Celebrating his centenary, how can we think about Paulo Freire’s actuality and which other thinkers can contribute to this reflection? Carlos Alberto Torres, Distinguished Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), founder and director of the Paulo Freire Institute in several countries, political sociologist of education of world reference, has facilitated a CeiED Workshop where he has included us in a dense journey of readings, questions and dialogues. Throughout the five sessions of this workshop, Carlos Alberto Torres guided us between methodology, metalanguage, metatheory and Paulo Freire’s theory, reflecting them against the framework of German critical theory in its various generations, with special focus on the work of Hartmut Rosa.

Freire is widely and rightly recognised for his legacy concerning adult education and literacy; however, references to his work cannot be restricted to this field. Starting from the empirical reality of literacy experimentation, Freire fostered the development of theoretical and methodological innovations, notably with his advocacy of questioning as a pedagogical mechanism and of participatory action-research.

Between poetics and politics, Freire associates a worldview of the socially subordinated sectors (through the power of his Pedagogy of the Oppressed) with the defence of education that activates critical consciousness and enhances liberation, with dialogical communication that incorporates and recognises popular culture and with the defence of humanist democracy that allows for the improvement of the social condition. It does not isolate education in the school space nor does it deny the relationship between education and politics; it recognizes the importance of the educational context as well as the usefulness of the State in understanding the political nature of education and the formation of public policies. This does not subtract the importance attributed to social movements, engines of decolonization and revolutionary work, which exert pressure on the State and thus make change possible.

Change, the utopian horizon of the “viable unprecedented”, is also closely associated with the action of educators, rooted in a pedagogy of hope and in a set of civic virtues that allow us to overcome the dilemmas of globalisation, in particular the ethics of freedom/autonomy and dialogue as a method, a code for radical democracy and strategic pedagogical practice.

Noting the proximity between Freire and German critical theory, consider the sharing of the dialogical theme and the importance of recognition, work and communication. With the fourth generation of the Frankfurt School associated with the work of Hartmut Rosa, the proximity of the thesis on resonance to Freire’s legacy stands out: in the context of late modernity, we have an antidote to alienation where and when we enter into resonance with the world, the places and things, the people and everything that moves us.

The workshop “Science of the Experience of Consciousness. A hermeneutic-analysis of Freire’s Work” took place on 7, 8, 9, 21 and 22 June 2022, at the Lusófona University (Lisbon) and online. It was part of the project Global Citizenship Education – inclusion and sustainability, winner of Fulbright Specialist funding for the visit of Carlos Alberto Torres to Universidade Lusófona.