Epistemological Foundations of Intercultural Education: Contributions from Raimon Panikkar

The present article explores the epistemological conditions of intercultural encounters. Based on an analysis of Raimon Panikkar's intercultural hermeneutics, we argue that intercultural encounters cannot take place adequately when they are based on purely rhetorical rationality or rational persuasion. We point to the limitations of grounding intercultural relationships on dialectical dialogue and, therefore, of educating them by simply enhancing discursive capacities. We underline the need for other epistemological conditions that should be fostered in order to move forward on the path to actual interculturality. These can be summarised by what Panikkar calls "conversion", an epistemic framework of love—personal relationality, that goes beyond objectifying rationality—for the communication between (culturally different) subjects. We conclude that the culturally diverse human condition refers to being encountered and being understood on a level that is not merely logical or linguistic. What can be understood of a person with another cultural background goes beyond what can be comprehended by logical rationality or captured by veritative judgements about objects. In other words, in intercultural encounters, ontological, rather than merely logical truth is at stake, which means that the presence of the other can lead to experiences of meaning: it reveals a being that calls for conversion. Conversion demands an ontic action on the part of the subject, not merely an epistemological one, that cancels the violence that rational persuasion might entail.


Introduction
What are the epistemological conditions of intercultural encounters and, consequently, the dimensions of the person that should be educated for these encounters to be fruitful? In other words, what human capacities are involved in them and, therefore, should be developed so that contact with culturally different people becomes humanising? In 1 3 this text, these questions will be addressed along the lines proposed by Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010. Building on his intercultural philosophy, the aim of this piece is to point to the limitations of grounding intercultural relationships solely on rhetorical or persuasive rationality, and thus indicate the need for other epistemological conditions that should be educationally fostered to advance along the path of interculturality. These can be summarised in what Panikkar calls "conversion." The paper will be structured as follows. First, the meaning of interculturality will be addressed in the context of a world of growing human diversity (Bauman and Portera 2021;Álvarez et al. 2012), which includes epistemic diversity and its corresponding inequality (Xu 2022). Then, Raimon Panikkar's intercultural philosophy will be analysed with a special focus on his thesis about the inadequacy of rhetorical or dialectical communication for approaching intercultural encounters. In other words, in this section, we will look into Panikkar's insights on the limited or insufficient intercultural encounters that a purely logical-linguistic rationality or dialectical dialogue allows. Finally, some suggestions will be offered about how to advance interculturality in educational spaces in view of those expanded epistemological conditions that enable a satisfactory relationship with people from other cultural backgrounds.

The Meaning of the 'Inter' in an Intercultural Model of Cultural Diversity
Interculturality is based on an understanding of culture and cultural identities as being flexible, dynamic and historical realities, for whose consideration the focus should not be placed on the cultural abstraction but on the individual as the subject of history. In this model, the individual becomes a member of a community inasmuch as a tradition is donated to her, and which she herself rebuilds (Mínguez 2014). Far from being homogeneous, culture includes the diversity and variability that is distinctive of the individual way of being human. Identifying this internal plurality prevents any attempt to seek cultural purity. In addition, in the global village that is the world today, each culture is recognised as an open reality, exposed to the influence of other cultures and influencing them in turn (Ortega and Mínguez 1997). Thus, interculturality moves away from the culturalism that essentialises cultures and understands them in a monolithic way, wanting to derive from this essentialisation rigid or fixed ways of behaving "at the expense of the capacity of the individual to construct her own identity according to the roles she wants to represent" (Escámez 2002, p. 133).
Since the 1980s, an intercultural model of understanding and managing cultural diversity was proposed in Europe, in contrast to other theoretical approaches, such as transculturalism or multiculturalism. While the former emphasises the common elements of human experience and, therefore, falls on the side of universalism, the multicultural or pluricultural model, at the other end, emphasises cultural differences from a symmetrical and static consideration of cultures, approaching relativism (Portera and Milani 2021). Unlike these, the intercultural model addresses cultural diversity from a postcolonial perspective by focusing on the different dynamic ways in which people relate, communicate and express themselves and how they use different cultural traits to do so.
The conceptualisation of intercultural competence and, correspondingly, the theoretical models that have been developed around it are numerous (Spitberz and Changnon 2009), and it is now thought to be connected to global competence. In fact, since the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) urged global competence as a critical aspect of student training in 2018, this competence has been the object of theoretical and practical research in recent studies (Sanz-Leal et al. 2022;Sakamoto and Roger 2022) in its relationship with intercultural education to respond to the challenges of globalisation and cultural diversity (Holubnycha et al. 2019).
