other which has not yet been justified rationally nor discursively by the subjective cognition of the one who has been interpellated. F. Schelling expounded some reflections regarding this theme in his university classes entitled Regarding Revelation which I would like to draw upon here, at an anthropological level, when he writes that he approaches “revelation in the first instance as an authentic source of knowledge (Erkenntnisquelle)” ([25], p. 398). He goes further to say:

“Wisdom, which all the task of knowing directs itself towards as an end, we call faith (Glaube) […] Faith should not be referenced as a knowledge which is unfounded, but instead should be understood as that form of knowledge which is the most well-founded [das allerbegründetste], because it possesses has that which can vanquish any doubt, and which is so absolutely positive, that any transcendence towards a higher term of reference is impossible”.

28

The analogical moment enters into play then simultaneously thanks to the fact that reason captures interpellation, revelation, the word of the Other from the minimal semantical similitude that the word possesses within the world of the interpellated. One knows what it is to be hungry; knows that hunger is satisfied by food; has no semantical clarity as to what kind of hunger is being felt in concrete terms, nor what its origin or sense might be as it interpellates, but through similarity (the minimum fusion of horizons) approximately captures or semantically interprets its content. The pain expressed through its visage moves the person who has been interpellated, touches their sensibility [26], their affect, their will. It will have time still to unfold, through the development of the capturing of the meaning of the similar word of the Other, and thereby of a better understanding, consensus, communication, that will make possible the cognitive grasping of the content of the word due to future dialogue. In this way it will be more possible to understand in future the characteristics and origin of this hunger. Nonetheless there will never be a grasping, conceptualization or completely univocal or identical interpretation between two persons in dialogue regarding the meaning of a word profferred within the framework of an initial interpellation. The meaning of the hunger of one will never be the identical univocal hunger of an Other.

Faith in the person of an Other, and thus in their word, thus opens up the possibility within a minimal fusion of horizons for an analogical similarity to be possible through the will of communication which is enabled upon the basis of the respect and love-for-justice which is sacred to the person of the Other. In this way analogy makes it possible for discursive reason to grow out of a minimal similitude until a greater degree of mutual comprehension made possible through the time of dialogue can unfold. But additionally the revelation of the Other as an interpellation of justice puts into question the univocal ontological totality and launches anew the dialectical creation of the new, of the unexpected and of that which has not been planned as a result of the prevailing totality. This is why I wrote in 1973:

“That revelation of the Other. […as an interpellation of justice] has put into question the ontological level which is now recreated from a new dimension. The discourse becomes ethical and the new fundamental ontological level (which is univocal) is revealed as non-original, and as open from the ethical perspective [the Other as an analogical exteriority] which is revealed afterwards (ordo cognoscendi a posteriori) as that which was before (the prius of the ordo realitatis) […] The acceptance of the Other as another already presupposes the ethical option, choice and ethical commitment which is at issue: it is necessary to negate oneself as a totality, and to affirm oneself as finite, to be atheist as to the foundation from the perspective of identity”.

([27], pp. 162–163); see also ([22], p. 116])

With all the passion typical of a work written in my youth, I argued then:

“If philosophy were merely a theory, a reflected understanding of being and an interpretation that had been thought through as to an entity, the word of the Other would be unfailingly reduced to what has been said and interpreted mistakenly from the perspective of the prevailing foundations of Totality [of my Totality…]. To take the word of the Other as univocal as to one’s own is the kind of ethical evil which corresponds to the fanatic, an ethical fault which condemns the person who engages in it because it represents a capital error of the intelligence […]. To consider the word of the Other within the similitude of my world, conserving its meta-physical distinction which is supported in the Other, is to respect analogy as if it were revelation; and is to fulfill the duty of committing oneself in humility as to the happiness of the Other”.

([27], pp. 170–171])

5. Analogy as to the Polysemic Concept of “People”

One of the most longstanding and still contemporary polemics in Latin American political philosophy has to do with the concept of the “people” [28]. Who or what is the people? What is the function of this concept in politics? What is their origin and how do they develop or enter into crisis? Might this not be a concept that is so complex that it would be better to abandon it so that further confusion is not encouraged, given its ambiguity? I believe that the logic of analogy is the methodical path for the resolution of this controversy in political philosophy, especially within the context of the Philosophy of Liberation.

For some the concept of the people is ambiguous, contradictory, or slippery and therefore does not serve as a category for political interpretation (as Horacio Cerruti argues). Others, inspired by B. Spinoza, prefer to develop concepts such as the multitude and deny that of the people (such as Antonio Negri). Others elect to employ the term as a valid category, but do so within the semantic realm of populism (as Ernesto Laclau does, through a populism that ultimately expresses the complexity of political action as such). Within the latter context the term is used with disdain by others, considering that demagogical policies which are “populist” simply follow the fashion of the day or of “short term” options which simply seek electoral approval by majorities influenced by the mass media in order to exercise power for the sake of power, or in service to a nationalist or authoritarian political project (generally employed by neoliberal politicians).

For his part, Antonio Gramsci describes the people within the terminology of his philosophy of politics as the “social bloc of the oppressed”. Fidel Castro considers the people, a category he employs frequently, from the perspective of its everyday meaning, but describing it at a more complex level in terms of the multiple actors which constitute it, and considers it to be a basic collective political actor. Even in the analysis undertaken in his work by Walter Benjamin, as interpreted for example by G. Agamben29, the category of the people has a polysemic political meaning drawn from Paul of Tarsus: the “people which is not mine” as opposed to “my people”, which must be distinguished from the “rest”, collectively, and singularly from the “meshiakh”. How can we resolve the confusion resulting from such a broad array of meanings? I think that the method of analogy can come to our aid in this context by shedding light upon a dimension of similarities among all of these words which reference different political concepts and moments, understanding that the distinction between their varying semantical contents is at the same time analogical in character30.

The First Distinction (Dt1). Perhaps the most widely shared meaning, which is perhaps because of this the most valid but the most imprecise, which could be traced in search of the dimension of analogical similarity as to the plurality of meanings of the word people (pueblo in Spanish; meanings which reflect multiple analogical distinctions). This search could be summarized as follows: a people is the totality of the population or the members of a political system (at least in the classical, stabilized, hegemonic sense on the part of under “historical power bloc”31), with common history and language, which inhabits the same territory (or at least did so at the moment when it was definitively constituted). This sense of people thus constitutes the principal analogical distinction. At this stage the contradictions among the people are not still being addressed.

The Second Distinction (Dt2). In a stricter and still more critical way, one can refer to the people, in a Gramsci´s sense, as the “social bloc of the oppressed” within a given social system. This sector enters into action at certain strategic moments, which A. Badiou defines as the “event” (l´événement) which is when

“[…] the dominant class has lost consensus (consenso), is no longer the ruling class but only the dominant one, exercising purely coercive force, which indicates that the great masses of the people have distanced themselves from the traditional ideology, and no longer believe in what they did previously”.

([30], p. 311)

In this case the people are an effect of a rupture [29] between the components of a political community, because there are members who are not considered to be part of the people or are “anti-people”. This implies an analogical distinction which is restrictive of the term’s broader meaning. This is what Fidel Castro describes in detail as follows:

“We understand by the people, when we speak of struggle, of the great mass of those who have not been redeemed […], who demand great and wise transformations of all kinds and are determined to achieve them, when they believe in something and someone, and most of all when believe sufficiently in themselves […]. We refer to the people then, if we are thinking in terms of struggle, of the 600,000 Cubans who are without work […]; of the 400,000 agricultural workers […]; of the 100,000 small farmers […]; 30,000 teachers and professors […]; 10,000 young professionals […]. These are the people, who suffer every day such plights and who are therefore able to fight with all of their courage”.

