Studies in Philosophy and Education 18: 389403, 1999.

2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

389

Conscientizacion y Comunidad: A Dialectical

Description of Education as the Struggle for
Freedom
EDUARDO MANUEL DUARTE
Hofstra University, 208 Mason Hall, Hempstead, NY 11549, U.S.A.
(E-mail: edaemd@hofstra.edu)

Abstract. This paper contributes to those analyses that have discussed Hegels influence on Freire,
and Freires rethinking of Hegel. Yet, my narrative of the dialectic of conscientizacion, which I
present here, is a novel attempt to read both thinkers simultaneously. Thus, in this paper I am
exploring, and not didactically proving Gadottis (1994) important, yet unqualified, claim that
Hegels dialectic can be considered the principal theoretical framework of (Freires) Pedagogy of
the Oppressed. It could be said that the whole of his theory of conscientization has its roots in Hegel
(p. 74). And in this exploration, I am not demonstrating Freires expansion of Hegels dialectic
(Schutte, 1990), nor taking a position on whether or not the dialectic of Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed supersedes the Hegelian dialectic (Torres, 1976). Nor am I offering a comparison of the two
dialectics (Torres, 1994). (Of course, having made these claims, I am, as it were, taunting the reader
to deconstruct my piece.) My aim here is to immerse, or insert, myself into the Freirean/Hegelian
dialectic itself. I attempt to situate myself within that peculiar position of the dialectician who
braids ideas through synthetic textual analysis. I use a third person descriptive perspective that
incorporates the voices of Freire and Hegel, and, thereby, weave a new synthesized account of
the emergence of critical consciousness within the formal educational setting.
Key words: Freire, Hegel, submergence, alienation, being-for-another, master/slave dialectic, emergence, dread, freedom, conversion, intervention, Conscientizacion

To be is to engage in relationships with others and with the world (Freire, 1997,
p. 3). With this statement, Paulo Freire begins what is perhaps his most succinctly
titled essay, Education as the Practice of Freedom. Taken together, the statement
and the title reveal Freires ontology of human freedom as the twin aspects of being
and becoming more human. Being human is to be with others, because the human
being is not simply in the world like some inanimate object, but with the world
and others, a subject creating history. This togetherness is hardly known to us, as
very few of us ever actually move beyond a mere acquaintance with each other and
the world, due, in part, to the hypertemporality that we now discover as defining
our experience. Nevertheless, for Freire,the quality of our existence is located in
the fact that we are relational beings, that we are and become more human insofar
as we can maintain relations with one another. Death, technically speaking, is our

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withdrawal from the world we are in. When we are no longer in the world, our
departure signifies our demise. However, the Freirean ontology of freedom implies
that we cease to exist (mori) in our vocation as humans when we withdraw from
our relationships with others and the world. Aside from the hermit or the ascetic
whose concerns are, anyway, otherworldly, few would agree with the idea that
the human vocation is located outside our relations with others. This posture is
perhaps most illogical (impossible) for educators, for whom the meaning, if not
simply the time, of life is measured by the quality of the relationships we maintain.
For educators, how to construct meaningful togertherness is the proverbial riddle
wrapped up in an enigma.
Making (as in constructing, building, or producing) meaningful relationships
with others is the process through which we might define education as the practice
of freedom. But, what is meant by the practice of freedom? Does it mean habitual
or customary performance (e.g., we practice freedom and inclusion in this school)?
Or perhaps it signifies the process of learning through consistently repeated exercises (e.g., come forward and form a circle children, its time we practice being
free)? Or maybe it refers to a professional occupation (e.g., after many years of
liberating minds in the schools, Sofia has gone into private practice)? While it is
clear that in some ways all of these definitions could apply, my interest is not to
analyze ad nauseam the logical possibilities, but to focus on the sense in which the
practice of freedom involves collaborative work or production. It is precisely the
connotation of education as a process of working with others toward freedom that
takes me to the discussion I will offer in this paper.
My understanding of education as the collaborative struggle for freedom, has
emerged from my reading of Freires rewriting of G.W.F. Hegels phenomenology. My reading has focused, in particular, on Freires encounter with Hegels
dialectic of self-consciousness. (Chapter IV, sec. A, of Hegels Phenomenology of
Spirit.) In approaching this particular moment in Freires work, I was guided by
an important, yet unqualified, claim by Moacir Gadotti (a biographer of Freire)
that Hegels dialectic can be considered the principal theoretical framework of
[Freires] Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It could be said that the whole of his theory
of conscientization has its roots in Hegel(Gadotti, 1994, p. 74). Gadottis claim is
actually an endorsement of the conclusions reached by Carlos Alberto Torres: de
todas las influencia filosficos, el pensar hegeliano es el que est en las races de
la filosofa de la alfabetizacin problematizadora (y por ende en el mtodo, etc),
articulando toda el edificio filosfico, pero habiendo sido superado en la dialctica
de la Pedagogia del Oprimido1 (Torres, 1976, p. 407).
This paper contributes to those analyses which have discussed Hegels influence on Freire, and Freires rethinking of Hegel. Yet, my narrative of the dialectic
of conscientizacion, which I present in this paper, is a novel attempt to read
both thinkers simultaneously.2 Thus, in this paper I am not specifically interested
in exploring Gadotti claim, nor simply showing Freires expansionof Hegels
dialectic (Schutte, 1990), nor taking a position on whether or not the dialectic