We propose to understand interculturality as a "dynamic and relational orientation," as opposed to a static or stable one (Einfalt et al. 2022). This means that intercultural competence refers to communication, the relationships and interchange processes established with people from different cultural backgrounds (Abdallah-Pretceille 2006) that generate relational effectiveness. As Mínguez (2014) states, "the intercultural refers to the basic fact of having established a relationship with other individuals, groups or identities of other cultures. Therefore, the foundation of interculturality is communication between cultures" (p. 28), which can be judged based on its appropriateness and effectiveness. Here, "effectiveness" should be taken not only in a functional or utilitarian sense but also has to do with the humanising potential which that communication involves. In other words, it should not be understood just from a human capital but from a humanistic model (Regmi 2015). If the "appropriateness relates to the perception of a relational exchange that is adequate and in line with the expectations of all participants, effectiveness may be deemed achieved when the interlocutors succeed with their goals in a strategic, creative and, above all, united manner" (Portera and Milani 2021, p. 55).
Like any practical capacity, the development of intercultural competence requires not only gaining cultural knowledge and awareness but also designing educational opportunities in which communication becomes a reality. These communicative processes among people with different cultural backgrounds should be guided so as to become appropriate and effective or, in other words, so that they take place in a thoughtful, critical and humanising way. As Portera and Milani (2021) state, "education should go beyond knowledge and respect of diversities. Good education should always promote authentic interactions with the aim of changing what is considered to be maladaptive or wrong (e.g. violence, oppression, prejudice)" (p. 54).
In this line, numerous studies in education have shown concern about teachers' and students' limited ability to interact in culturally heterogeneous contexts. This is the case of the study carried out by Mayer et al. (2017), which focused on teachers' perceptions of their own levels of preparedness to teach to and about diversity, which were stated to be low. On this basis, Brownlee et al. (2019) examines teacher educators' understandings of diversity and of teaching to and about diversity with the purpose of analysing their epistemic reflexivity in this regard, which is influencing their decision-making. With regard to students, Einfalt et al. (2022) observe that, despite the internationalisation of educational spaces, there is a lack of interaction between international and domestic students. Along the same line, Lantz-Deaton (2017) reports in her study in the UK that even high levels of intercultural contact in a group of university U.K. and non-U.K. students did not lead to enhanced intercultural competence.
Therefore, if interculturality is based on the quality-appropriateness and effectiveness-of the ties that individuals with distinct cultural origins are able to establish, we should consider the following questions: what type of relationships are they capable of forging based on the intercultural education they received? And, determining the quality of these relationships, what kind of communication prevails in them, i.e., in the contact with (culturally different) others? Building on Raimon Panikkar's intercultural hermeneutics, we can examine if these communicative processes are fundamentally persuasive or rhetorical, i.e., if they are dialectical dialogues about objects in which who is right and what is (logically) true is at stake or, on the contrary, if they are not merely dialectical, but dialogical dialogues between subjects, in which it is the subjects themselves who have a priority over the objects and, therefore, ontological over logical truth, i.e., the being there together of the subjects over their judging and arguing about objects as particular (epistemic) acts.
According to the approach of universal hermeneutics, language has an ontological or fundamental condition, and, therefore, so does hermeneutics. From this ontological view of language, a similar condition of rhetoric can be derived. In other words, if language is ontological, rhetorical activity can also be considered universal, characteristic of all linguistic behaviour, as González (2012) points out. In fact, González argues that every use of language necessarily involves a persuasive moment in which, (1) on the one hand, on the part of the speaker, the speaker aspires to convince the interlocutor and make her access the speaker's horizon of meaning, and (2) on the other hand, on the part of the interpreter, the interpreter "allows herself to be affected by tradition" (p. 127) so that she does not adopt a neutral or objective attitude, but rather opens to the meaning that is presented by the speaker, taking it seriously. In other words, an "anticipation of perfection" (Gadamer 2001) takes place, by which the interpreter "asserts the right of what the other has to say" (González 2012, p. 132). From this perspective, it is said, "there is no language that is not intrinsically persuasive or rhetorical, nor is there a genuine understanding that does not involve a recognition of such persuasive intention and effects" (González 2012, p. 136).
Is this truly so? Can we really speak of rhetorical rationality as being universal, so that this kind of rationality is the one that guides not only intercultural encounters but any human encounter and thus, "there is not… any sphere of social existence in which discursive persuasion does not take place" (González 2012, p. 131)? Is the intercultural education that has prevailed heir to a discourse ethics that understands interpersonal relationships as fundamentally based on a dialectical logical-linguistic exchange? These questions will be examined by analysing Raimon Panikkar's intercultural philosophy and, specifically, his most characteristic proposal: that there is another kind of communication, apart from the dialectical, rhetorical one that is derived from logical rationality, that can take place in intercultural encounters, so that other epistemological conditions apart from discursive capacities need to be educationally fostered to build more effective relationships with those coming from different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, looking into how cultural encounters are understood-and what kind of communication is prioritised in them-is of vital importance since it will determine our ways of handling, managing and educating for interpersonal relationships with those with different cultures.

Culture as Mythos and the Pluralism of Truth Thesis
The intercultural proposal of Raimon Panikkar (1993aPanikkar ( , b, 2000Panikkar ( , 2006 is based on an original metaphysics that he calls cosmotheandric vision or intuition (1991). According to the latter, the ultimate nature of reality is triadic, and there is a triple interdependence or radical relativity of its three dimensions, which are distinguishable but inseparable: the human, spiritual or noetic; the cosmic, physical or empirical; and the divine, transcendent or metaphysical. His intercultural proposal is also based on a gnoseological thesis about the plurality-but not relativism-of truth (2009), which probably arises from his multicultural life experience as the son of an Indian father and a Catalan mother.
