Marxist and Personalist influences in Paulo Freire’s pedagogical anthropology

Abstract

Paulo Freire was profoundly influenced by Marxist philosophy and Mounier’s personalism, both in terms of civic engagement, particularly in the constant search for practices of human emancipation, and in specific aspects of his thinking. In this paper, I focus on the legacy of both in Freire’s pedagogical anthropology by drawing from the idea that, in Freire’s works, the point of entry to pedagogical problems is anthropological. In the second and third sections of the paper, I focus on how Freire met Marx and highlight the link between the two thinkers. In the fourth and fifth sections, I analyse the legacy of Latin American personalism in Freire’s pedagogical anthropology. In conclusion, I argue that the originality of Freire’s thinking and its relevance stem from how he mixed the two traditions.