Marianna Papastephanou

Globalisation, Globalism and Cosmopolitanism as an Educational Ideal

In this paper, I discuss globalisation as an empirical reality that is in a complex relation to its corresponding discourse and in a critical distance from the cosmopolitan ideal. I argue that failure to grasp the distinctions between globalisation, globalism, and cosmopolitanism derives from mistaken identifications of the Is with the Ought and leads to naïve and ethnocentric glorifications of the potentialities of globalisation. Conversely, drawing the appropriate distinctions helps us articulate a more critical approach to contemporary cultural phenomena, and reconsider the current place and potential role of education within the context of global affairs. From this perspective, the antagonistic impulses cultivated by globalisation and some globalist discourse are singled out and targeted via a radicalization of educational orientations. The final suggestion of the article concerns the vision of a more cosmopolitically sensitive education.

Critical Thinking Beyond Skill

The aim of this article is to investigate possibilities for conceptions of critical thinking beyond the established educational framework that emphasizes skills. Distancing ourselves from the older rationalist framework, we explain that what we think wrong with the skills perspective is, amongst other things, its absolutization of performativity and outcomes. In reviewing the relevant discourse, we accept that it is possible for the skills paradigm to be change‐friendly and context‐sensitive but we argue that it is oblivious to other, non‐purposive kinds of rationality that are indispensable to critical thought. Our suggestion is that there is an aporetic element in critical thought that is missing from contemporary educational positions. We consider some other efforts to redeem the surplus of criticality that performativity fails to take into account and conclude that the aporetic element that we highlight accommodates better than other theories do the significance of thematizing the taken‐for‐granted instead of focusing on problem solving.

Arrows Not Yet Fired: Cultivating Cosmopolitanism Through Education

In this article I discuss Martha Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan educational ideal and its theoretical underpinnings. I argue that, in spite of its merits, it overlooks the historical-relational dimension of cross-cultural encounters and the impediments posed by unresolved historical conflicts to the goal of cultural reconciliation. I suggest a rehabilitation of the historical-relational dimension by applying the insights of Paul Ricoeur to this context. My steps comprise a description of Nussbaum’s position, an exploration of its shortcomings, an interpolation of Ricoeur’s ideas and some concomitant suggestions.

Forgiving and Requesting Forgiveness

In this article I attempt to address three positions on forgiveness that could be encouraged in schools. They are the strict view defended by Philip Barnes, the relaxed view promoted by Patricia White and the idea of forgiving the unforgivable discussed by Jacques Derrida. I shall examine the tradition from which they emerge and explore some of their problems. This will lead me to a rehabilitation of what is other to that tradition (within and without)-an other that can serve as a corrective to the problems of those positions. I shall conclude the article with an exposition of the radicalisation of the teaching of forgiveness if we focus on the perspective of the one who seeks forgiveness.

Education, risk and ethics

While the notion of risk remains under-theorised in moral philosophy, risk aversion and moralist self-protection appear as dominant cultural tendencies saturating educational orientation and practice. Philosophy of education has responded to the educational emphasis on risk management by exposing the unavoidable and positive presence of risk in any endeavour to learn and teach. Taking such responses into account, I discuss how the theoretical connection of risk and education could be radicalised through an ethical approach combined with epistemological and existential concerns. My aim is to propose an ethics that is sensitive to the difference between risks taken and risks imposed and to the cultural variations of what counts as danger. Finally, I explain how the educational relevance of such an ethics requires a prior questioning of the western understanding of self and world that has functioned as a subtext of the dominant view of risk.

Communicative action and philosophical foundations Comments on the Apel-Habermas debate

Anglo-American and continental philosophy are often con sidered sharply divergent, even hostile, movements of thought. However, there have been several attempts to cross the divide between them, leading some theorists to very interesting and promising new projects. Apel has been one of the first German philosophers whose serious preoccupation with continental themes has not impeded his thorough and responsible investigation of analytic and post-analytic issues. Thus, Apel promotes a linguistic analysis that aspires to unveil the hidden, implicit, but non circumventible linguistic-pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation and to explore its implications for epistemology, ethics and politics.

Religious teaching and political context: the case of Cyprus

In this article I aim to explore some philosophical issues involved in teaching religion in Cyprus and suggest some preconditions in order for this teaching to be sensitive to the multicultural character of the island and conducive to the vision of reconciliation and reunification. First, I shall clarify some particularities of the political problem of Cyprus, since many misconceptions obscure the understanding of the real stakes at issue, having crucial repercussions for demarcating the role of religious belief. For the Cyprus problem has been misconceived by many people as a kind of religious and ethnic conflict, thus raising various kinds of false dilemmas and expectations in relation to the local religions (Christian Orthodoxy and Islam) and their future cultivation in the schools of the two communities. I shall attempt to ‘put the record straight’ in a way, showing that the Cyprus issue is not reducible to the religious difference of the peoples involved, and suggest what I believe is the real challenge now regarding the teaching of religion in this part of the world. The independence treaties left Cypriots—particularly Greek Cypriots—with a political half‐life. If the NATO allies thought the contrived constitutional arrangement would enable the two communities to live peacefully together, they were badly mistaken. (O’Malley & Craig, 2002, p. 87) Like forgetting, forgiving permits starting over. But unlike forgetting, political forgiveness requires that the past be recalled and acknowledged for what it is. (Digeser, 1998, p. 716)

Kant's cosmopolitanism and human history:

In this article I discuss Kants idea of cosmopolitanism both in its prescriptive dimension (its normative content and regulative aspirations) and also its descriptive basis (its crucial philosophical-anthropological assumptions constituting its theoretical justification). My aim is to show that the prescriptive dimension cannot be treated separately from the descriptive one for some difficulties that the latter confronts pervade the former and misinform it. I then proceed to an examination of those difficulties which I locate mainly in Kants onto-theological commitment to some anthropological tenets of his era. I explore the implications of these tenets and show that they contribute negatively to the task of the promotion of a cosmopolitanism that respects difference and heterogeneity. I conclude with some critical suggestions pro-pounding a renegotiation of the paradigmatic certainties of Kants cosmopolitanism in order to salvage its normative import and couch it in less onto-theological terms.

Religious Education for Political Thinking and Citizenship.

The curricular accommodation of religious education is almost always dissociated from the latter’s political significance and the teaching of religious worldviews is often limited to serving social, (multi)culturalist and epistemological purposes. When RE is made relevant to political identity this occurs strictly within the confines of a liberal sense of citizenship. In this article, the relevance of religious teaching to citizenship is approached through a lens that is critical of liberal secularism and of its confounding view of the social and the political while distant from faith‐ and validity‐based debates on RE. The article aims to render some rigid demarcations of politics and religiousness problematic and to show that religions comprise portrayals of egalitarianism and visions of a better life that can become taught material conducive to a reflective political citizenship beyond liberalism.

Globalisation, the challenge of educational synchronisation and teacher education

In this article, we set out from the challenge that globalising synchronisation – usually exemplified by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Bank initiatives – presents for education to argue that the time–space compression effected by globalisation must educationally be dealt with with caution, critical vigilance and a broadening of educational theoretical outlooks. We focus on the demands this raises upon the teacher as a researcher and a critical thinker and claim that meeting such demands presupposes some curricular enrichment of teacher education. We suggest two theoretical frameworks that can effect such enrichment and be made relevant to a critique of the globalising educational synchronisation, namely, the charge of developmentalism and the capabilities approach (Sen, Nussbaum) to equality. We conclude with some indications of the need for a reformulated notion of cosmopolitanism that should be contrasted with those globalising practices that often appear in cosmopolitan guise.