([31], p. 39)

This understanding of the people is not only analogical with respect to other possible semantic contents of the word, but is also in itself constitutively analogical. And this is so because it acts collectively as an expression of those who are oppressed systemically in the economic, political, cultural and other fields, as the base of new social movements which are articulated with critical new political parties. Movements and parties can be diversified analogically from each other in terms of the distinctions between their demands, their objectives (the feminist movement is distinct in terms of its liberation demands from those of the anti-racist movement, as is the anti-capitalist one from that which is environmentalist, these in turn from indigenous movements, etc.). Social movements have particular objectives32, which must be articulated with those of others through dialogue, the translation of their demands or needs, and through the negotiation of their interests in terms of a “fusion of horizons”, which can be transmitted through new progressive political parties with broader aims that articulate national objectives. This socio-political totality thus has similarities, both in terms of its social movements as its objectives or interests, which play the role of analogical distinctions, whose articulation becomes hegemonic33 when undertaken by a collective actor which can have “contradictions within its core”.

The Third Distinction (Dt3). It must also be taken into account that the category of exteriority is essential with regard to the definition of the people in terms of its secondary meaning. Because the people are not only the bloc of the oppressed (those who are exploited and as a result alienated or passive) within the Totality of the prevailing system, but who equally resist and struggle from the perspective of a certain exteriority, within a dimension where the people can live, reconstruct and strengthen themselves in creative ways in order to be positioned to grow and intervene as collective actors of political, cultural, economic, and environmental action regarding the system which is dominant. The people as an exteriority constitute an essential cultural and overall strategic reserve34. I refer to them in this context as the plebs, who erupt in history as a collective actor that presents itself in the face of the prevailing political system as a creative force, as a hyperpotentia (beyond the mere potentia of the political community which has become fetishized in its decadence as a repressive force) and who put into question the dominant system as such. This is the people in the third analogical meaning. (Dt3). I have defined all of this initially in my book Twenty Theses on Politics, [18] in Theses 11 and 12. The critical destructive presence of the people as hyperpotentia constitutes itself as a political community grounded in a collective political actor directed at the creation of a new political system that arises subsequent to the collapse of the previous dominant system. The plebs thus become a populus.

The Fourth Distinction (Dt4). There is yet another analogical distinction of the people, that of “populism”, which is defective in my view (and which E. Laclau does not adequately distinguish from that of the popular)35, which could be described in terms of the relationship between the members of the people and all of its inhabitants are understood as a mass or “multitude” (as A. Negri understands this term) pursuant to the organization of a state within a specific territory (Dt1), with a nationalist option attached (either from the right or the left), where no rupture is produced between the people and the anti-people I have referenced above, which ultimately falls into an ambiguity which is criticized by some, both in Europe and in Latin America, and elsewhere, in terms of charismatic leaders who are unscrupulous and demagogical. Sometimes there are deliberate confusions provoked by dominating groups, which confuse the liberation action of truly popular leaders with mere populists, based on Max Weber’s understanding of charisma focused on leaders who hide their will to dominate behind this kind of legitimacy.

In this short writing I cannot go into this in greater detail, but only seek to highlight that taking into account the logic of analogy one can develop a value-based description and judgment as to the different ways of conceptualizing the people. This in turn makes it possible to criticize certain trends which are in fashion, and to the contrary highlight others.

6. Analogy within the Context of Intercultural Dialogue and Epistemological Decolonization

The logic of analogy also includes an ethics of respect regarding the Other, and a patience vested in the long term of debate needed in order to comprehend the Other’s of truth claim, and the possibility of arriving at rational agreements without having achieved the kind of identity that frequently undermines the possibility of the ascertaining the validity of opinions necessary in order to act together.

The hypothesis of a ragione debole in G. Vattimo, for example, which attacks the dominating reason of modernity, which is considered dogmatic and authoritarian, seeks to lay the groundwork for an ethics of communication, but in order to do so falls into a certain kind of skepticism that ends up putting into question all of the strict varieties of rationality, and at the same time negates critical reason, which is not weak and which has all the right to express a grand narrative, although this might be epic and not tragic in character. For this reason it might perfectly reformulate the question from the perspective of the affirmation of an analogical reason, which is neither weak nor skeptical, in the Nietzschean sense, and which is capable of criticizing modern reason, approaching it in terms of its character as a univocal rationality trapped within an exclusionary and dominating logic of identity and difference. It is similarity rather than identity which permits a greater degree of movement that lays the basis for the realization of a constructive and critical analogical dialogue between distinct positions which retain a dimension of similarity where a fusion of horizons regarding the themes to be addressed respects distinctions without demanding identity between them.