The pluralism of truth thesis serves as a key foundation for his diatopical hermeneutics, which sets the possibilities and limits of intercultural encounters. Panikkar describes interculturality with the help of nine theses (Panikkar 1993b;Pigem 2001). According to the first and second of these, each culture is an encompassing mythos (Panikkar 2006(Panikkar , 2009 and not an object at the person's disposal. It is "that which is believed in such a way that it is not even believed to be believed: it is the evidence itself" (1993b, sp); it establishes "the horizon of intelligibility where we must situate any idea, any conviction or any act of consciousness so that they may be held by our mind." That is, it is "the basis from which the question as question makes sense" (2000, p. 50) so that it makes up "a galaxy which secretes its self-understanding, and with it, the criteria of truth, goodness, and beauty of all human actions" (2000, p. 53). There is nothing above it from which different cultures could be compared or classified: "Cultures are not species of any genus"; there is no common denominator or cultural universals (unlike human invariants), so that "cultural diversity is not such diversity because we have no background to place it on" (1993b). In other words, if diversity is always diversity 'of' something that admits variation, but there is not such something, there is no diversity, but incommensurability. However, incommensurability does not lead to incommunicability, according to Panikkar, as will be seen below.
Building on this understanding of culture, Panikkar proposes a diatopical hermeneutics, in contrast to Gadamer's diachronic one. Diatopical hermeneutics is based on the idea that there is no shared tradition, nor, therefore, a community of meaning that ensures (logical-linguistic) understanding. Without a shared tradition and without cultural universals, arguing a person's worldview with someone who has a different one is not possible anymore. Inhabiting both different worlds (topoi), such argumentative exercise cannot be based on shared principles or certainties, which are a precondition for argumentation. In other words, when it comes to different worldviews, mythos or ultimate human horizons, there is no language that acts as a background of common certainties from which the truth or falsity of the propositions could be agreed upon. Then, the incommensurability of cultures should be taken seriously without seeking to assimilate differences or reduce them into something else. Panikkar calls this the plurality of truth, which is not relativism but requires understanding the relationship with people from different cultural backgrounds in terms that are not exclusively persuasive or rethorical but, as he argues, of conversion. According to Panikkar, incommensurability does not equate to incommunicability. Effective communication with people inhabiting different mythos is possible and, moreover, desirable, inasmuch as it has humanising potential. However, for that exchange to acquire those features, it is necessary to overcome a purely discursive, logical-linguistic intercultural approach in which only the rational dimension of the person comes into play in contact with culturally distinct people and, instead, adopt a deeper, more encompassing perspective in which the whole being of the person is involved. It requires what Panikkar calls conversion.

Conversion in an Intercultural Sense
Conversion involves assuming or adopting the language and certainties of those with another cultural origin, after having identified and clarified them. It involves allowing for the possibility of being guided by those certainties, and thus learning to live according to them, so that what the person takes for granted is the same as what the other (culturally distinct) person does. This is so because, as Panikkar indicates, certainties can only be lived. One can only be in them; they are not something set or arranged by the subject: Every human tradition must be learned as the child first learns the language that surrounds him: not by comparing the words of one language with those of another previously known but by confronting the new words in their own context, checking their peculiar significance, experiencing their power in the stark reality… Learning involves… converting to the world of the things learned (Panikkar 1993a, b, p. 387).
As seen in the Latin word itself, con ('with, together with')-vertere ('turn, bend'), to convert is to come with the other person, to pour oneself into the other or to turn towards her to transform oneself or to become something different from what one was before. Therefore, conversion points to relationality as a distinctively human condition (Ortega 2013). In addition, it indicates that this turning towards the culturally different cannot be primarily based on linguistic, dialectical rationality because the inhabited worldviews are different and there are no shared certainties. As Mínguez (2014) notes, "we cannot judge the culture of the other with our arguments alone because there are always areas of incomprehension and untranslatability from one culture to another" (Scartezzini 1996). We need another way of understanding intercultural dialogue" (pp. 28-29).
Thus, if in a purely logical-linguistic, discursive or persuasive intercultural approach, the focus of attention is on the other, who, to some extent, we want to transform, something very different happens in conversion. Indeed, persuasion aspires to be a productive or transeunt action: by applying the technical rationality of practical reason, it seeks the best means to achieve a result: that the interlocutor takes something for granted (Aristóteles 2003; López-Eire 1995), so that she acquires a new certainty (i.e., that which is not an object of knowledge and doubt any more, of what can turn out to be true or false, but becomes something that does not need any further justification or demonstration) (Ariso 2015(Ariso , 2019. Perhaps because of this focus on the external result on the other person, persuasion is represented in a negative way, as something to be suspicious of, and rhetorical education is often conceived in terms of resistance to persuasive mechanisms that may be deemed illegitimate. This does not come without reason because persuasion actually involves an exercise of violence towards the other, a violence that can be described as subtle, "sophisticated," or "civilised" (Alayón 2008, p. 10), but that is, after all, a redirection of the other subject to another person's way of thinking and linguistic world, so that she assumes the same certainties. "The person who is subject to the rhetorical effect must move from one position to another. She is required to overcome her natural resistance, to force her will." Ariso (2019) acknowledges that persuasion is a "very invasive means" because it somehow assumes that there is something in the other person that must be modified, that is worth changing and, on this basis, the person is required to go through her beliefs. Aristóteles (2003) also refers to persuasion along these lines. He explains that it consists in "inventing or resisting a reason and defending oneself and accusing" (p. 4). That is, even in the sphere of logos, there is a real "struggle of positions," and in the end, "someone attacks and someone capitulates" (Alayón 2008, p. 10). Moreover, this is so even when rhetorics is regulated by truth and aspires to truth, and not only (i) when it is degraded to demagoguery, a sophist-populist form of flattery that attempts to make something appear to be true that is not (as Plato presents it in the Gorgias), or (ii) when it is understood as an exercise of fascination of the other (as Arendt refers to it), or (iii) as a mere stylistics that seduces with beauty at the expense of the truth. In these latter cases, there is no proper exchange, but sheer imposition and manipulation from an interest that is alien to the truth. However, even when persuasion takes place within the limits of truth and, therefore, of respect for human dignity, rhetorical activity involves an exercise of violence towards the other that cannot be overlooked. In this case, the person is con-vinced, attracted to a position or caught up in it through the "very fine eroticism of the verb, the seduction of the logos" (Alayón 2008, p. 11).
In contrast to persuasion, Panikkar's intercultural proposal does not focus on the other so as to change her certainties or most basic attitudes, but rather on the self that accepts to be affected and transformed by the other's mythos and way of being. This is in line with the deep meaning of interculturality, which has to do with becoming aware of personal identity and how it is transformed in the relationship with others (Abdallah-Pretceille 2006). This approach has been adopted in educational experiences such as that of Ang et al. (2020): "The focus of the training changed from looking at the patient as the 'Other' to offering space to reflect about the 'Self'" (p. 469). Markauskaite and Goodyear (2017) point to something similar when explaining the concept of "epistemic fluency" or adaptivity, which refers to the set of capacities, dispositions and beliefs that allow us to "think about our epistemic aims in ways that do not automatically reproduce or naturalise existing, familiar or powerful ways of knowing" (Brownlee et al. 2019, p. 4).
In addition, the result to which conversion leads cannot be taken for granted nor is known in advance. It remains uncertain since, rather than taking the lead, the subject just allows herself to be converted and then is possessed or caught up in the horizon of the other, which surpasses her. Thus, the individual does not exert control nor have a position of dominance from a certain will to power; it is the world of the other that has priority. Therefore, appropriating a different tradition is not an activity that depends solely on the autonomous self. In such an experience, the self does not act as a self-sufficient subject in any productive sense, nor is conversion a reproducible activity based on a technical or methodical systematisation of rules. Rather, it is a creative activity that requires originality in the ways of allowing oneself to be affected by someone else. Therefore, strictly speaking, there is no possible repetition of this experience but at most a reactualisation.
The absence of a self that holds control means that conversion cannot be reduced to an exercise of rational integration or fusion of cultural horizons from a gnoseological perspectivism. Therefore, the transformation that conversion brings about does not consist in turning the other subject into an object to be understood, as opposed to the interpreting subject, nor does its essence lie in the pure subjective emotion that can be experienced in contact with the person with another cultural background. Rather, conversion involves an experiential shift in which the person assumes a load of meanings that make up the tradition of the other, letting herself be questioned, conformed and guided by the other person's sense of reality. Conversion entails "subjecting oneself" to the world of the other, insofar as it is acknowledged that it offers meaning, it opens up existential possibilities that are valid for oneself. These are not merely possibilities of knowledge but of being more than what the subject is by herself. Conversion amounts to being beyond oneself, which, for a human being with a fundamental social and relational condition, results in being more humane. Thus, although (logical) truth is dependent on each culture or worldview (mythos), meaning is intercosmic: it goes across all worlds.
Conversion requires, therefore, believing in the other person's world, believing that it makes sense: "I cannot understand the other if I do not believe that in one sense or another, she also possesses the truth" (Panikkar 1993a., p. 387). However, this is not tantamount to saying that all meanings are equally effective. Gadamer considers that "only distance in time" (2001, p. 369) resolves the question of which interpretations are valid. In Panikkar's view, it is the ability to convene others, to relate with the (human) others and with the other dimensions of the (triadic) cosmoteandric reality that determines the validity of a tradition, as opposed to an excluding monism in any of its forms-as a pure individualism, a separating patriotism or a self-sufficient anthropocentrism that absolutises its immanent horizon-. This is so because this convening and relational structure constitutes the person's linguistic condition, which takes the form of personal encounters and includes the possibility of donation. Human nature develops and reaches its full potential as it actualises this relational disposition. However, this relational condition should not be reduced to an instrumental interpretation, according to which the others would merely be means to meet either individual or social human needs more efficiently and make survival easier, as Carr (2018) criticises. The human relational condition is not just an indication of the needy human nature but should also be taken as an indication of its abundance or wealth, as we are able to build relationships with others for the sake of themselves, not just out of utility.