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391

of Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed supersedes the Hegelian dialectic (Torres,

1976), and not offering a comparisonof the two dialectics (Torres, 1994). Rather,
my aim is to immerse or insert myself into the Freirean/Hegelian dialectic itself.
The voice I use in my paper is a third person descriptive perspective that incorporates the voices of Freire and Hegel. I weave a phenomenology of conscientizacion using both Hegels and Freires dialectical descriptions. The discussion I offer
can perhaps be described as a philosophical mimesis, or mirroring, i.e., an attempt
to mirror the phenomenologies of Freire and Hegel. The result is a synthesized
account of the emergence of critical consciousness. This account culminates in the
depiction of education as an intersubjective struggle for freedom, as an ongoing
struggle between the clear perceptions of critical consciousness and historical
conditions of the world.

1st Moment: Submergence: Alienation, Being-for-Another

People, as being in a situation, find themselves rooted in temporal-spatial conditions which mark them and which they also mark. They will tend to reflect on
their own situationality to the extent that they are challenged by it to act upon
it. Human beings are because they are in a situation. And they will be more the
more they not only critically reflect upon their existence but critically act upon it
(Freire, PO, p. 90). Here is a succinct summary of the dialectic of conscientizaction
as an ongoing process of becoming free. But how does this process get under way?
Where does it begin? What is the initial situation of consciousness?
The dialectic of conscientizacion, the struggle of the human being to be
and become free(r), begins in the state of unfreedom, where consciousness is
submerged by and objectified within the processes of a deterministic and materialistic lifeworld. Here, consciousness remains fixed in the world, its being rendered
permanent in the immediate form in which it appears as a being in nature, a
submergence in the expanse of life (Hegel, POS, p. 114). Without a life of its
own, consciousness is a dependent being, domesticated and reduced to mechanical,
functionalistic unthinking. In this state of submersion, consciousness is impotent
and incapable of independent action. This is the intransitive awareness stage,
where consciousness is caught in the flux of the world. Fatalistic, and an outsider
with regards to history, the individual lives from day to day satisfying their
basic needs (Mashayekh, 1974, p. 15). This fatalism defines life as determined and
closed. Consciousness in this moment is caught between the colorful show of the
sensuous here-and-now and the nightlike void of the supersensible beyond (Hegel,
POS, p. 111).
In this first moment of the dialectic of conscientizacion, pedagogy is practiced
as banking education: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating
forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings . . . banking
method directly or indirectly reinforces [peoples] fatalistic perception of their
situation (Freire, PO, pp. 65, 66). This pedagogy serves to maintain consciousness

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submerged in thinghood, as a being not essentially for itself but for another, a
dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or be for another
(Hegel, POS, p. 115). Reduced to beings-for-another (manipulable objects) the
students are seen as containers or receptacles into which the teacher deposits
facts detached from any historical context.
As a mechanistic and deterministic environment, the banking class is ahistorical. History is not present within this context as a living, evolving force, but
remains a past out there, an event that has happened. History is lifeless and petrified, divorced from individuals who are themselves understood as isolated and
unattached to the world (Freire, PO, p. 62). Because it has already occurred, history
is registered as a permanence that molds the present, a superstructure: something
that is both beyond their grasp and, yet, determining their existence. Banking
method emphasizes permanence . . . a well behaved present, [and] a predetermined future (Freire, PO, p. 65). Thus, critical consciousness is submerged
by a reality presented as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and
predictable (Freire, PO, p. 52).
Power is the crux of this pedagogy. Banking education is structured upon
an asymmetric power relation which domesticates the students. In the banking
classroom the critical capacities of the students are alienated from them as the
teacher appropriates their processes of inquiry. The teacher knows everything and
the students know nothing (Freire, PO, p. 54).3 The students, reduced to the status
of receptacle, equate learning with passive reception. The students are not called
upon to know, but to memorize the contents narrated by the teacher (Freire, PO,
p. 61). A strict hierarchical power relationship allows the instructor to completely
dominate the process: the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while
the pupils are mere objects (Freire, PO, p. 54). This domination or power of the
teacher over the students, maintains the two in opposition, although the students are
unaware of this opposition as a the site of potential conflict. Their ignorance, the
essence of the submergence of critical consciousness, is the chain which holds them
in bondage (Hegel, POS, p. 115). Submerged in reality [they] cannot perceive
clearly the order that serves the interests of [the teacher] (Freire, PO, p. 44).
True, they perceive the teacher as other than them, but their perception is not yet an
awareness of their alienation. They remain vicarious beings who have the illusion
of acting though the action of the teacher (Freire, PO, p. 54).
This first moment of the dialectic produces a pedagogy without an acknowledged conflict or struggle. The banking pedagogy seeks to instill credulity and
manageability. The relationship is thus one between unequals who exist as two
opposed shapes of consciousness; one is the independent consciousness whose
essential nature is to be for itself, the other is the dependent consciousness whose
essential nature is simply to live or to be for another (Hegel, POS, p. 115). Within
this context, the students do not practice any act of cognition, since the object
towards which that act should be directed is the property of the teacher rather than

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393

a medium evoking critical reflection of both teacher and students (Freire, PO,
p. 61, emphasis mine).
In sum, the banking pedagogy alienates, and dehumanizes insofar as it reduces
the individual to a manipulable object: to alienate human beings from their own
decision-making is to change them into objects (Freire, PO, p. 66). This pedagogy
serves to domesticate the consciousness of students, and to the extent that they
understand their condition, they will recognize that they do not possess an independent consciousness, but a dependent one; they are not certain of being-for-self
as the truth of [them]self. On the contrary, [their] truth is in reality the unessential
consciousness and its unessential action (Hegel, POS, p. 115). Moreover, because
this pedagogy actively submerges the critical capacities of the student, it is, in
essence, an act of violence. Any situation in which some individuals prevent
others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence (Freire, PO,
p. 66). This asymmetrical relationship is based on a recognition that is onesided and unequal (Hegel, 1977, p. 114) with the teacher alone understanding
consequences of submergence and choosing to maintain it. As a result, neither side
of the relationship knows the freedom of critical consciousness.

2nd Moment: Emergence: Recognizing and Confronting the Fear of

Freedom, Risking Life
In the first moment, where consciousness is submerged, the teacher in Freires
phenomenology, like the master in Hegels, chooses to hold the student in the
bondage of ignorance and to be the power over this thing s/he has created (Hegel,
POS, p. 115). Thus, the teacher chooses and enforces their choice, and the students
comply (Freire, PO, p. 54). But in making this choice, the teacher has chosen
to create conditions of alienation in which they too must exist. The teacher, in
choosing to create this context of unfreedom, put [them]self into relation with . . . a
thing as such . . . to the consciousness for which thinghood is the essential characteristic (Hegel, POS, p. 115). Thus, the teacher, despite the power possessed, is also
unfree insofar as s/he is living like those whom s/he has reduced to object-status:
the teacher has submerged her/his own capacity for critical consciousness and does
not experience the freedom of self-consciousness. S/he is not a being-for-self, but a
being-for-another insofar as her/his labor is exhausted in the act of controlling the
students. Herein lies the contradiction within the banking educational context: all
end-up living as things, as object-beings, submerged within reality, [and] cannot
relate to it; they are creatures of mere contacts . . . only in the world (Freire, 1997,
p. 3).
The educator as dominator is not free.
The realization by the teacher that s/he has created and therefore lives within a
contradiction, that lordship has in reality turned out to be something quite different
from an independent consciousness (Hegel, POS, p. 117) moves the dialectic
of conscientizacion. The recognition of this contradiction by the banking-clerk