Within a global horizon that is not merely Eurocentric, and from the perspective of the critical position inaugurated by epistemological decolonization, the practice of the use of analogical reason is very fertile within the context of so-called “intercultural dialogue”, which is so necessary in ethical, theoretical, and political terms. In effect, the positions opposed to analogy can be described within two limits which can be, contradictorily to the extent that (a) it is thought that humanity will achieve through dialogue, or violence, the cultivation of a future pluriversal culture, which could not be anything but a type of modernity such as that experienced by Europe since the end of the 15th century, or at its contrary extreme, (b) the fundamentalism that propounds the juxtaposition of equivocal cultures which are different upon the basis of their return to their origins, and for whom European modernity should be negated completely. In between these two polarities, (a) the first, which seeks to impose the truth claim of univocal European identity and the second, (b) which proposes the destruction of modernity, which in its view is corrupt, imposing an equivocal position as to the radical, essentialist and irreconcilable contradiction which judges it as blasphemous and diabolical, a third path opens: (c) which is that of the analogical character of the dialogue between distinct existent cultures which recognize the dignity of others, and also of modernity.

Beyond the univocal universalist identical logic (centered around the duality between identity and difference), the pluriversality of analogy (centered around similarity and distinction) makes it possible to initiate a process of intercultural dialogue which is honest and ethical, in which each interlocutor can have a “truth claim”, which seeks to reach a validity claim among the members of other cultures. This validity becomes legitimate thanks to the mediation of consensus through a fraternal praxis and the use of rational argumentation, which can achieve agreement through a convergence in the similarity of the semantic content in dispute. Such “validity”36, does not demand identity. If there is an adequate accord regarding this similarity it will advance towards greater comprehension which is mutually enriching as an expression of the development of the dimension within which the worlds of the interlocutors can fuse. It is not a matter of the skepticism as to admitting many truths, but instead of the argumentative discussion of distinctive truth and validity claims as to proposals that retain a certain distinction from the perspective of similarity, but not of identity, which is ontologically impossible. The different positions which confront each other objectively frequently proceed from an incommensurable complexity and diversity of reality itself, understood from the perspective of diverse worlds, and in subjective reference to the cognitive finitude of human beings in the face of their own reality (as X. Zubiri would say), and of the meaning grounded in the world of the Other.

If we take for example the experience of “nature” it is understood that this has distinct meanings in distinct cultures. In modern civilization nature is simply the raw material of labor which can be transformed thanks to technology, which can be sold and bought as an extension of land, and which can be exploited through agriculture in order to conduct business through agricultural production. It is an object and a thing which lies at one’s disposal, and a resource of poietic and instrumental reason. In the native cultures of the original inhabitants of the Americas such as the Mexicas, the Mayas, Chipchas, Tupi-Guarani, human beings hold a sacred respect for Mother Earth. They experience this in terms of a world within which37 a human being is only a part, the child of a Mother that nourishes and has generated us and which demands care and veneration because we have our origin in Her (through the evolution of life which is a terrestrial phenomenon) and to Her we shall return.

If there were to be an intercultural dialogue between the members of distinct cultures, analogically speaking, and if they sought to communicate to each other the meaning of “nature” they would have to take into account this kind of polysemic distinction. This would involve grappling with distinct existential (analogical) meanings which although they have a certain similarity between them (in the end nature is that nonhuman realm where we find ourselves in terms of a daily interiority, not in the face of Her, but rather within Her). Intercultural dialogue as to nature begins with a quasi-abysmal incomprehension, but slowly, within the framework of the time of revelation that each one receives from the Other, a “fusion of horizons” emerges (Figure 4), and the dimension of similarity gradually increases. There will never be a point of univocal existential experience, nor of the identical grasping of the meaning that the Other attributes to this experience, but there will be a progressive enrichment through the grasping of a polysemic concept in a world which is increasingly common in character, where a mutual and progressive comprehension is possible.