If conversion requires believing in the meaning that other people with different cultural backgrounds embody, it is necessary to overcome the dogmatic attitude that human beings are naturally prone to show (Spaemann 1993). This dogmatic orientation arises from the need that the person has for some unquestionable, non-negotiable certainties that provide her with a stable framework of action and which, for this reason, she tends to disseminate. Thus, although the person may acknowledge a posteriori that all her access to truth is limited, she initially takes certain things to be the whole truth because, if she did not think of them that way, she would have to continue her search for them. This dogmatism suggests that the plausibility or verisimilitude that the various cultural worlds internally possess is not understood a priori as a merely finite, contingent, and limited human realisation in the self-consciousness of each tradition. However, it is easily verified later that no culture or situation can claim to be absolute.
Conversion is, therefore, a comprehensive life experience of "unconditional acceptance" of the other as she is, "without intending to eliminate ambiguities" (Vilanova 1993, p. 19). It involves the highest respect for otherness as a "condition for authenticity in every human relationship;" and it is "one of the signs of spiritual maturity" (Vilanova 1993, p. 20). In fact, conversion demands not just (cognitive) open-mindedness but an ontic openness that transforms all the dimensions of the person to be in a more suitable position to access other horizons of intelligibility. It is made possible by the ontological experience of fraternity that the cosmotheandric intuition allows, which makes it possible to go beyond the person's individual limits and gives "rise to universality" (González 2012, p. 133). In particular, fraternity allows for a universality that transcends a purely dialectical (gnoseological) universality based on an ethics of logos or rational discourse. Therefore, it is not a merely abstract universality that results from identifying and extracting the common out of the experience of many particular worlds. In conversion, universality-or, more precisely, different levels of it-is achieved by accessing another incarnated particularity which is not the immediate one in which the person has always found herself. Conversion is the path from I to you, from one particular to another, but that achieves the effects of universality to the extent that it allows the subject to become aware of her own assumptions.
Lévinas considers that the encounter with the other enables the person to discover the being that she is (according to Panikkar, her cosmotheandric reality). Therefore, the experienced person is the one who, having travelled the different paths offered by distinct faces, is more capable of having even more experiences of otherness. That person is, thus, also the least dogmatic of all because, having embodied different possibilities of being, she has noticed the partiality or negativity they all involve. Therefore, intercultural encounters involve a dialectical-negative exercise which reveals the risk that is run in them: the person must be willing to change since in intercultural encounters she distances herself from her habits, so they do not appear again in the same way. This negative exercise does not lead to denying the own cultural world-it does not result in alienation-but "it is clear that revealing a prejudice involves suspending its validity" (Gadamer 2001, p. 369).
"However, people are limited, and this experience [of conversion] will always be that of our own limits. We fight against our boundaries" (Vilanova 1993, p. 20): against the limits of our capacity for solidarity, for acceptance of the other, for fraternal love. These limits reveal our vulnerability and finitude and account for the incomplete and imperfect experience of conversion that we can achieve. For this reason, Panikkar (1993a) argues that conversion is based on pleading. The hermeneutics of those who live in different topoi can also be called utopian in this sense: not only because "interculturality is not one's land, it is utopia, situated between two (or more) cultures" (Panikkar 2000, p. 3) but also because of the limits of our ability to understand and communicate. In addition, and along this line, Panikkar also acknowledges that the other person is a certain mystery based on the recognition of her transcendent reality and capacity for infinity, as well as her deep immanence and unfathomable intimacy (Panikkar 1991). If this is so, there is "an incomprehensible substrate of understanding" (Panikkar 1993a, pp. 331-332), and conversion becomes an inexhaustible task. Consequently, Panikkar considers that intercultural encounters can be described as some kind of religious experience (of re-binding -religare-) and require a symbolic-not merely conceptual-language suitable for embracing that mystery.

Dialogical Dialogue and the Limitations of Dialectical Dialogue
Panikkar distinguishes between two types of dialogue, the dialectical and the dialogical, and points to the different epistemological conditions they require. These types of dialogue serve two kinds of interests: in dialectical dialogue, "a crypto-missionary will to power can still act", i.e., the intention to persuade the other on the basis of what the person considers to be right. In contrast, in dialogical dialogue, there is an openness "to the possibility of being converted by the other" (1993, p. 329; 2006). Panikkar argues that dialectical dialogue is about objects, while dialogical dialogue is about subjects and is, consequently, more encompassing. This distinction corresponds to that proposed by Rorty between "methodical readings" and "inspired readings" (González 2012). While "methodical readings" refer to the purely linguistic activity of reading as a cognitive-objective task, "inspired readings" allow for an encounter or presence that serves as the basis for any strictly linguistic reading behaviour.
