Cosmopolitanism as a Philosophical Foundation of Post-Yugoslav Peace Studies in Higher Education

Abstract

The final decade of the twentieth century and the inaugural years of the new millennium have left much of the region of the former Yugoslavia¹ in the Balkans² of southeastern Europe a ff ected by the direct, structural, and psychological violence of war and the unwieldy processes of transition. While the demise of Communism in 1989 propelled much of Central and Eastern Europe into a turbulent but generally nonviolent period of economic, social, and political development, the former republics of the Yugoslav federation engaged in a decade of violent conflict and human r ights abuses. Other post-socialist and post-communist countries began their transformations, however awkward, into democratic governance, capitalist economies, and permissible pluralism. With their nationhoods and state identities stabilizing, many of these countries have moved into the global community at a symbolically and materially recognizable level, namely, membership in the European Union (EU).

What are the concrete stakes of this situation today? Why must the important questions concerning philosophical teaching and research, why must the imperative of the right to philosophy be deployed in their international dimension today more than ever? Why are the responsibilities which need to be taken no longer, and even less today in the twenty-first century, simply national? What do “national,” “cosmopolitan,” “universal” mean here for, and with regard to, philosophy, philosophical research, philosophical education or training, or even for a philosophical question or practice that would not be essentially linked to research or education?

Jacques Derrida (2002, p. 332)