Michel Foucault and Paulo Freire: a counterpoint on education

Philosopher Michel Foucault’s genealogical method called into question the sovereignty and universalism of the modern subject. Thus, this subject, crossed by complex power-knowledge relations, is more attentive to the effects of the power-knowledge-truth regimes that constitute its subjectivity. As Deleuze had already said, Foucault was able to invent a properly philosophical way of questioning, a new way that gives History a new impetus. Paulo Freire’s anthropological and educational ideas are part of the desire to find a solution to the disciplinary mechanisms that capitalist society has developed and continues to perfect. The Brazilian educator made it possible for us to understand a pedagogy that invests in practices of freedom and, at the same time, an education based on commitment, respect and trust in the human person, who by his nature always seeks to be more.