In the same vein, dialogical and not merely dialectical dialogue is based on a certain sympathy for the other person so that she does not appear as an enemy to beat or to conquer in "the logical arena of the struggle between ideas" (Panikkar 2006, p. 52) from a model of competitive rationality. The relationship with a person from a different cultural background "is not the same as that between two commercial companies dedicated to selling their products to the same customers"-"neither they compete nor are they enemies"-, but is based on a bond of solidarity through which the human race reveals its solid condition, the "spiritual agora" in which everybody has a place. "We can descend into the arena, but we must always keep open the invitation to the agora… in the agora we speak, in the arena we fight" (Panikkar 2006, p. 53)." On this basis, the limitations of an intercultural ethics that is grounded on purely persuasive logos or rhetorical rationality come to light. In other words, the different epistemological conditions of both kinds of dialogue reveal the shortcomings of an approach to intercultural encounters that solely rests on or fundamentally prioritises the discursive, logical-linguistic capacities of the person. This is so because before any analytical-argumentative exchange happens between people from different cultural backgrounds, an encounter between them takes place, which is precisely what lays the foundations for any subsequent argumentative dialogue, in other words, what acts as its condition of possibility and marks its subsequent distinctive character. This encounter consists in the experience of the other person's otherness, of her being together with-and not just in front of-the subject since the other has not yet become objectified. It is the concrete manifestation of the human relational identity, embodied in a particular experience, and it foreshadows the ethos of the subjects involved and already provokes a certain pathos. Mínguez points to the same idea in what follows: We have widely defended a less intellectualist or dialectical and more intersubjective vision of dialogue, we have insisted on a dialogue that is more anchored in mutual recognition, reciprocal trust and acceptance (Ortega and Mínguez 2001). Therefore, dialogue is not limited only to words and ideas (knowledge of the culture of the other) but also materialises in personal experiences and interpretations (memory) and in the concrete experience of the gesture, of the look, of touch and of attentive listening. 'Dialogue is an encounter with the other' (2014, p. 29).
Therefore, in such an encounter, it is not yet the logos of rhetorical activity but those other two elements-ethos and pathos-that come into play. Indeed, the presence or the immediacy of the other (not yet mediated by judgements) shows the undeniable factum of her existence, of the possibilities that open up before her and foreshadows a particular character: "Language, before having a meaning, a signified, a signifier, a referent… reveals first of all the speaker, the man" (Panikkar 2006, p. 69). The current movement of Free Listening also points to this experience of encounter as an ethical proposal of communication that promotes active empathic listening to the speaker, prioritising the subject over the object (Andolina and Conklin 2021). By underlining the importance of that encounter, the promoters of such a movement uncover our problematic listening habits and communication behaviours and the effects these have on our ability to connect with others (Tietsort et al. 2021).
Heidegger (2012) also highlights a structure of pre-comprehension (Vorhabe, Vorsicht and Vorgriff), and Gadamer refers to prejudgment as an expectation of meaning, as an anticipation-projection that precedes the interpretation and guides it, opening the subject to the other. However, intercultural encounters cannot be reduced to this pre-understanding if this structure of pre-comprehension is still understood in cognitive terms (as the background on which certain things appear significant). Instead, before (not necessarily in a temporal but foundational sense) this cognitive activity takes place, there is pure pre-sence (prae-esse), that is, the pre-being with the other as the basis or foundation for all con-vincing (con-vincere 'to conquer, to overcome, to defeat an opponent') or persuasive talk. This presence unveils the previous attitude and feelings of the subjects, their character (ethos) to some extent, and marks the subsequent tone of the strictly logical-linguistic comprehension process in a decisive way. In other words, prior to any attempt to persuade the other person and make her recognise the logical truth of a particular proposition, there is a contact with her, the encounter as a pre-sence, which acts as a principle that determines or defines ex initio the possibilities of an authentic or honest communicative exercise, i.e., it makes this kind of communicative exercise possible, or it excludes it ex initio. This means that the argumentative exchange with a person from another cultural background does not occur in a subjectively neutral or objective way, from an absolute beginning detached from any affective, ethical and historical dispositions (Gómez 2015).
Understanding as an ontological condition of the human subject has to do with this (already communicative) encounter that sets the preconditions for (logical) understanding. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the concept of understanding and make it more flexible to integrate all the dimensions of the person: not only the cognitive but also the attitudinal and affective, which are modes of original understanding. This expanded concept of understanding reveals the whole meaning of our communicational or relational being: "It [understanding] is not simply an intellectual attitude. It is also a matter of the heart, of love… The intellect cannot accept what it thinks is a mistake, but the heart can embrace the one it considers wrong" (Panikkar 1993a, p. 336). This attitude of acceptance comes first, before the strictly dialectical exchange; therefore, the encounter is primarily moral by nature (Touriñán-López 2006). In addition, for this expansion to be fully inclusive, it must be taken into account that reason actually encompasses plural rationalities, as opposed to the monism of modern reason (Gómez 2015). In this connection, Panikkar states that although "the logos represents the great dignity of man… there is also the spirit" (2006, p. 14). As Mínguez argues, "We need thought and concepts to know the reality of the other, but we should not reduce it [intercultural education] to a dialectical game of ideas" (2014, p. 28). Therefore, intercultural education should not be merely limited to conveying information or cultural content but involves a much more demanding task (Ortega and Mínguez 1997).
