Part I: Freire’s Notions of Pedagogy and Epistemology

The Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, may well have been the most well known educational activist and theorist in the world at the time of his death in May 1997 (Elias 1994, p. 1). Although not as well known (or regarded) in North America, even here many educational theorists have been influenced by his work. This is especially true in "critical pedagogy,", in people such as Donaldo Macedo (Literacies of Power), Peter McLaren (Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture), Henry Giroux (Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope), and Ira Shore (When Students Have Power). However, despite their overt admiration of Freire’s work, there is little hint here that Freire was, in fact, a Christian or that his Christian vision dominated his thinking about education and society.

Yet, as some lesser-known theorists have noted, it did. For example, Cheryll Johns (1993) has suggested that Freire’s pedagogical enterprise is centrally founded in his Christian faith. She suggests that for Freire, the prime purpose of Christianity is to make all people fully human, to raise them back to their creational position. According to Johns, this ontological vocation in Freire must be understood first of all creationally, namely, a call by the Creator to live in a particular way by virtue of being a creature. The creaturely vocation is affirmed in human yearnings for freedom and justice and is negated by injustice, exploitation, violence and oppression (Johns 1993, p. 49). Restoring creaturely vocation, then, takes place within history, and in doing so people ‘make history’ towards the kingdom of God.

John Elias (1976) suggested something similar. He suggests that Freire’s criticism of education is religiously inspired. According to Elias, for Freire "the theological enterprise and the educational enterprise have the same purpose—to promote the liberation of man" (Elias 1976, p. 64). Being Christian is not passively waiting around to be filled by the Word. Instead, says Freire, "I think that in order to listen to [the Word of God], it is necessary to be engaged in the process of the liberation of man. Because of this, I think that theology, such a theology, should be connected with education for liberation—and education for liberation with theology" (Freire 1970, "Education for Awareness: A Talk with Paulo Freire" Risk Vol. VI, No. 4, 7-19; quoted in Elias 1976, pp. 64-65). Elias argues that because central to Freire’s belief is the notion that God works in history through humans, he has a Christian view of being human (Elias 1976, p. 67). That view of humans leads Freire to believe that the Word of God demands working for liberation, a task that includes challenging the powerful in society (Elias p. 77; cf. Letter to a Theology Student, p. 7).

Educationally, this leads Freire to develop his central notion of critical consciousness or conscientization. This concept too, Elias suggests, must be understood within the context of humans living out a relationship with the Creator (Elias 1976, p. 67; cf. Education for Critical Consciousness, pp. 17-18). Freire’s notion of conscientization involves a process in which humans as knowing subjects develop a heightened awareness both of the oppressive reality which shapes their lives and their capacity to transform that reality through their action on it (Elias 1994, p. 123). The attendant ideas of ontological vocation, love, dialogue, hope, sympathy, and humility—all important to Freire’s idea of raising critical consciousness—stem from his Christian vision.

The central role of a Christian faith in Freire’s pedagogy and social critique is certainly born out in one of his last publications, Pedagogy of the Heart (1998). At the end of that work Freire reflects on the Christian vision that has motivated him throughout his life. His overall message of hope for the millions of people that are oppressed around the world has always been, in his own mind, unmistakably centered in his own Christian faith. For example, he recognizes that the oppressed people are often themselves very pious Christians, understanding God to be one who punishes rebelliousness against injustice. However, instead of urging a Marxist analysis of ‘religion as opiate’ Freire urges a change in their perception of God. Freire wants them to overcome their "vision of a God at the service of the strong for a God on the side of those with whom justice, truth, and love should be" (Heart, p. 103). Certainly Freire has always pushed for liberation from oppression. His pedagogy is thoroughly saturated with the activism of liberation. However, in the background, as a tacit, enduring framework, is his belief in God and his notion of God. He says, reflectively at the end of his life, "This is how I have always understood God—a presence in history that does not preclude me from making history, but rather pushes me toward world transformation, which makes it possible to restore the humanity of those who exploit and of the weak" (Heart, p. 104).

