This paper studies democratic education from the standpoint of the philosophy of critical pedagogy. It asks, what ethical-political principles the philosophy of the Freirean critical pedagogy provides for contemporary democratic education, and how recent feminist-political theory can contribute to critical pedagogy as theory of democratic education. The paper provides a reinterpretation of Paulo Freire’s philosophy of hope and suggests that this interpretation may function as a fruitful ground for democratic education that aims to contest the prevailing neoliberal ‘common sense’. According to this reformulation, hope is defined as a democratic virtue that is required for resisting the discursive practises and affective mechanisms associated with the contemporary neoliberal ethos ­– those, which Carlos Alberto Torres characterizes as the “neoliberal common sense” and Lauren Berlant as “cruel optimism”.

It is suggested that Freirean notion of false hope bears some similarity to, and can be further elaborated by, a more recent concept of “cruel optimism” by Lauren Berlant (2011). Paulo Freire formulated his philosophy of hope as a response to the ideological operations of capitalist societies, which he recognized as causing political inaction and impeding collective endeavours of transformative political struggle for democratization. More recently, through her notion of “cruel optimism”, Lauren Berlant (2011) has characterized the way the neoliberal culture directs individual hopes and dreams towards goals that serve neoliberal economy rather than collective political transformation. For Freire, hope is an essential human quality that enables resisting the “culture of silence” and cynical discourses that the neoliberal ideology entails. However, from a Berlantian perspective, even more than the hopelessness and despair that Freire witnessed among underprivileged citizens in the society of his time, the antithesis of hope in late-capitalist societies is the false form of hope associated with unattainable objects to which people become affectively attached, but which are not realistically within their reach.

The paper aims to respond to the issues highlighted by Berlant by using Freire’s philosophy of hope and his idea of democratic education as a starting point. More specifically, the paper outlines central principles of democratic education, the purpose of which is to disclose and replace the individualizing educational discourses and policies with educational practices that centre on the idea of democratization as a form of collective hoping. These educational principles – history as possibility, ethics of intervention, and democratization – bring the political dimensions of education into focus and are thus particularly aimed at resisting the all-immersive presentism and individualism – responsibilitising of the individual actor in particular – that neoliberal common sense gives rise to in contemporary educational institutions and practices.

As method, we apply a philosophical approach which provides means for critical examination of the theoretical premises and groundings of contemporary theories. Philosophical analysis means here studying characteristics of theories through philosophical conceptual analysis, reconstruction, and analyzing their presumptions, and argumentative basis.

Conclusively, the paper constructs three principles for democratic education –´history as possibility´, ´the ethics of intervention´, and ´democratization´ – which are intended to function as a foundation for democratic education through which the virtue of hope can be fostered. These principles are argued to form a basis for reviving the political dimensions of education and thus allowing collective transformative action.

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