When the self is solely governed by the logos, it adopts the position of a constituent subject, which determines and objectifies things, that is, reduces them to objects so that she does not capture them in their complete being. However, the person is more than a subject of this kind, and something happens before (not necessarily in a temporal sense) that objectivising activity takes place, i.e., before cognitive intentionality or thinking objects that are imposed on others in persuasive, linguistic-rhetorical acts: "It is necessary to let the evidence go for a heart filled with awe, still capable of wonder, and only afterwards let it enter our categories. We can then see that the spiritual life as a whole goes along this path. Is not life an encounter?" (Vilanova 1993, p. 18). Panikkar argues that this encounter allows for a fuller communicative exchange and is more comprehensive than that achieved with purely dialectical dialogue: And if there is no question, there is no answer: there is a look, there is a smile; it is love, it is forgiveness (1970, p. 14).
Therefore, the discovery of the other requires retaining a capacity for wonder, as occurs in the encounter of a mother with the newborn, and it is contemplative by nature. Consequently, it should be conceived as an end in itself and not as a means to convince the other person or enlist her in one's own world (Panikkar 1993a).

Pedagogical Orientations for an Expanded "Sphere of between"(-Cultures)
Building on Panikkar's intercultural philosophy and his concept of conversion, some pedagogical suggestions can be derived in order to improve intercultural education. All of them seek to expand the kind of relationships that people with different cultural backgrounds can form among each other, moving beyond logical-linguistic dialectical dialogues to dialogical communication. This kind of contact leads to an expanded "sphere of between" (Buber 2018) among the culturally distinct that involves a multidimensional-and not purely rhetorical-persuasive-communication.
4.1 First, the first and second rules of Descartes' method should be kept in mind for guiding intercultural encounters: avoid precipitation and divide each of the difficulties into as many parts as possible, analysing or decomposing. "Avoiding precipitation," first, means learning to see just what can be seen in what a person with a different cultural background does and says. In other words, it has to do with minimising the burden that language and culture impose on the experience as much as possible. This is extremely difficult because the "safe ground of cultural custom, of the conventional" (Inciarte 2004, p. 80) permeates everything, including perception, so that "our knowledge prevents a pure seeing" (2004, p. 78). For this purpose, it is wise to learn to distinguish between errors (false judgements) and anomalies (judgements "that do not make sense, so that, strictly speaking, they are not even judgements") (Ariso 2019, p. 2). Anomalies arise from a different worldview, that is, from other fundamental certainties. Therefore, in contact with people with different cultural backgrounds, they must be identified as such and, instead of declaring them as mere errors, they should be understood as a framework from which to grasp the aspirations, desires, fears and way of life of other people. Acknowledging these anomalies requires striving for a genuine understanding of the other person, which neither idealises her in what Nussbaum (2005, p. 155) calls a "descriptive romanticism" nor distorts her reality by assimilating it to the own's culture ("descriptive chauvinism"). In other words, it involves promoting knowledge of the individual and undoing prejudice to build interpersonal relationships in which the person can be discovered as she is. The second rule of the method encourages not to take all cultural practices as if they were equivalent but to make an effort to "learn to distinguish, in the own traditions, what is local and what could be proposed as a norm for the rest; what is arbitrary and unjustified from what could be justified" (Nussbaum 2014, p. 90) based on our communicative, relational being. In other words, teachers should help students discern what is essential and what is secondary in their cultures, which its constituent pillars are, and which could be dispensed with (Ibáñez-Martín et al. 2012). 4.2 Second, intercultural education should avoid any form of "hidden irenism" or false pacifism: dialogical dialogue "does not involve uniformity of opinions, but… harmony of awakened hearts" (Panikkar 1993a, p. 325). As Ortega and Mínguez (1997) point out, "the 'romantic vision' of an intercultural education that is produced without resistance on the part of both sides is unrealistic" (p. 45). Therefore, the intellectual dialectical dimension of the individual should be distinguished from her complete personal being. This distinction makes it possible to reconcile communion and otherness. If this is so, intercultural encounters "do not spare struggle or disagreement… they do not exclude controversy… they do not simply focus on unity but on understanding; they do not dream of uniformity but of the greatest possible harmony" (Panikkar 1993a, pp. 330-331). 4.3. In addition, in contact with people with different cultural backgrounds, there exists the uncertainty or "the danger that some participants have hidden purposes" (Panikkar 1993a, p. 330); in other words, that they do not have a genuine willingness to dialogue and, as a foundation for it, to an encounter. Therefore, it is essential to learn to endure this kind of uncertainty. However, suspicion must transform into mutual trust (Tamayo 2018) with the help of the teacher's example and her reliable, consistent dedication and helpful disposition to the students. 