What has motivated Freire’s ideas, then, is his Christian faith. However, for him faith without works is never enough. Faith and obedient action must act in tandem (Heart, p. 104). In fact, because he takes this so seriously, he feels compelled to say that it is not easy to have faith, precisely because "the demands that faith places on whoever experiences it" (Heart, p. 105). The core of that demand, according to Freire, is "a stand for freedom" (Heart p. 105), which for Freire is virtually synonymous with "overcoming social injustice" (Heart p. 107). For Freire, freedom and justice flow centrally from his Christian vision of life. Freedom and justice are central to his liberating, faith-full pedagogy. And thus it is on these two features that I wish to focus the rest of this paper. However, I wish to examine particularly their role in Freire’s notion of knowledge, including especially its production and the notion of the student (and human being) that undergirds it.

My criticism of Freire’s pedagogy will be that on the one hand his attendant epistemology is framed by a modernist conception of the student as active constructor of knowledge. Central here is the notion of active agency, one that relies heavily on the idea of freedom. On the other hand Freire’s epistemology is at bottom meant as an ethical project, centered on the role of knowledge for the purpose of developing social justice. However, it will be my contention, reading these two concepts through the perspective of Emmanuel Levinas, a notion of knowledge consistent with justice requires going beyond an epistemology rooted only in freedom. This change will require a different outlook on the nature of knowledge, one that will include a conception of alterity. This Levinasian reading, I believe, recovers a deeper notion of knowledge, one that is in the service of bringing about social justice, the central part of Freire’s interpretation of the gospel message. Thus a Levinasian reading will make more explicit what I believe to be the ultimate faith-based root of Freire’s pedagogy.

Pedagogy as an ethical enterprise is central in Freire. For Freire, pedagogy ought always to bring on structural change in an oppressive society (Gadotti 1994, p. 118). As such, at its core, pedagogy ought to be ethical in character; good pedagogy ought to be aimed at political transformation for the purpose of justice, righting the evils of oppression. And although Freire doesn’t rule out political armed revolution to achieve these aims, his writings overwhelmingly suggest his desire to develop political change towards social justice by means of pedagogy. In any event, for Freire, "Education must be an instrument of transforming action, a political praxis at the service of permanent human liberation" (Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 140). Throughout his varied discussions on pedagogy and teaching his ultimate concern is the ethical one of ending political and social oppression.

Freire recognizes that education isn’t automatically or intrinsically a vehicle of bringing on social justice. Instead, he realizes that much of education is dehumanizing, taking the form of what he calls "banking education" (Oppressed p. 58). In that sort of education, the teacher knows everything, the students, nothing; the teacher is active, the student passive; the teacher thinks, the students do not (but are instead thought about); the teacher chooses the content, the students comply with it; the teacher is authority, the student is obedient to authority (Oppressed p. 59). On this model, excellence in pedagogy would mean being efficient in loading up the students with knowledge and saturating them with information. Being a good student would mean being receptive to the depositing process, retaining it, and being able to it give back quickly and perfectly. On the banking model, pedagogy is the process of depositing pre-selected and ready-made knowledge into the empty mental vault and withdrawing it at the appropriate times.

Central to his criticism of banking education is a critique of its model of knowledge. Here knowledge is too neatly packaged, complete and objective, portrayed as clear and distinct items that are easily transferable and able to be deposited into passive students. This view of knowledge misleadingly portrays the world as static and finished, unchanging and unchangeable. Through this model of knowledge the students are thus implicitly indoctrinated to believe that all the activity, power, authority and expertise is held by the teacher (the expert, the textbook) and none of it by the students. Through this model of knowledge students are co-opted into a system that treats them as objects rather than as humans. Thus structurally, the model of knowledge in banking education is dehumanizing because it creates oppressive passivity in students.

This, he says, mirrors the dominating structure of an oppressive society as a whole, where there is a deep division between a class of oppressors and one of oppressed. The oppressed segment of society is kept passive by believing that the oppressors rightly hold all the power and authority. The oppressed accept without question the domination of the oppressors because they believe that their oppressed status is just part of reality’s structure. Consequently, they also believe that reality cannot change, that it is static and finished in its development. Structurally, the model of knowledge in banking pedagogy mirrors this with its fixation and reification of reality. Thus the banking model of knowledge is a vehicle, deliberate or not, for continuing the political oppression at large, working against the ethical project of liberation from that oppression.

