Enrique Dussel was born on December 24, 1934 in La Paz, Argentina. He studied at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza from 1953 to 1957, receiving an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, after which he travelled to Europe to continue his studies. He then received a Doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid, a Doctorate in History from the Sorbonne in Paris, and an undergraduate degree in Theology obtained through studies in Paris and Münster. Between 1959 and 1961 he lived in Israel learning Arabic and Hebrew and working manual jobs at a cooperative led by French Jesuit Paul Gauthier. He returned to Argentina in 1969 and became influenced by Dependency Theory and the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, both of which were to become major influences on his thinking. In the events leading up to the military dictatorship in Argentina of 1976-1983, he was increasingly the target of violence, including death threats, the bombing of his house, and sacking from the university. He escaped to Mexico in 1975 as a political exile, where he continued his work as a Professor of Philosophy at the Iztapalapa campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Autonomous Metropolitan University, UAM) and in a teaching position at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM).