On education, negotiation, and peace

Marianna Papastephanou

pp. 97-110

in: Carmel Borg, Michael Grech (eds), Lorenzo Milani's culture of peace, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

Peace education is often associated with cosmopolitan education because global peace is typically considered the most important component of the cosmopolitan ideal. Presuppositions of peace such as conflict resolution are then viewed from what can be termed "an agreement perspective on cosmopolitanism" By this I mean that many political theorists, peace educators or organizers of conflict resolution initiatives imagine the solution of local or world problems as consensus-reaching decisions through negotiation processes that focus on a pragmatic give-and-take with little or no attention to issues of justice¹ and fair settlement of ethical debts. Within such a framework it is assumed that the ultimate cosmopolitan objective of dialogue is cognitive: to get to know others, to learn about them and, just by knowing them, all pending issues will be solved. The main tendency is to confine cosmopolitanism to the everyday and factual contact with what is not familiar; and to emphasize its pragmatic stakes, that is, interaction, movement, habit, and modus vivendi and coexistendi. Thus, for many contemporary thinkers, cosmopolitan is the subject who allows the pragmatic dimension of her existence to be shaped not only by what is available in her culture but also by elements of other cultures and lifestyles of other people. This simple, "collection-like" and "touristic" contact with otherness presupposes capital, technology and a planetarism² in the double sense of nomadic wandering and globality.