O espectro da dialética das consciências: Paulo Freire e o “existencialismo cultural”

Abstract

This work aims to investigate how consciousness is constituted in the works of Paulo Freire. From our research, consciousness does not present itself as a mere word or concept abstracted from others; it structures the form of the "Paulo Freire Method." By problematizing as a principle, we analyze its genesis, which comes from the relationship with the thought of ISEB, known as an ideologue of national developmentalism. From the reading of the context of the time, one can observe that consciousness was an inductive method, primarily derived from the systematized reading by the IBF intellectual Vicente Ferreira da Silva, who systematized a dialectic of consciousnesses. It is based on the principle that all forms of thought are forms of consciousness seeking to realize their wills in the world, with particularities that enter into divergence and processes of domination and liberation. The overcoming of this conflict would occur through dialogue among various conflicting viewpoints, aiming for unity in the dialogue. Dialogue would be the way to organize divergences and form a collective temporal project to overcome the domination of one over others. Unity would not only form an ontic project but also rescue the essence of being, humanizing the world. In the 1950s and 1960s, driven by the way of organizing distinct and antinomic contents of the existential conflict of History, the educator believed that the solution to Brazil's crisis was to form a national developmentalist project. However, from his "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," Freire abandons his reformist ideas and bets on the socialist utopia to achieve the long-desired humanization. The problem of our thesis is whether, in fact, Freire discarded the model of the dialectic of consciousness in favor of a new principle, or if he simply discarded developmentalist nationalism while preserving the structure of the dialectic of consciousness. For us, the second movement occurred: Freire always insisted on the same form, from the way of thinking and organizing various antinomic perspectives to the way of practicing his activism, changing only the ontic projects, as they are historically finite. However, the ontology of the consciousness of being is present throughout his work. History is simply the development of consciousness in search of its humanization.