Open AccessThe eros of the meal
Author(s) -
Samuel D. Rocha,
Adi Burton
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
encounters in theory and history of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.102
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 2560-8371
DOI - 10.24908/eoe-ese-rse.v18i0.6781
Subject(s) - objectification , eucharist , constructive , epistemology , marxist philosophy , philosophy , sociology , common ground , aesthetics , theology , law , politics , political science , communication , process (computing) , computer science , operating system
After outlining the common critique in selected texts Paulo Freire and Benedict XVI, we turn beyond the individual thinkers and into the mystagogy of their common religious traditions, beginning with an extended description of the Jewish ritual of Passover, foundational to a description of the Catholic celebration of the Eucharist to follow, but also definitive in its own right. In describing these two rituals we find a fuller consideration of the constructive responses by Freire and Benedict to the institutional objectification of the human person in the eros of the common meal. This is the mysterious freedom of eros that is a necessary condition for the possibility of true and lasting communion, essential for any liberating education and often missing in Marxist and other accounts of critical pedagogy that ignore its theological roots. Rather than reacting to these limits to the present, well-known literature, we carve out an alternate path.