ABSTRACT

Maxine Greene draws upon a variety of existentialists and phenomenologists to inform her educational theory. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Alfred Schutz, Soren Kierkegaard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty appear prominently throughout Greene’s work. Of these, I am interested in examining how Jean-Paul Sartre, Alfred Schutz and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have influenced Greene’s writings. Ultimately, I want to suggest that Greene moves beyond these philosophers by offering a phenomenology of the imagination. Greene’s phenomenology of the imagination opens doorways to lived experience; it is through the imagination that educators may hope for better futures.