Moral Education and Cosmopolitanism

Kieran Keohane
National University of Ireland, Cork,

The central problem of citizenship and political culture in the `postnational constellation' is the cultivation and institutionalization of cosmopolitanism as a political identity. The cultivation of citizenship in the postnational constellation echoes the problem Durkheim confronted at the turn of the twentieth century, when he faced the task of developing a systematic programme of moral education as a basis for social solidarity in a secular national French republic; a programme that would perform the same functions of social integration previously organized in terms of a religious discourse. While nationalism provided a discourse of political identification throughout the twentieth century, critical theory and psychoanalysis (for example, the Frankfurt School's studies in prejudice and the authoritarian personality) have shown how nationalism has now become a problematic basis for political identification and citizenship. This article explores Habermas's and Beck's present problem through an examination of Kant and Durkheim. It suggests that an appropriate pedagogical model of cosmopolitanism, one that combines elements of transcendental and situated reason, may be found in Joyce's representation of Leopold Bloom; a pedagogical representation wherein transcendental ideals grounded in universal reason are combined with various discursive and communicative encounters with the Other, in cosmopolitanizing experiences of the workplace and organizational life, international travel and migration, and urban neighbourhoods and milieus.

Key Words: cosmopolitanism • Durkheim • Habermas • Joyce • Kant • moral education

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