L'educazione alla cittadinanza democratica e la Philosophy for Communities in contesti interculturali

Anno LII, n. 219, maggio-agosto 2017

The first goal of this paper is to highlight the relevance of citizenship education. In the paper I underline the constitutive connection between democracy and educated citizens and its urgency for the present social-historical context. In the second part of the paper, I then introduce the concept of Philosophy for Communities, describe its main features and its structure. Moreover, looking at the Lipman-Sharp approach, I show that the Philosophy for Communities is derived from Philosophy for Children. My analysis in grounded in the so-called twentieth century practical turn of philosophy: starting from this theoretical framework, I describe philosophy as a social practice and show how Philosophy for Communities can contribute to the education of democratic citizenship in intercultural contexts. To better show the pragmatic virtues of this approach, I end the paper describing a community-based philosophical practice experience, realized by an association which pursues cultural and social integration. To conclude, I show how Philosophy for Communities can be conceived as an educational practice for community development and creation of social empowerment which can educate to a better democratic citizenship.