Freire, Wittgenstein and Aesthetics, Ethics and Religious Belief

My aim is to investigate some of Paulo Freire and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concerns for aesthetic, ethical and religious concepts with a view to amplifying and broadening our epistemological and ontological outlooks. In relation to Freire, I argue that he envisions the human being as a totality; a person who knows with one’s body, feelings, passions, reason and the storehouse of his or her lived experiences. I claim that naïve, epistemological and aesthetic curiosity plays a central role in how human beings think. I argue that Freire discerns the limits of science and of rationality. And I argue that aesthetic curiosity is key to the critical being overcoming her state of unfinishedness, her incompleteness. Then I make the claim that one constant in Wittgenstein’s writing is his deep respect for the mystical and, with it, questions touching upon aesthetics, questions of value, God and the meaning of life. I argue that, for him, there is an asymmetry between aesthetics, ethics and religious belief on the one hand, and science on the other; and, further, that reflection on Wittgenstein’s mystical germinates other ways of knowing and helps the critical being appreciate the significance of seeing things differently.