All of the themes or experience of a culture can be reflected in dialogue with members of other cultures, and this would permit the construction of a pluri-versal (not uni-versal)38 world which is what this kind of dialogue is intended to achieve.

Rational dialogue should have as its ethical principle an attitude of respect towards the “analogical pluriversality” of humanity that could lay the basis for progressive mutual understanding, capable of accepting in a non-contradictory manner the truth claims of another culture, which we will no longer seek to refute (which is to say, seek to render false39) but instead to undertake together the long slow but ever deepening path of understanding the meaning of the linguistic and conceptual components of the other cultural world, in order to assimilate the influences of other cultures through the fusion of horizons in similarity, which in any case will not achieve an identical consensus, but instead a broader understanding necessary and sufficient for a world that postulates the possibility of perpetual life and peace.

The analogical method in Latin America is necessary as a path that can be followed in order to undertake dialogues among distinct cultures within the same continent, between the cultures of its original inhabitants, of creoles, mestizos and people of African descent, and also applies as a method for analogical dialogue as well among the peoples of a continent that shares the similar culture.

7. The Pluriversality of Transmodernity or a Future New Civilization as an Analogical Concept

During the long duration of intercultural dialogue convergence towards a New Civilization in a global Age of Transmodernity demands clarity as to the meaning of a pluriversal global culture, which could avoid falling into the univocal character of today’s transnationalized modernity, and could instead be a culture capable of articulating all existing cultures within a framework of similarity. Within this framework the mutual peaceful construction of humanity that will gradually subsume the most distinct, important and valuable aspects of regional cultures, without the need to annihilate them or impose upon them the uniform identity of a dominating culture of the world, as Hegel imagined, which was intended to subjugate all of the rest. It is necessary to imagine, for centuries, how the slow process of construction of a polysemic global culture might unfold through similarity, constructed through the contributions of the millenarian distinctions of existing cultures.

I wrote 45 years ago:

“We refer to the analogical universality [today I would say “pluriversality”] of all of humanity unified through the distinct character of its integral parts, where each one, without losing its own cultural personality, could nonetheless participate in a communication without borders imposed by closed forms of nationalism. This is not the univocity of a humanity dominated by a single Empire, but instead a single global Homeland based on the solidarity between the freedom of its parts. But there is no universal philosophy (abstract, univocal, nor concrete). There is no philosophy without more40. There are philosophies, that of each authentic philosopher, that of each people that has expressed itself through reflective thought, which is not directly communicable but which can be communicated analectically; and this because the word of each philosophy is respected as distinct because it is dialogical”.

([27], p. 241])

There I stated explicitly that what we refer to today in terms of an (analogical) global pluriversality as to a culture that is to come, which will go beyond that of European Modernity’s pretensions as a global culture, towards what we have described as a Transmodern global Age.

The Islamic concept of Tawheed clearly refers to the revelation of the Islamic Absolute which has been revealed in distinct ways to diverse peoples, which highlights the analogical presence of a distinct revelation for each cultural community from the perspective of a fundamental similarity. Within this framework it is not necessary to annihilate the truth claims of an Other, but instead to discover the similarity between varying truth claims attributable to the participants in an inter-cultural (inter-philosophical) dialogue.

From the perspective of the univocity of identity, one’s “possession of the truth” is imposed upon others engaged in that dialogue, since the one who has that certainty presupposes a priori that they have to “defend” the truth, not necessarily purely through argumentation or the honest exercise of a coherent ethical action of an enunciated truth. In the final analysis, in the face of the resistance of the Other, there is no room for anything but domination through force (in the final instance: war) in order to move the other interlocutor to accept the truth that has been proposed. This is the purely tautological universal expansion of the “truth” of the dominator. Dialogue is superfluous, and the violence of arms is valid from the perspective of the fundamentalist, as a means to impose truth on those who ignore it. This is a logic that becomes irrational to the extent that it strips the Other of the honest and ethical freedom of argumentation, of rejecting arguments overall or specifically to reject them because of how they fall short of a rational, responsible, free, and equally symmetrical exchange. The univocal universality that is imposed through coercion is necessarily dominating and irrational.

