The Culture of Peace in Adult Education: Its Epistemological Bases from the Jesuit Philosophy

This work constitutes a historical-pedagogical reflection focusing on the philosophical foundations of Jesuit pedagogy or education for peace through the thought of Francisco Javier Clavijero, in particular, his works Ancient History of Mexico and Particular Physics. The authors studying Clavijero found that his thought included the following foundations of education for peace: eclectic attitude expressed in a search for the reconciliation of modernity with tradition; the use of verisimilitude as a criterion of knowledge in the process of adjustment to the truth within the philosophy of nature and history; and a belief in the knowledge of the different philosophical systems, in which the truth is found. According to Clavijero, education, at first, represents means or a pretext to refute the insults of European philosophers concerning the supposed inferiority of Mexicans, based on the reason. Education could be understood as the principle on which a political-social system is based, in this case of the society of ancient Mexicans. Education is the resource that enables the transmission of laws and customs, in short, a worldview of the world, which can be understood in terms more typical of culture.