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educator, namely, that s/he has created a context of unfreedom, and has therefore
chosen to be unfree, initiates the next moment in the dialectic: the emergence of
conscientizacion. This insight motivates the educator to negate the contradiction
through a commitment to transform the context they have enforced. This commitment to create conditions of freedom signifies the emergence of the educators, and,
in turn, the students conscientizacion: just as lordship showed that its essential
nature is the reverse of what it wants to be, so too servitude in its consummation
will really turn into the opposite of what it immediately is; as a consciousness
forced back into itself, it will withdraw into itself and be transformed into truly
independent consciousness (Hegel, POS, p. 117).
Without this conversion by the teacher, the consciousnesses of the educator
and students remain submerged. Why is this? Why must the teacher initiate the
transformation of the power dynamic and shift the landscape so as to create a
space for the emergence of conscientizacion? Because the students, as receptacles,
will remain captive until the educator is awakened and moved to dramatically alter
the power relationship. Thus, it is necessary for the teacher who has perceived
the contradiction of their banking pedagogy to initiate the process to resolve
the teacher-student contradiction, to exchange the role of depositor, prescriber,
domesticator, for the role of student among students and thereby to undermine
the power of oppression and serve the cause of liberation (Freire, PO, p. 56).
Thus, the teachers conversion to the students, this growing awareness that s/he
has created a context where none are free, will produce an important moment
in the dialectic: the slow and confounding negation of the educator as dominator.
Of course, this negation is not tantamount to the act of liberating the students. On
the contrary, it is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their
oppressors (Freire, PO, p. 38). It is they (the students) who must, from their
stifled humanity, wage for both the struggle for fuller humanity; the oppressor,
who is himself dehumanized because he dehumanizes others, is unable to lead
this struggle (Freire, PO, p. 29). Hence, while the educators conversion initiates
the necessary shift in the paradigm of power, this movement is not, in-itself, the
moment of liberation. The emergence of conscientizacion is not to be confused
with conscientizacion itself. The negation of the banking educational context
and the presence (role) of the educator as dominator is fulfilled by the students
whose liberation or freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift (Freire, PO,
p. 29). Besides, the conversion of the teacher is not an immediate transformation
willed by a decision. On the contrary, conversion is a gradual movement from one
pole of the contradiction to the other, and a discovery of her/himself to be an
oppressor may cause considerable anguish. In turn, this stage in the emergence of
conscientizacion is like a childbirth, and a painful one (Freire, PO, p. 31).
The negation of the dominator is a slow death/birth which creates, at first,
chaos and uncertainty, rather than certainty and purposeful action. The awakening
of the educators consciousness which initiates the negation of the conditions of
unfreedom, unsettles the dynamic to the extent that a momentary vacuum or void

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395

is created. The educators abdication of power and attempt to join the students
creates panic and fear; neither side understanding who or what will fill the void
that has emerged. Both have been conditioned to act as subject and objects,
and neither fully understands the potential of the new roles they have before them.
The vacuum created by the teachers conversion is a void signifying the rupture of
the bond between teacher and student. This rupturing sets the students apart from
the teacher, who must now re-enter the relationship as a student. This new position
or role is the necessary outcome of the insight which initiated the conversion. With
the rupture, however, all are now confronted with the contradiction, the truth of the
contradiction that s/he had created the conditions of her/his own bondage.
The teachers conversion is a life-and-death struggle (Hegel, POS, p. 114) in
which the educator slowly eradicates the position of dominator. From this trial
by death, the educator emerges anew in solidarity with the students fighting at
their side to transform the objective reality which has made them these beings
for another (Freire, PO, p. 31). The educators radical gesture, or conversion,
requires that s/he enter into the situation of those with whom one is solidary
(Freire, PO, p. 31). With the relationship now reconfigured, the teacher will be
recoupled with the students in a struggle for freedom/humanity that is lead by
them but fought together. And here is initiated the pedagogy which represents
a collective struggle for freedom. From the outset, her efforts must coincide
with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual
humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people and
their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their
relations with them (Freire, PO, p. 56).
The birth of the new relationship is, first and foremost, experienced as the
slow, painful death of the old. The death of the authoritarian presence does not
immediately produce a context of freedom, but a context of chaos and uncertainty.
The rupturing of the asymmetrical relationship represents the absolute meltingaway of everything stable (Hegel, POS, p. 117). The educators enlistment to
the ranks of the students signifies the dissolution of the educator as dominator.
In the face of the death of the old order the students are seized with dread. This
fear manifests as an internal conflict. In this moment of confusion the consciousness of the students is bifurcated and split, suffering from the duality which has
established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they
cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic freedom, they fear it
(Freire, PO, p. 30). The split represents the legacy of the dominator (unfreedom)
as a slowly dying presence that has yet to be buried or located outside the students
consciousness. They havent yet understood the condition of unfreedom as an
antagonistic reality that must constantly be perceived, confronted and transformed.
At this moment of emergence, the oppressor is housed within the people, and
their resulting ambiguity makes them fearful of freedom (Freire, PO, p. 144). The
original paradigm of unfreedom has not yet been completely negated, as the legacy

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of the teachers domination over the students lives on as an internal conflict within
the students partially submerged and emerging consciousness:
The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being
divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between
human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having
choices, between being spectators and being actors; between acting or having
the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors; between speaking
out or being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their
power to transform the world. (Freire, PO, p. 30)
The internal conflict will ultimately give way to the dialectic of conscientizaction as an ongoing struggle between the clear perceptions of critical consciousness
and historical conditions of the world. However, in these moments of conscientizacions emergence the students remain partially submerged in the order that serves
the interests of those who benefit from their ignorance, within the contradiction
in which the banking education seeks to maintain them (Freire, PO, p. 56). The
emergence of conscientizacion is a slow and painful death/birth.
The dialectic of conscientizacion is moved by the dread that the emerging order
causes. The dread represents the fear of being free. Yet the fear of freedom compels
the negation or transformation of the given [alienation], starting from an idea or
and ideal [freedom] that does not yet exist, that is still nothingness (a project)
(Kojve, 1969, p. 48). The potential of independent critical/self-consciousness
produces a fear or anxiety. But this doubt and fear, precisely as first moments in
the emergence of conscientizacion, are overcome by the lure of freedom itself. The
vaguely perceived ideal of freedom entices consciousness, tempts it with the hope
of reward or pleasure to be attained with independence. The fear of freedom is
at once dread and awe. Hope in the promise of independence produces awe, an
overwhelming feeling of reverence for freedom which is perceived as sublime. As
dread, the fear of freedom is the intuition of nothingness as the failed project of
self-affirmation and the resubmergence of consciousness. This dread is the spectre
of alienation that haunts consciousness. Fear of freedom, of which its possessor
is not necessarily aware, makes him see ghosts (Freire, PO, p. 18). Thus, dread,
like hope, moves consciousness to action. Dread motivates a negation of alienation
as a present reality and future possibility. The hope or promise of this ideal, the
attainment of freedom, in turn, compels life risking action which represents the
final moment in the death of the old and the birth of the new. It is solely by risking
life that freedom is obtained . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life
may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth
of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness (Hegel, POS, p. 114).
This risk is a crucial moment in the dialectic, because it is here that alienated
(oppressed) consciousness becomes aware that its dread is its own internalization
of the oppressors necrophilic view of the world (Freire, PO, p. 41). This realization
is a negation of the fear of freedom as the inability to function beyond the status of
object, or being-for-another. Thus the moment of emergence is recognized as a

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double bind.4 The students realize they are stuck or trapped by the duality which
has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom
they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic freedom, they
fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose
consciousness they have internalized (Freire, PO, p. 30). In turn, they realize that
overcoming the double bind involves negating the internalized dominators love
of death, not of life. This realization is at once the confirmation of the desire for
life itself, the recognition that life itself is the object of desire in freedom. The
oppressed, who have been shaped by the death-affirming climate of oppression,
must find through their struggle the way of to life affirming humanization . . .
(Freire, PO, p. 50). This realization is the moment of the birth of conscientizacion
and the Subject. [Desire] and action, then, conspire to reveal the subject itself as a
living being (Lauer, 1987, p. 94). The realization is thus a negation/confirmation:
a negation of the dread (fear of the death of self, alienation), and confirmation of
the awe of freedom.
The dread of unfreedom (the resubmergence of consciousness), gives way
to the awe of freedom as the possibility of life. In this moment the perception of possibility produces the insight toward human experience as historical, as
being-in-history. Herein lies the initial insight concerning the historicity of human
experience. Perceiving life as a becoming, critical consciousness understands life
as not simply being alive but confirms that existence is historical (Freire, PO,
p. 79).
In sum, the emergence of critical consciousness involves a process of selftransformation through which the fear of freedom is overcome. This transformation
of self represents the resolution of the internalized contradiction or conflict between
a whole/unified and divided self. Only as they discover themselves to be hosts
of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy
(Freire, PO, p. 30). By overcoming itself as a divided and inauthentic being, the
emerging consciousness begins the process of understanding itself as a subject of
history. This process of transformation is thus the first moment in the reconfigured
educational context, or the beginning of the new pedagogy which will focus on the
historicity of the human condition. Here is seen the beginning of the two essential
sides of education: the investigation of thinking itself and the deepening of historical awareness. Hence, the self-transformation is the process of coming to know
what knowing is, and by knowing what knowing is the person comes to know what
it is to be a subject in the world, a knowing which begins when consciousness
posits itself rather than an alien object as the object of its knowing (Lauer, 1987,
p. 92). Positing itself as the object of its knowing, consciousness (Bewusstsein)
initiates the process by which self (Selbst) returns from otherness (alienation). In
this process of returning, whereby self is negated as other (object), the orginary
motivating desire (Begierde) of dread is transformed/transcended (aufgehoben) and
gives way to the awe of possibility or potential of freedom in historical subjectivity.
The fear of freedom is overcome through the risking of life, not in the sense of