The banking model of knowledge violates the humanity of students because it doesn’t acknowledge their creational subjective agency. Centrally, for Freire, humans were created as active developers of knowledge, rather than passive recipients. And our creational human vocation is using that knowledge to transform a changing and changeable world. To project an absolute ignorance onto students, as the banking model of knowledge surely does, is inhuman because it doesn’t acknowledge that being human is already being active, both in knowledge development and in social transformation by means of that knowledge. The teacher who suffocates the natural active curiosity of the student is disrespectful of an essential characteristic of the students’ humanness.

By contrast, normative pedagogy creates possibilities for active inquiry. Good teaching, which Freire labels problem-posing pedagogy, leads to the development of knowledge by the students themselves, deepening inherent spontaneous creaturely curiosity into a deliberate tool of inquiry. On this model, students are more closely equal to their teachers with regard to problems under investigation and knowledge being developed. In this, students exercise freedom, helping control the educational process along with the teacher (Elias 1976, p. 107). Both teacher and students are subjects in this process, together unveiling reality and engaging in the task of creating knowledge of that world (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 56). As Freire says, problem-posing pedagogy "is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge" (Freedom p. 30). Instead of a ‘passive spectator’ model of knowledge acquisition, Freire believes that knowledge always is actively manufactured, in dialogue, among students and teacher. Thus central to Freire’s problem-posing pedagogy is a constructivist epistemology.

Freire’s constructivist epistemology requires critical consciousness. The dynamic relations between knower and known is not merely an unreflective being-in-the-world, but an active consciousness involving the deliberate use of the imagination, the emotions, and the ability to conjecture and compare (Freedom p. 82). Furthermore, this conscious relation is a deliberate interrogation involving the student’s capacity to integrate, synthesize and construct new categories about the world. Freire advocates a dynamic unity between students and world in which knowledge is actively produced by that person.

That unity, however, originates in the student as conscious subject. Knowledge is constructed by a conscious relation to the world. This is a Husserlian "consciousness of . . ." in which the notion of consciousness is linked to an object of consciousness. Central to this "consciousness of" in the knowing relation is the notion of thematizing intentionality. In Freire, knowledge is developed by the active, conscious agent’s thematization that constitutes reality’s unveiling. In Freire’s words, "Thematic investigation thus becomes a common striving towards awareness of reality . . ." (Oppressed p. 98). Knowledge for Freire has an arrow of thematizing intentionality moving from subject to object, involving a conscious subject pointing out objective features of reality, thus unveiling it.

The intentional relation of thematizing is a central requirement for Freire’s idea of humans as active, transformative agents, where the world is viewed as an object of transforming action. In the process of thematically unveiling reality, humans "come to see the world not as a static reality, but as reality in process, in transformation" (Oppressed p. 71). Knowing that reality changes can lead to helping it do so in new directions, transforming it. The set of beliefs formulated in the thematizing process is the means to carrying out that human vocation.

A central condition for conscious thematizing is freedom. The possibility of thematizing requires the freedom to make decisions about which themes to emphasize, which concepts to utilize, and which categories to ignore. Freedom is that part of our human epistemological equipment which gives us the capacity to go beyond present knowledge to change the current perceptions of reality. Since transforming reality is central to our human vocation, changing our conceptions of reality rather than merely adapting to present understandings is central to our human calling. But to do that we must have freedom and control over knowledge development, already as students. This means then that, for Freire, freedom is central for human creatureliness, epistemologically as well.

Knowledge development and social transformation are not two distinct phases, but are inextricably intertwined. At times Freire refers to this as praxis: "There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world" (Oppressed p. 75). By praxis Freire means the dynamic of reflection and action, where word and work are closely intertwined. He calls this naming the world. Naming is intentionality-laden and thematizing, for it is the codification of a recognized theme for the world during the transforming process. Naming is a deliberate objectification of the world by consciously taking distance from it and identifying its structure. This is important for naming to be effective in gaining a perspective on the structural forces that lead to oppression (Vasquez 1997, p. 186). Thus naming can be thought of as an epistemological intervention. The capacity to intervene in the world is interwoven with language, for language makes humans "able to give a name to things that resulted from its intervention, ‘grasping’ intellectually and being able to communicate what had been ‘grasped’" (Freedom p. 53). To be human is construct knowledge, which is to name, which is to transform, which is to be an active agent, which is to be a subject. But naming can only be possible ontologically in freedom.

Part II: A Levinasian Reading of Freire

Does Freire’s notion of freedom associated with the student as an active, epistemological subject and transformative agent provide adequate support for the ethical project he wishes to accomplish with his pedagogy? Does the pedagogical emphasis on freedom required for his constructivist epistemology deliver the quest for justice that Freire seeks? A Levinasian-inspired reading of this will help see a tension between these two.

That reading might go like this. The world on which the epistemological subject acts is "a site where I can" (TI p. 37). The world is the arena where the active student is free to act by grasping, taking, calculating, conceptualizing and thematizing. A Levinasian-inspired reading of the agent’s action on the world is trying to possess the world by conceptually grasping it. This epistemological action involves forging what Levinas would call a totality or an economy of sameness, thematizing the world into categories. This is the epistemological process of making the strange familiar. As a result, the world becomes part of the student’s identity by being an extension of his or her conceptual structure. This gives the student as active agent power over the world in order to transform it. Freire’s constructivist epistemology, based in freedom, is at its root an attempt to relate to the world by a totalizing relation, grasping it by means of naming.

What is largely absent from Freire’s conceptualization is the Levinasian idea of alterity. A Levinasian-inspired move would suggest that, in the epistemological relationship, reality also actually resists possession, contests conceptualization, confronts thematization, remains (stubbornly) other. Because Freire views grasping and thematizing the world as unveiling reality, he’s not in a good position to acknowledge this other side. Freire does recognize that it takes hard work to develop knowledge. But he never comes to the Levinasian-inspired point of realizing that this is because reality never quite fits into the totality thematized by the active agent. A Levinasian perspective would suggest that to the extent the world is other, it cannot be possessed, conceptualized, thematized. Therefore the Freirean subject’s reduction of the world to his or her themes or concepts always are attempts to make the otherness of the world vanish. The ‘positive’ character of the world’s alterity is largely missing in Freire.

As a result, Freire’s constructivism involves the active subject securing itself and not allowing itself to be alienated by the world’s alterity. In constructivism, knowledge development is an act of freedom for the self: "freedom denotes the mode of remaining the same in the midst of the other. . . ." (TI p. 45). That is, the freedom associated with constructing knowledge is the process of continually deploying my identity in grasping and thematizing the world, thereby maintaining the permanence of my identity in the face of difference. Within the context of Freirean pedagogy, then, the construction of knowledge can be viewed as a freedom statement by students with respect to the otherness of the world. Freedom is neutralizing the world qua other and encompassing it with the student’s identity. Knowing is an act of centering.

What a Levinasian-inspired reading makes clear is that constructing knowledge isn’t merely just unveiling the world. The naming process is not neutral with respect to reality; instead, it is a prejudice against its alterity. This bias can be understood as a process of objectification, a way of making the world as other into the familiar world of the same by reducing difference to identity. In this sense, objects qua objects are projects of a conscious subject. Objectification is a form of domesticating the world as other by getting it to surrender, forcing it to "lay itself open to grasp." Objects are not other, difference, but part of the subject’s same, a reduction to identity. To the extent that they are objects they have no mystery but are something known, grasped, conceptualized. Objects are thus thematized entities, with the alterity removed in the naming process. Objects are entities domesticated for possession and control by removing its alterity. Objects are in the circle of sameness, even if they are thought to be outside the subject as such. Subject and object form a totality, with the subject at the center of an ever-widening circle of sameness. The mediating names thus bring the world as other into domination by the active subject. Knowledge turns out to be power because of its domesticating process, thereby making it "the ultimate sense of freedom" (TI p. 45) and control.

As a result, I believe that Freire’s constructivist epistemology remains too close to the position he wishes to avoid, namely, knowledge for dominating control by the oppressor. A constructivist epistemology develops knowledge for power and control to transform the world. As such it is nevertheless structurally similar to the epistemology of the oppressors in banking education. Theirs is also knowledge for control and power, a process in which the world is objectified. To use the words of Horkheimer and Adorno, objectification of the world occurs "in order to determine how it is to be dominated" (1972, p. 39). The main difference between Freire and the oppressors is not an epistemological one, but concerns how large to draw the circle of agency. Freire wants all humans to be in that circle, students included, whereas the oppressors systematically exclude a large group of people from sharing in this power, namely, the oppressed, including students. Democratization and universalization of power in this manner is not to be minimized by any means; it certainly is a step in the right direction. But all that has changed is enlarging the site of production to include all humans in the process. It still remains the case that structurally Freire’s epistemology at bottom is similar to that of the oppressors, one for power and domination, possession and control. The freedom required for a constructivist epistemology leads back to oppression. This seems to be in fundamental tension with his ethical project of pedagogy for justice. David Harvey suggests that this sort of Enlightenment project is bound to turn against itself, transforming "the quest for human emancipation into a system of universal oppression in the name of human liberation" (1989 p. 13; quoted in Vasquez 1997, p. 191). There is a polarity between the means to transformation—i.e., naming—and the goal of transformation—i.e., social justice in term of ridding the world of oppression.

To resolve this tension, Freire needs to ground epistemology in something that goes beyond constructivism. There might well be grounding for knowledge that is deeper than the conceptual and thematic, a dimension of knowing that isn’t structurally oppressive towards reality. This would not be an alternative epistemology, rivaling a constructivist one, but a level of knowing that might situate constructivism. In this deeper, more originary relation, "the knowing being lets the known being manifest itself while respecting its alterity and without marking it in any way whatever by this cognitive relation" (TI p. 42). This deeper dimension of knowing has respect for alterity: it "does not reduce the other to the same as does ontology, but calls into question the exercise of the same" (TI p. 43). Knowing at this level is a way of undermining the confidence of naming, subverting the certitude of thematization for control, or questioning the neutrality of representation. This level of knowing calls into question the enveloping movement of the world by the spontaneity and freedom of the constructing subject. This questioning would be a way of acknowledging the continuing presence of alterity in reality. And it is precisely the phenomenon of the world qua other that would allow us to relativize the controlling thematization of a constructivist epistemology, thereby softening its oppressive temptation.

This dimension of the knowing process would be beneficial for Freire’s faith-inspired, overall ethical project of pedagogy for justice. Levinas calls this level "ethics". For Levinas, ethics is the calling into question of my own freedom, the spontaneity involved in grasping and possessing. In an ethical relation, reality as other is precisely not reduced to sameness, not thematized, not objectified. Ethics is resisting the agent’s constructivist actions by calling into question the freedom of the subject. It is ultimately the recognition that the comprehension of the world qua other is never quite possible. And yet it is the relationship to the other as other that is foundational, even to the grasping agent. In Levinasian terms, ethics is first philosophy, not epistemology.

In that sense ethics opposes freedom and holds it in check. The spontaneity of freedom is conditioned by the responsibility of ethics. For Levinas, central to ethics is justice, since it "involves obligations with regard to an existent that refuses to give itself, the Other. . . ." (TI p. 45). Justice then could be thought of as the relation where the subject has consideration for the other. Although for Levinas "the Other" is primarily human rather than non-human, I wish to extend this to reality in general and thus to epistemology in general as well. Whereas, epistemologically, freedom involves grasping, possessing, reducing difference to themes, epistemologically justice involves respecting alterity, letting the other be other. Although this is certainly true for humans, I would suggest this to be true also for reality in general.

