The field of peace education presently remains undertheorized suffusing praxis and pedagogy as foundation within the edifices of dissembling postModernity marked within the Institute of Rationality. (Re)imag(e)(in)ing critical pedagogy in a peace education-to-come, enjoins readers/writers along a putative journey through the violence of metaphysics in the fundamental question of difference bridging chiastic ethico-philososphical terrain, reconceptualizing pedagogical endeavour in ethicus obligatus to the other towards a renewing peace literacy within academe. Peace education can reconstitute the force of community on planes of difference unfolding socialis aequitus and peace, reframing the nature of our being, self and other as the appositional realm of separation/connection. The opening of peace, as concept, ethos, through critical pedagogy in/by the fashioning of discursive forms acknowledging the semio-theoretical chain constructing human social relationality proffers a solid theoretical foundation for the field of peace education, re-tracing difference across socio-ethno-politico-historical structures. Central tenets of the evolving field of peace education are reconfigured in deontological proposition through deconstruction as precursorial project in reason affording performative discourse transversing the transcendental signified, peace, in another idiom eclipsing spatio-temporal illusion, affording diachronous affirmation and revelation in a crucial luminous snapshot within the post-conflict setting of Northern Ireland concerning fundamental matters of peace and education. Peace education as constituent element of contemporary peace knowledges and principal arena for education for peace within the unconditional university is fundamentally challenged in a commitment to peace literacy to adduce and address all interwoven questions of difference, justice, peace, and education within academe. A new beginning compels another reading in presence honouring the other and Other in ethico-philosophico-pedagogy radically questioning our individual and collective rationality in relation to understandings of human social relationality and the transperformative tenets of peace education in difference through différance, cathecting presence anew while (re)configuring academe primarily concerned with difference, peace, and social justice as discursis unfolding impossibility. Consequently, the order of phallogocentricism and its sponsoring patriarchal institution that would sublimate a discourse on/of difference in substitution, as the same irrupts in the fissure another perspectivity opening through presence, presence in meaning, presence in spatiality, presence in temporality in the impossibility of the limit.

With the liberalisation of the society and education in the Western Countries, new development horizons have emerged thus altering our expectations from the younger generation and our vision of human fulfilment and happiness. As Dewey stressed, the current advance of technology and democratic ways of life results in the unprecedented rate and speed of changes and ‘it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities’ (Dewey, 1897, p.77). This prompted many educational policies in Western Countries to resort to character education as a long-term solution to the tensions between the demands on the child to succeed in tougher market-led society and the necessity to foster a democratic citizen of the globalised world (The US Partnerships in Character Education Program, 1994; Strategic Plan, 2002; Character Education Framework, 2019).  However, the recurring instances of school violence and shooting (Schaeffer, 1999, p. 2), and the turmoil of incessant military conflicts around the world expose the failure of current policies to foster a modern ‘self’ that would sustain the humanity rather than just democracy, thus making the current goals and priorities sensitive to criticism.    This paper takes on the topic of character education in liberal school setting and views it in a broader sense as part of formation of the modern ‘self’ in liberal society as opposed to traditional Aristotelian reading through virtue ethics and moral character. By studying the current character education policies in the USA, UK, European Union and Sweden, the first chapter of the thesis demonstrates the instrumentality of character education and prioritising educating for citizenship and democratic values. This paper sets to contest this approach to character education and proposes to adopt the idea of The Love of the World advanced as the guiding principle of education by Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski in their Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy (2017) as opposed to ‘educating for….’ formular predominant in the policies. The Manifesto offers the banner but does not elaborate on the content and how to attain the goals. The aim of this thesis is to commence to fill this gap. Carefully laying out the concepts of conservative, liberal and critical theories of education related to character formation, this paper analyses their strengths and week points and consolidates in ‘My Creed’ section what it considers the worthwhile postulates that would help to design character education governed by The Love of the World. Resorting to the educating power of literature I address the question of ‘How to foster character in liberal schooling of today’ when the child and what is good in the world replace the current slogans of educating for citizenry and democracy.