Page 5 - Webb_(2010)

330 D. Webb

Thus, Freire’s reflections on the need for, and nature of, education revolve around
the key issue of how we as humans respond to the radical unfinishedness of which we
are conscious; how, in other words, and towards what we hope.

Humanisation: the utopian objective of hope
In Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas claimed that ‘hope is a movement of the appet-
itive power ensuing from the apprehension of a future good, difficult but possible to
obtain’ (Aquinas, 1927, 40.2). These four characteristics – future, good, difficult, possi-
ble – still form the basis of philosophical reflections on the proper objective of hope
(e.g., Godfrey, 1987; Schumacher, 2003). For Freire, too, hope is necessarily future-
oriented, for ‘hope, detached from the future, becomes only an alienated and alienating
abstraction. Instead of stimulating the pilgrim, it invites him to stand still’ (Freire, 1985,
p. 127). The future good towards which critical hope is directed is humanisation, or
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‘becoming more fully human’ (Freire, 1972b, p. 41). For Freire, ‘men are searchers
and their ontological vocation is humanization’ (1972b, p. 48). Although ‘we live the
life of a vocation, a calling, to humanization’, this vocation can be thwarted, negated,
distorted (Freire, 1994, p. 84). In the face of dehumanising forces, humanisation
becomes ‘a possible dream’, difficult to attain – a calling demanding a response.
One of the key cognitive acts associated with hope is ‘mental imaging’, i.e.,
conjuring in one’s imagination a picture of the world in which the objective of one’s
hope has been realised (Bovens, 1999). If the proper objective of hope is taken to be
humanisation, then this act of mental imaging would require nothing less than the
imaginary reconstitution of society as a whole, or the construction of a utopia. Freire
readily acknowledges this, conceding that our calling to humanisation, and the reali-
sation of this calling, ‘require, indisputably, the adoption of a utopia’ (1994, p. 84).
Taking his lead from Marx’s distinction between the worst architect and the best of
bees (Marx, 1946, p. 157), Freire argues that humans are purposive creatures unlikely
to act unless they have a clearly articulated goal. Thus:

As project, as design for a different, less-ugly ‘world’, the dream is as necessary to polit-
ical subjects, transformers of the world and not adapters to it, as it is fundamental for an
artisan, who projects in his or her brain what she or he is going to execute even before
the execution thereof. (Freire, 1994, p. 78)

In other words, humans, as purposive creatures, are unlikely to respond to the call-
ing to humanisation unless they can see in advance what the utopian ‘design’ for
humanisation looks like. Because it demands the utopian annunciation of the objective
towards which it is directed, the hope of which Freire speaks is always and necessarily
‘Utopian hope’ (1972a, p. 41).
The proper objective of hope requires utopian annunciation for another reason,
too. For although hope is both essential and intrinsic to our own humanity, as a
spontaneous orientation toward the world, hope – and its associated dreams and
desires – is naïve, unsophisticated, undisciplined, and lacking in rigour (Freire, 1976;
1994, pp. 11–12; 1978, p. 100; 1993, pp. 109–110; 2007b, pp. 95–97). Corresponding
to the level of semi-intransitive consciousness, the curious search driven by spontane-
ous hope scarcely moves beyond the realm of common sense and often involves the
expectation that one’s objective will be realised through an external agency such as
fate, magic or God (Freire, 1972a). This mode of hoping is variously referred to by