The Existential Concept of Freedom for Maxine Greene: The Influence of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Greene’s Educational Pedagogy

Abstract

When freedom is the question, it is always time to begin. 1 Maxine Greene and Jean-Paul Sartre both believe that it is through the dialectical principle of negativity and freedom that meaning and intelligibility are conferred upon the world in their manifest form. This notion is important throughout Greene's work, and is particularly important in Dialectic of Freedom, where Greene says about the student that " We must foster the freedom that he/she can attain as she moves dialectically between necessity and fulfillment, between the ineradicable qualities of her particular situation and the thus far unrealized capacities which are hers " (DF, 163). Sartre's existentialist concept of freedom suggests that morality as a whole is the province of individual self-determination, and the social dimension of morality and relationships with others comes in simply as one element in the design of an individual life. Sartre's focus on individuality is particularly acute in Being and Nothingness. To use one's freedom of action, according to Sartre, means that one wills a world that bends to his or her desires. Rule-governed situations can be included within this world only to the extent that they can be shown to involve individual choice. Greene, in emphasizing the social dimension of freedom, represents an advance on Sartre's individualistic philosophy. She is so faithful to the idea of an involved consciousness that the idea of a detached consciousness is largely negative in her cosmology of freedom. Greene believes that people are never alone but always stand in relation to others. In a recent interview, Greene drew attention to the importance of community: " I want young people to identify themselves by means of significant projects. It seems important as I have said too often that the projects are most meaningful when they involve others. " 3 Moral education, according to Greene, must be specifically concerned with self-identification in a community.