The transmodern culture of the future Age that is being sketched in the present must be the fruit of a qualitative leap in humanity, which we could reference in terms of the following diachronic stages.

First stage. At the origins of Modernity, with the opening to the Atlantic of Europe which was besieged by the Ottoman Empire, and the resulting conquest of Latin America (1492, followed by that of the American continent as a whole), this modernity subsumed through domination the cultures of the original inhabitants of the Americas, constituting the essential dual structure which underlies the new Age of the world during this period: modernity/coloniality. Modernity constitutes itself in the same instant that it subsumes American cultures (during its first three centuries) which are negated in their exteriority.

Clarification of Figure 6: (A) Totality. European culture develops as modernity. (B) An entity (think, ens) that has been subsumed, such as the cultures exploited by coloniality and modernity. (C) Structures that are positioned in terms of exteriority as the colonial domination of modernity.

Non-European cultures are not respected in their (analogical) alterity but are instead subsumed (B), thereby negating their exteriority and incorporating them to the world-system as an integral part of the univocal horizontality of the totality of modernity, for example as colonies of the capitalist system, that is fed by the extraction of external (alien) wealth which produces the alienation of other cultures. The so-called modern Age is produced and reproduced through the colonial exploitation of knowledge, resources, wealth, labor, technology, types of food, etc. which make it possible for Europe to constitute itself as the modernizing center of a new Age.

Second stage. After approximately five centuries of coloniality, the peoples, peripheral, dominated and supposedly “backward” cultures (as modern Europe perceives them), following the Second World War which is prolonged by the U.S’ intervention in it, begin the first stage of “becoming conscious” of the status of under-development which the structures of modern domination have organized to produce their inevitably impoverished state which is reflected in all relevant cultural and civilizational dimensions. These are the national liberation movements in Africa and Asia which had been foreshadowed by movements for independence in Latin America at the beginning of the 19th century. It was only during the second part of the 20th century that these peoples enter a second stage of consciousness which is deeper than that achieved during their initial stage of political emancipation. This involves the negation of the introjection of modernity into the consciousness of the dominant classes of the elites in the colonies (or postcolonies) that reproduce the culture and the civilizing ethos of the modernizing metropolis. This second emancipation has been denominated as that of epistemic cultural emancipation.

Third stage. Taking as its place of enunciation (locus enuntiationis) not the subsumed and merely dominated moment of the colonial world (B in Figure 6) and less still the positionality of the modern world itself (A in figure)41, but instead the exteriority disdained by modernity (and because of this, not destroyed or exploited because it was ignored, but at the same time contaminated42) (C in the same figure), the critic situated in the peripheral world must initiate a task of archaeological reconstruction of their own cultural and popular memory. This critic must reconstruct “against the grain” (as Walter Benjamin put it), from the perspective of the oppressed who have been vanquished by modernity, and from that of the memory or history of the ethical, mythical nucleus of their own culture (as P. Ricoeur suggested), the epic of their own millenarian civilizations (for example those of China, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Islamic world, Bantu Africa, the original peoples of Latin America, etc.), and of their knowledge, technologies, economies, politics, poetry, art, etc., which in many cases are much more ancient than those of modernity and have continued to resist and invent new uses and customs during the Modern Age (despite its coloniality).

These cultures are not eternal identical essences; they are cultural structures that evolve with the lives of their peoples and cannot reproduce their past in their futures. But they can continue to live and to evolve their distinct worlds. This task of reconstruction cannot be undertaken by the modern European scientist or sage, because they are alien or foreign to these contexts, and do not know the colonial languages as mother tongues, have not eaten their food with an educated palate, and have not lived their climates, clothing, and homes through such sensibilities. These are often forgotten processes which have been rendered invisible and condemned as backward, rude, or barbarian even by many within the peripheral peoples who have been silenced successively since the end of the 15th century (beginning with Latin America, continuing through India, Southeast Asia, the Islamic world, and Africa).

