215 Leonard J. Waks P H I L O S O P H Y O F E D U C A T I O N 2 0 0 8 Cosmopolitan Education Leonard J. Waks Temple University David Hansen notes that recent cultural fracturing and violence have generated many cosmopolitan projects; humanities and social science scholars have offered them as intellectual resources for ameliorative projects. Hansen indicates the scope of this work, but otherwise says little about it. Noting that cosmopolitanism has been critiqued as naïve, optimistic, rootless and elitist, he assures us that scholars have responded to these critiques, but since both new cosmopolitan ideas and critiques of them appear daily, further assessment is sorely needed. Hansen’s substantive account begins with two surprising moves. First, noting “affinities” between educational cosmopolitanism and moral, political, and cultural cosmopolitanisms, he states that it is not merely an “appendage.” He might mean that we cannot deduce an educational cosmopolitanism from external premises. But instead Hansen turns away from these other cosmopolitanisms, linking educational cosmopolitan to “the art of living” without fitting it into a larger cosmopolitan political or cultural project. Second, after situating current cosmopolitanism as a response to recent crises, Hansen worries that it has become “parasitic upon perceived rupture, strife, and fragmentation.” He tries to avoid this by shaping educational cosmopolitanism as more than a means (of response to the crises), thus sidestepping the very problem situation that the new cosmopolitanism addresses but leaving us uncertain about how to assess his formulations, if not as a resource for amelioration. Hansen’s exposition of educational cosmopolitanism starts with Epictetus; he and other classical Stoics were early cosmopolitans. For them the art of living meant living in accordance with nature, especially human nature’s universal capacity for reason. Possessing this capacity, all people belonged not only to local communities but also to a worldwide community of reason. Starting with Epictetus offers opportunities for linking the art of living with cosmopolitanism and comparing classical and contemporary cosmopolitans (Epictetus, for example, reflected on adversity and disappointment, not cultural difference). But Hansen quickly drops Epictetus without taking these up, and turns to the core elements of educational cosmopolitanism (EC). Let me summarize these elements, each of which raises questions for exploration: 1. EC presumes, along with liberalism, a creative potential of all people to craft meaningful, purposeful lives, and thus grants the young everywhere genuine freedom in articulating their response to experience. 2. EC also foregrounds the community, seeking mechanisms for protecting it from corrosive pressures (in the wake of global consumer markets). 3. EC presumes that individuals and communities can “inhabit the world educationally,” that is, come to grips with external contacts.