The Tension Between Justice and Freedom in Paulo Freire's Epistemology

Paulo Freire's pedagogy is rooted in his belief in social justice through liberation of the oppressed.His problem-posing pedagogy is the primary ve hicle to raise critical consciousness whereby the ethical project of social justice can be realized.Central to that pedagogy is a view of human beings as change agents and a constructivist vie w of knowledge development.By reading Freire through a framework inspired by Emmanue l Levinas , th e art icle uncovers a central tension between Freire's et hi cal project of justice and the language of freedom that is supposed to bring it about .Specifically the article explores how the concept of freedom in Freire's constructivist epistemology -constituted as agentive, spontaneity-based action -is in tension with his ethical project of a pedagogy for justice, one based in responsibility and non-indifference.Resolution of this tension means situating the subject as an active epistemological agent in the context of an e thical construal of the subject .This means reconceptualizing the grounding notion of the subject beyond a modernist one of spontaneity to the more Levinasian one of responsibility.It also me ans situating Freire's still modernist notion of knowledge as grasp ing within the Levinasian-inspired idea of an ethically situated epistemological relationship with reality as othe r .Levinas's notion of alterity is the key to this re-envisioned grounding of epistemology and human subjectivity.