Fourth stage. In order to construct a new transmodern civilization, a new world, information is necessary through intercultural dialogue with other cultures that suffered the same kinds of domination of modernity, in order to learn other values, other literatures, other histories, economies, politics, esthetics, practices, other ways of understanding gender, etc. The idea is not to univocally imitate another culture: the focus now is to initiate a dialogue where the kind of fusion of horizons can be produced that I have sought to explain and depict above (Figure 5). This will include the kind of translation of languages, uses, aptitudes and worlds that Boaventura de Sousa Santos has suggested. The idea is in effect to carry out the approach of the analogia fidei on a global scale. This is envisioned as a dialogue where each culture learns from other cultures in a manner which is conscious of the analogical distinction of each theme which is addressed: without either identity nor equivocality. But the learning that is to take place is not through domination or imposition of one upon another, but from the perspective of a symmetry of rights, without violence, within the framework of a reasonable (rational) dialogue, which includes choosing and deciding along the way what aspects of the other culture are convenient from each culture’s perspective. And between these cultures the objective is not just a South-South dialogue of excolonies with excolonies, but also of modern culture that is not universal, but rather particular and provincial, which was imposed nonetheless with its “universality claim”, based upon the extraction of resources of all of the world’s distinct cultures from the perspective of the universal univocity imposed through violence, and not with justice for the benefit of the common good of humanity, but instead in service to the accumulation of global wealth enjoyed solely by the system’s center, by Europe- and today by the United States.

This should not be a fundamentalist dialogue that negates all of modernity’s validity, but must be one instead that knows how to differentiate between what is convenient for the cultures of the Global South and what is harmful. It should not be a fundamentalist position, but equally it should be free of the coloniality of knowledge, being, existence, which negates itself. What we need is an epistemological, cultural, and technological decolonization that has a distinct project for a new future civilization, not to return to a tradition of the past which cannot be repeated, but instead to advance towards another that ought to continue with the ontological, ethical, cultural traces of one’s own traditions, which are alive, within a new future civilization. This does imply the negation of tradition nor the transformation into substance of the inexistent eternity of a tradition to which one should return; but instead the dialectical and analogical creation of a new totality that takes the best and the most essential from the own tradition, innovated within a new distinct totality: similar to the previous stages of tradition, but constitutive of a distinct new Age of the same tradition.

Fifth stage. What is at stake here has been explored above. Proceeding upon the basis of the South-South and South-North global dialogues, and the production of instrumental mediations and of an ethical and ontological transformation of subjectivity, a vital growth of postcolonial cultures can continue, as they decolonize their interpretations, epistemes, technologies, their projects in all fields and dimensions (not only in the economic context, but also those which are political, cultural, with reference to gender and the overcoming of patriarchy, beyond white racism, and the ecocidal mentality grounded in a secularist and purely quantitative interpretation of nature, etc.). All of these are processes with analogical distinction, which is to say that they are grounded in a recognition of these distinct characteristics and challenges and do not take a univocal approach towards them. When someone enunciates the theme of human rights in Latin America for example they should have an understanding as to the analogical distinction and character of this concept in the centenary Arab legal tradition and philosophy, for example. And the same logic should be applied to all of the components of a culture, of a civilization, and of economic and political structures.

Clarification of Figure 7. A, B, C, etc.) Moments of the cultures dominated, exploited, alienated or subsumed as mediations of Modernity. A’, B’, C’, etc.) Moments which are positioned in the Exteriority to Modernity, and which are the points of departure of historical development (analogically distinct moments). Lines a, a’, etc.) Distinct growth of each culture. The Line from Modernity to Transmodernity shows a dialectical process of a prevailing totality (Modernity) towards another future totality (the global cultural pluriverse of the transmodern Age, with analogical similarity). This dialectical process is a passage (Übergang), which is simultaneously analogical to the extent that there are components in Transmodernity that were not given in Modernity (which means that there is therefore similarity between the two), and that they were not even in potentia (the Aristotelian dynamis) in Modernity. This is to say, that they would therefore be impossible if this was merely a univocal passage within the identity. But the intervention of the contributions from the Exteriority of Modernity (indicated by A’, B’, C’, etc., and by the lines) transform the process into a creatio ex nihilo (out of nothingness43) from Modernity to Transmodernity.

