Freire’s philosophical contribution for a theory of intercultural ethics: A deductive analysis of his work

Abstract

This article claims that Freire’s work offers an important ground for a potential theory of intercultural ethics and, for that purpose, examines his ideas at different levels: (1) the ontological; (2) the ideological; (3) the political; (4) languages and languaging; and (5) cultural identity and diversity. Freire never used the word ‘intercultural’, although it is suggested here that this is due to the fact that terminology related to cultural diversity has changed over time and in his day this term was not yet common currency. Moreover, Freire uses more often the term ‘multiculturalidade’ rather than ‘multiculturalismo’ (multiculturalism) since the former suffix ‘-dad(e)’ has a different meaning which refers to the ontological nature of the condition and is more usual in both Portuguese and Spanish. This article also argues for the relevance of a theory of intercultural ethics in the contemporary world that imprints (inter)cultural flexibility on the current hermeneutics of ethics while preventing excessive abuses on behalf of relativism, dogmatism, essentialism and fundamentalism.

Keywords:

• Freire
• cultural diversity
• intercultural
• multicultural
• ethics
• languages

Notes

1. Freire refers to the difficulty that his translator found to translate his expression ‘inédito viável’ and how she finally came up with the version ‘untested viable’, which he confessed to feel comfortable with. However, here I decided to propose another translation of my own ‘viable unknown’.