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gambling with life, but as risking the challenge of life as an ongoing struggle for
freedom, and as an ongoing struggle to critically unveil and transform the world
self is situated in. By embracing the project of freedom the subject risks life, and
overcomes the anxiety of the future as a failed project, an anxiety which is itself
a product of a dissolution of the old order. In this act of negation consciousness
supersedes in such a way as to preserve and maintain what is superseded, and
consequently survives its own supersession. In this experience, self-consciousness
learns that life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness (Hegel, POS, p. 115).

3rd Moment: Intervention: Consientizacion, Education as Making History,

Making Culture, as Humanization
The students have now emerged from the ahistorical conditions in which they
existed submerged in a world to which they [could] give no meaning, lacking
a tomorrow and a today because they exist[ed] in an overwhelming present
. . . (Freire, PO, p. 79). They now posit themselves as Subjects of history (the
subjectivity of history, the makers of history). The emergence of conscientizacion
is the awareness of self as a historical being in a situation. This dialectic between
self and situation is the historical condition which defines the ontology of human
experience or human freedom as the twin aspects of being and becoming more
human. Human beings are because they are in a situation. And they will be
more the more they not only critically reflect upon their existence but critically
act upon it. Reflection upon situationality is reflection about the very condition of
existence (Freire, PO, p. 90). This reflection is not contemplation but praxis, an
action-oriented inquiry. Conscientizacion, or reflection upon situationality, is an
analytic-creative act of inquiry. Humankind emerge from their submersion and
acquire the ability to intervene in reality as it is unveiled. Intervention in reality
historical awareness itself thus represents a step forward from emergence, and
results from the conscientizacion of the situation. Conscientizacion is the deepening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence (Freire, PO,
p. 90).
The emergence of critical consciousness signifies the resolution of the original
teacher/student contradiction. The transformation of the relationship marked the
dissolution of the old roles and the emergence of a new person: neither oppressor
or oppressed, but [the person] in the process of liberation . . . the humanist, revolutionary educator (Freire, PO, p. 38). Education, properly speaking, now comes
on the scene through the reconciliation of the poles of the contradiction so that
both are simultaneously teachers and students (Freire, PO, p. 53). Thus, the emergence of conscientizacion, the emergence of these new roles and new persons,
immediately announces the birth of a new pedagogy: problem posing education.
The education flowing from conscientizacion is historical. The banking educational context was a mechanistic, deterministic environment, and ahistorical.
History was not present as a living, evolving force, but remained a past out there,

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an event that has happened. While the banking classroom presented history as
lifeless and petrified, in problem posing pedagogy history is the sum total of
human aspirations, motives and objectives . . . [which] do not exist out there
somewhere, as static entities; they are occurring (Freire, PO, p. 88). The temporalspatial conditions of problem posing pedagogy are defined as processural, evolving
and unfolding. The incompletion of the human being defines education as the
continuous labor which brings into the world this new being: . . . human in the
process of achieving freedom (Freire, PO, p. 31).
Problem posing education is an ongoing process, a permanent struggle,
constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be, it must become (Freire, PO, p. 65).
Education as the practice of freedom is the ongoing, emergence of a new person.
Conscientizacion is a dialectical telos (end) or a final moment that is defined as
an ongoing event. Conscientizacion defines education as the continuous making of
history, as the event through which human beings not only critically reflect upon
their existence but critically act upon it (Freire, PO, p. 90). With conscientizacion,
human beings are aware of their incompletion, that they are unfinished, uncompleted being in and with a likewise unfinished reality (Freire, PO, p. 65). Thus,
to say that problem posing education is historical is to recognize that the studentseducators have entered a pedagogical context in which they confirm themselves as
free.
If problem posing education is the labor through which the human being is
constantly emerging, conscientizacion is that ever growing awareness and understanding of this emergence. Conscientizacion gauges and guides the process by
which the situation is unveiled and transformed. Humankind emerge from their
submersion and acquire the ability to intervene in reality as it is unveiled. Intervention in reality historical awareness itself thus represents a step forward
from emergence, and results from the conscientizacion of the situation (Freire,
PO, p. 90). Through their intervention, the students-educators in problem posing
education apprehend [their] situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation (Freire, PO, p. 66). Thus their work is first and foremost a struggle to
transform the conditions they discover themselves in. However, they immediately
recognize that the process of intervention is already underway. This is identified
in the discovery that their labor to emerge from the alienated banking context was
the first intervention, the first moment in which they seized control of their destiny
and created history. Reflecting on this intervention, they recall the negation of the
dread, and recognize that in work desire [was] held in check, fleetingness staved
off (Hegel, POS, p. 118). The negation of dread, of alienation, and the struggle to
transform the world is now perceived as the Action (Tat) of Fighting and of Work
(Kampf und Arbeit). Work [will] open the way to Freedom or more exactly
to liberation (Kojve, 1969, p. 48). As subjects inserted in history and no longer
caught in the flux of the world, the students-educators are neither fatalistic nor
resigned, but fully engaged in the process of directing the movement of their existence with one another. Resignation gives way to the drive for transformation and

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inquiry, over which people feel themselves to be in control. If people, as historical

beings necessarily engaged with other people in a movement of inquiry, did not
control that movement, it would be (and is) a violation of their humanity (Freire,
PO, p. 66).
The pedagogy of intervention is thus investigation and transformation of the
given reality (sociopolitical situation), or education as the creation of history.
Making history, however, is synonymous with humanizing the world. This
pedagogy is thus co-intentional education, or the collaboration of studentseducators, as Subjects, to unveil the world as an historical context rather than
a static, closed, mechanistic universe. As they attain this knowledge of reality
through common reflection and action, they discovers themselves as its permanent
re-creators (Freire, PO, p. 51). Hence, the pedagogy of intervention is a complete
inversion of the banking concept of education insofar as students-educators now
perceive life as the result of their own work. It is in this way, therefore, that
consciousness qua worker, comes to see in the independent being [of the object]
its own independence (Hegel, POS, p. 118). Education, as the praxis of freedom,
is the ongoing struggle to be and become more human. Problem posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming (Freire, PO,
p. 65). Education as the praxis of freedom is the making, construction, or building
of the world as a more humane (compassionate) reality. Thus, when positing that
education in order to be, it must become (Freire, PO, p. 65) one is claiming that
education qua intervention (guided by conscientizacion) is the process of humanization. Education as the praxis of freedom is cultural action. Students-educators
are now identified as cultural workers in the sense that their labor, or what they
create (culture), is the sign of their independence or freedom. Through this work
they see themselves and thereby become for [themselves] something existing on
[their] own account (Hegel, POS, p. 118).

Conclusion: Freedom with Others, Education as Co-Intentionality

The education issuing from conscientizacion is co-intentional: the teachers and
students co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling
that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating
that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection
and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators (Freire, PO,
p. 51).
By describing intervention pedagogy as co-intentional Freire is using the philosophic language of Edmund Husserl in a particular, if not peculiar, manner. Freires
unique use of Husserl (the architect of phenomenology) is both an avenue for
further exploration, and an issue that allows me reiterate the most important implication of the dialectical description offered above; namely, the teachers choice to
be and become free(r).