Sixth stage. The future system (D), the age of the world subsequent to the modern Age, will not be a another modernity that has been fully realized (J. Habermas), nor an alter Modernity (Antonio Negri), nor possible other modernities based upon each of the cultures within the Global South (as suggested by the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abdurrahman), nor a non-capitalist modernity (B. Echeverria), etc. Instead what is unfolding is a transition and transformation into another global Age, another civilizational process, another kind of personal and collective peoples’ subjectivity, which will involve leaving modernity behind, in a manner similar to how modernity in Europe (and only there) implied leaving medieval German feudalism behind (remembering that no other culture anywhere else in world history was feudal). I have described this Age in terms of Transmodernity, in order to distinguish it from Postmodernity, without yet attributing to it a positive identity of its own. Postmodernity has been a positive step in the face of Modernity’s agony which produced a partial self-criticism of its own limitations. Postmodernity, the final, agonizing cultural movement of modernity itself, still has modernity as its place of enunciation, and its creators and cultivators are still modern, although they are critical of the univocity of their own culture. Transmodernity instead is being constructed through the efforts of those critical forces who think, act and project themselves from outside of and beyond the modern horizon, from the perspective of another geopolitics, from the regions and dimensions of the world that have been ignored, negated, exploited, and from what Parmenides conceived of as realms of “non-being”.

But the creator of Transmodernity, of a new Civilization, is not a fundamentalist who merely negates modernity, nor someone who is backward or traditional who becomes modern, nor someone who seeks to reproduce from the basis of each tradition a modernity of their own which is in fact impossible to reproduce. Thanks to the possibility of overcoming the provincialization of modernity (a task which requires the negation of its pretensions of universality) the future of a civilization, a world, a culture, a pluriversal (grounded in the similarity of analogy) world Age, is possible, where the distinct distinction of each diverse culture is respected, but also where it is possible to lay the basis for the fusion of the distinct horizons of these cultures, through their gradually increasing similarity, through mutual understanding, complementary recognition and valuing, and tolerance. The contrary would be identity, which in itself is impossible, but which in any case would imply the impoverishment of humanity, since it would involve the imposition by a single people of a culture identical to itself corresponding to that which dominates the world, through the domination of a single language, history, mythical world, and poetry:

“This people (Volk) is in the global history of that epoch […] the one that dominates (herrschende). Against that absolute right (absolutes Recht), as bearer in the present of the development of the Spirit of the world (Weltgeistes), are arrayed the Spirits of those peoples with no rights at all (rechtlos)”.

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This would be the culmination of Nietzsche’s Will to Power, which would be self-affirmed politically on a global scale as univocal, proclaiming itself as the only absolute global, exclusionary truth. This would be in essence the solitude of tautological unanimity. The total infernal boredom of modern fetishized totalitarianism!

Analogy instead makes it possible to open ourselves towards the path of a rationality which is not only discursive or in dialogue but which also unfolds through pluriversal (not universal) similarity, which makes conviviality, recognition possible as well as an inevitably fragile but active and open tolerance, where many worlds can interact in solidarity by recreating themselves and each other, thereby permitting the innovative adventure of the unexpected and creative interpellation of the Other, which in order to be an Other must care for45 its space, its distinction, and not merely its internal and functional difference within the univocal totality that is deadened through the certainty of tautological repetition. Analogy allows the creation of the new without the loss of the beauty of the plurality within the unity or community of the polysemic similarity, that unites without dominating, and which permits dialogue and does not demand that one forgets their own millenarian cultural distinction, and thus lays the basis for future centuries characterized by greater convergence. The landscape is no longer that of abstract argumentative rhetoric that leads to the competitive destruction of the Other, but instead the dialogical and harmonic complementarity which makes it possible to recognize alterity.