Here we see a way to understand what is problematic in Freire’s emphasis on constructivism when what he wants is justice. The freedom of constructivism is at odds with the justice of recognizing the otherness of reality, its alterity. Freire is pulled in two directions at once. On the one hand, his Christian faith orients him to develop a pedagogy that is first of all oriented towards justice. The pedagogy of the oppressed is meant to allow justice to prevail so that humans can do their God-given vocation. Freire’s Christian faith motivates him to develop a pedagogy in which the duality of domination and dominated will be broken once and for all, where all people will have justice. That is his dream. Yet, his epistemological language of choice is the modernist language of freedom, power through thematizing knowledge, control of reality by naming. Freire’s vehicle for justice is freedom. He has not realized the Levinasian point that the two are opposites, pulling in different directions. His own first language blunts his choice for justice, ultimately working against it. A Levinasian reading sharpens this.

But how can we ensure that justice in fact will occur in his faith-full pedagogy? How can he keep priority of justice over freedom more permanent? A Levinasian-inspired way would be to situate freedom in the context of justice, to suggest that epistemology be grounded in ethics. It would be to situate the conceptual knowing process in a more primordial or originary epistemological relationship with reality. This level suggests that the subject as conscious, active agent is not originary.

If constructivist epistemology is conditioned by ethics then the constructing subject would not be the originary subject; instead, the ethical subject would be, also for knowing. Or, more subtly, we must recognize that the subject as active agent has at its core a more primordial subject, one that could be called the ethical subject. On this model, we might want to say that it is the call of the other that elicits my knowing response most primordially. Certainly that would hold for other humans, as Levinas suggests. However, I would suggest that this hold for reality in general as well. We might want to say that the other is a site of obligation that gives rise to the intentionality of thematizing consciousness. Then knowing, at the ethical level, involves a form of obligation that comes from somewhere in the world, from the world as other, from the otherness of the world. In this Levinasian-inspired reading, the face of the world as other gives rise to obligations on my part as a knower, to my process of knowing. In the knowing process our primary epistemological responsibility is precisely to reality as other. If knowing is indeed a response on our side, it is a response to the world: more particularly and primordially, to the otherness of the world, to the world qua other.

That is, a Levinasian hope here is that ethics as first philosophy is not merely for ethics (morality, the ethical traditionally understood) but for epistemology as well. The Freirean conscious subject constructing knowledge through naming is not bedrock for epistemology; instead, the ethical relation contextualizes that level of knowing, situating thematizing knowledge in reality’s mystery and awesomeness, its creatureliness.

The Levinasian ethical level has particular implications for a Freirean pedagogy that is oriented exclusively towards raising consciousness, to conscientization. Situating pedagogy of freedom in the ethical would call into question the originary character of the ontological vocation of transformation. At bottom, pedagogy for justice cannot just be a pedagogy of freedom.

Freire needs to realize the conditioning character of justice for his pedagogy. To situate pedagogy of freedom, we need pedagogy of responsibility. Pedagogy of responsibility would orient students, qua students, to listen before naming, to have a passivity beyond the passivity of the student as container, as object. Certainly I do not mean for this as a call to return to traditional pedagogy. Instead, it would be a move forward, past freedom, past the activity of the possessing agent, toward responsibility.

I believe that as pedagogy, Freire’s project would not have to abandon a pedagogy of freedom or liberation. Surely, for the oppressed that is an important, central part of the move towards justice. Freire is certainly right about this. However, that cannot be the resting-place of pedagogy, at least of a pedagogy for justice, one motivated by his Christian faith. Activating freedom can’t be the original, for then it is too much like the Enlightenment project of mastery over our own destiny (Vasquez 1997, p. 186). Justice is originary, not freedom. Freedom must be situated in ethics to have direction. Freedom must heed a call, endure a limit, be conditioned in one way rather than another. This would bring out more clearly, pedagogically, Freire’s suggestion that "fighting against discrimination is an ethical imperative", an "obligation" (Heart p. 87). And ultimately this direction comes from a prayer of Freire's: "The prayer that believers should engage in, as I see it, is one where they ask God for the strength and courage to fight with dedication to overcome injustice" (Heart p. 65).

Endnotes