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401

Intentionality, or the phenomenological process by which the knower simultaneously discovers and creates the world, was described by Husserl in Cartesian
tones. Intentionality is, first and foremost, the experience of a singular ego. For
example, when describing human experience Husserl demonstrates performatively
what he (I) knows about others: Experiencing them as men, I understand and
take them as Ego-subjects, units like myself, related to their natural surroundings
(Husserl, 1969, p. 105). For Husserl, of course, each individual experiences distinct
and different fields of perception due, in no small part, to the unique memories
each of us holds. Husserl adds that despite the uniqueness of our own ego-subject
experience, we come to understandings with our neighbors, and set up in common
an objective spatio-temporal fact-world as the world about us that is there for us
all, and to which we ourselves none the less belong (Husserl, 1969, p. 105). Does
Freires category of co-intentionality correspond to Husserls qualification of the
ego-subjects intentionality? Is setting up a common world what co-intentionality
is all about? How, if at all, does Freires phenomenology diverge from Husserl, and
what are the consequences of this new direction in phenomenology?
At first glance, it would appear that Freires co-intentionality is a consistent
application of Husserl. When Freire defines conscientizacion as peoples awareness
of their situationality, their understanding that they are rooted in temporal-spatial
conditions which mark them and which they also mark (Freire, PO, p. 90), his use
of Husserls phenomenological language is unmistakable. In turn, his connection
with Husserl seems even clearer when Freire defines co-intentionality as peoples
knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, [by which] they
discover themselves as its permanent re-creators (Freire, PO, p. 51).
However, the connection between Freire and Husserl starts to loosen when cointentionality is considered in light of the Hegelian inspired dialectic of conscientizacion. In Husserl, the ego-subject both alone and with others knows/sets-up
the world. In Husserl, this common world we set up with our neighbors unfolds,
so to speak, casually and naturally. The creation of a common world is an event
of almost secondary purpose. In Freire, on the other hand, the act of creating the
common world is the expression and experience of our existential freedom, and the
individual emerges in-and-through this collaborative act of unveiling and transforming the world. Thus, the pursuit of full humanity, . . . , cannot be carried out
in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity . . . Attempting
to be more human, individualistically, leads to having more egotistically, a form of
dehumanization (Freire, PO, pp. 6667). Hence, Husserls inter-ego-subjectivity
is supplanted by Freires category of co-intentionality, a description of intersubjectivity which is inspired by the Hegelian dialectic. The affirmation of life
which is essential to self-consciousness cannot be the affirmation of ones own
life alone, because unlike the Husserlian phenomenology of intersubjectivity
which first discovers the self and then seeks to constitute a world of other selves,
the Hegelian phenomenology finds that other selves are essential to the discovery
of ones own self and that this discovery is actually a producing of oneself in

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relation to others (Lauer, 1976, pp. 99, 101). In light of Lauers statement, I
would claim that Freire extended the phenomenology of intersubjectivity through
an ontology of human freedom which insists that being and becoming more human
occurs always and everywhere with others, because, as I stated at the outset, for
Freire the human being is not simply in the world like some inanimate object, but
with the world and others, an intersubject creating history. As Freire writes, the
intersubjective praxis of freedom is a liberation of women and men, not things.
Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he
liberated by others (Freire, PO, p. 48).
While the connections and disconnections between Freire and Husserl requires
further exploration, the established divergence between the two allows me to
underline what I understand to be the most pivotal moment in the dialectic
of conscientizacion, namely, the educators conversion to the students and their
commitment to the liberatory process. It seems evident that the key moment in
the shift toward a pedagogy of intervention is that moment where the educator
recognizes that his/her freedom is dependent upon the freedom of his/her students,
when s/he comes to the realization that the production of her/his freedom (selfactualization) is a joint project s/he works on together with her/his students. Freire,
using the words of Ernesto Che Guevara, calls this moment a communion with
the people. Above, the moment was described as a conversion, and as a life-risking
action. Here, I emphasize that the educators conversion, their communion with
the students, follows from an existentialist choice to disrupt the hierarchical power
arrangements in the name of freedom and possibility. It follows from the understanding to accept, as Sartre did, that I can take freedom as my goal only if I take
that of others as a goal as well . . . Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for
everyone else. In choosing myself, I choose [humankind] (Sartre, 1970, p. 37).
Notes
1 Of all the philosophical influences, the Hegelian thought is that which is at the roots of problem-

posing literacy (as a method, etc.); articulating the entire philosophical structure, yet superceded in
the dialectic of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
2 Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit are abbreviated (PO)
and (POS) in parenthetical references.
3 Freire is clear about his connection with Hegel on this point: The students, alienated like the slave
in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teachers existence . . . (Freire, PO,
p. 53).
4 I am indebted to Reiner Schrmann for this term. Schrmann describes the phrase double bind
as a primary injunction declaring the law; a secondary injunction declaring a counter-law, hence
conflicting with the first; and lastly a tertiary injunction prohibiting the victim from escaping from
the field constituted by the first two injunctions (Schrmann, 1991, p. 234). This term, according
to Schrmann was first coined by the social psychologist Gregory Bateson. I am using the phrase to
denote the insight that consciousness has about the duality signifying the need and fear of freedom.
This stage of the dialectic can be described as a double bind because consciousness is trapped, and
not yet able to experience the freedom of critical consciousness.

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403

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