Ebook: Paulo Freire: A Philosophical Biography

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) is one of the most widely read and studied educational thinkers of our time. His seminal works, including Pedagogy of the Oppressed, sparked the global social and philosophical movement of critical pedagogy and his ideas about the close ties between education and social justice and politics are as relevant today as they ever were. In this book Walter Omar Kohan interweaves philosophical, educational, and biographical elements of Freire’s life which prompt us to reflect on what we thought we knew about Freire and also on the relationship between education and politics more broadly.
The book is structured around five key themes that come up again and again in Freire’s work, those of life, equality, love, errantry and childhood. It includes an epilogue which contextualizes the political context in Brazil where Freire lived and worked for most of his life, including details of his imprisonment by the Brazilian government, his years in exile, and his academic engagements in the USA. The book also includes a conversation with Lutgardes Costa Freire, Paulo’s Freire’s youngest son, a dialogue with the founder of the Latin American Philosophy of Education Society, Jason Wozniak (West Chester University, USA), a foreword by the renowned Freirean scholar and activist Antonia Darder (Loyola Marymount University, USA) and an afterword by the decolonial theorist Catherine Walsh (Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador).