Dreaming Peace: Oniricopolitics, Imagination, and the Ethics That Caring Is Done With: Journal of Health Care Education in Practice

Abstract

The paper deals with the theme of imagination, peace, and education at the intersection of psychoanalysis, pedagogy and philosophy. Education is always a political action and can become an essential tool for social transformation. The paper deals with the theme of imagination, peace, and education at the intersection of psychoanalysis, pedagogy and philosophy. Education is always a political action and can become an essential tool for social transformation. We argue that education has to be seen as a nurturing space for imagination, reclaiming its role in humankind's evolutionary trajectory toward the Kantian perceptual peace, freeing next generations from domination and violence. Peace is not only the absence of war, but the result of higher mind’s functions and ethical relations and institutions that can foster coexistence. Moreover, it focuses on the importance of dreaming, both from a personal and collective perspective. Dreams allow symbolic re-elaboration. They give us new narratives and possibilities against the Hobbesian concept of homo homini lupus. Herein, the paper will argue, through the integration of Erich Fromm's thesis on love as an art of care and the problem of responsibility, that education can foster the relational capacities needed to construct peace. The urgent responsibility of education is introduced in the extreme world of today, where violence surrounds children and they lack adequate tools to discern that reality. Such is the purpose of the initiative, implemented by the PSYLab of Roma Tre University, aiming to offer new methodologies, among which are storytelling and creative activities that can help children develop a concept of peace. Hence, more than institutional practice, making peace is the ethical practice of relating to the other, demanding that the time has come for educators to demand their space back so that an imaginative, caring, and engaging practice can be formed to carry forward the pedagogy of creating a future where peace is thinkable and possible.