4.4 In line with 4.3., teachers should serve as an example of the caring attitude towards people with different cultural backgrounds that they want to build in their students. This attitude involves, first, discovering to the students the real relations of power and violence that have mediated the contact between cultures, as a result of an understanding of human reason as absolute, abstract and ahistorical that is characteristic of the modern philosophies of the subject and that becomes apparent in the ideological uses of language that seek to "impose a unique perspective or a privileged starting point" (Panikkar 1993a, p. 328). Second, developing a caring attitude towards the culturally distinct involves doing away with the arrogance of assimilationism to help the students free themselves from "the hubris of self-sufficiency" and "from the narcissistic attitudes of superiority" (1993, p. 336; 2006)." In this regard, it is essential to teach what a healthy patriotism is and how "love for what is close" is "a fundamental human trait." Still, the inclination towards those that are nearest and dearest should happen "always in a way that manifests respect for human dignity" (Nussbaum 2014, pp. 88-89). The caring attitude needed for dialogical dialogue entails, in short, ceasing to pursue some "type of monolithic unification but a kind of harmony… serene interrelation… dialogical interpenetration" (Panikkar 1993a, p. 333) among those with different cultures. 4.5 Additionally, in Panikkar's view, intercultural education requires developing resilience in students, improving their disposition towards external criticism of their customs and manners, even if this criticism adopts the most negative, destructive and hurtful form of a "distorted view of nonsympathisers" (Panikkar 1993a., p. 334) and even if it is not only caused by misunderstandings arising from a lack of knowledge about the other person. For this purpose, fostering a culture of error in educational spaces is very effective, where constructive feedback is provided to learn from mistakes-made and suffered-in line with what Seifried and Wuttke (2017) have proposed. Thus, teachers should play a key role in managing errors and guiding how criticism is received to avoid a defensive and negatively apologetic attitude in the student, which would reveal the fear of losing their identity. Furthermore, teachers should encourage students to rethink the meaning of their own traditions in pursuit of mutual fecundation. Learning the art of criticism and a resilient reception of it can culminate in gratitude for the other person's contribution so that her feedback and criticism appear as a gift or opportunity that "frees us from stagnation" (Panikkar 1993a, p. 336). 4.6 Finally, according to Panikkar's thesis of the pluralism-but not relativism-of truth, criticism should be pedagogically managed in a way that avoids the extreme of relativism. For this purpose, the student can be offered the criterion of distinguishing the positive nature of relativity or pluralism from the impoverishing vision of relativism, which nullifies the truth by reducing it to a property of any statement. As Nussbaum notes (2014), "rejecting any application of moral norms to a foreign person or culture is not truly treating them with respect" (p. 178) but deprives them of recognition, which is what happens in a relativism of indifference. Along the same lines, Panikkar notes that the other person is not a pure aliud, but an alter: the other part of the self (Panikkar 2006). In the same way, teachers should avoid the opposite extreme of monism. With this aim, it is worth drawing attention to the human dogmatic inclination that is spontaneously present in the subject. This way, the person can become aware of the fact that, although "we are not satisfied with partial visions" and "we think we see the whole", the reality is that "we only see the totum in parte and per partem" (Panikkar 1993a, p. 335). To help explore "the contingent, limited and imperfect value of our beliefs" (Panikkar 1993a, p. 336), some of the numerous examples that Nussbaum offers of "many good things [that] once seemed strange" (2014, p. 81) can be used. Such examplesare useful to "strip our practices of the falseair of naturalness and inevitability with which they are invested" (2014, p. 82) because "no religion, ideology, culture or tradition can reasonably claim to exhaust the field of human experience", "to be in possession of the monopoly of truth or to have exclusive rights over it" (Panikkar 1993a, pp. 337-338). This also affects techno-scientific rationality and its language: "Other perspectives [other rationalities] are also plausible" (1993a, p. 328).

Conclusions
Following Panikkar's intercultural hermeneutics, we have noticed that people with different cultural backgrounds inhabit different worlds or mythos and thus do not share a common ground of basic certainties. As a consequence, intercultural encounters cannot be understood in purely logical-dialectical terms. However, truth is not cancelled on these grounds: the pure presence of both the objective world and the face of the other that comes out to the encounter with the self reveals some ontological truth, the truth that corresponds to the being of things, in contrast to logical truth or the truth of (rational) thought (Espinosa Zárate 2019).
In the encounter with a person with another cultural background, the violence of persuasive reason, which forces the other person to submit to the linguistic constructions of the self, is cancelled. There is no claim to (logical) truth, whose right the speaker wants to affirm, nor is there an attempt to convince the other and change her vision. In such intercultural encounters, what happens is what is evident for both: the immediacy of the other that calls for her recognition. The face of the other, which appears as something the subject must respond to, opens the ethical relationship between the two (Ortega 2013) and prevents any temptation of domination.
Therefore, in such encounters, the relationship with the person with another cultural background is not primarily linguistic-coming from the analytical, dividing and classifying logos-but is based on the way of being (ethos) as a fundamental, unifying, also physical or bodily experience from which linguistic and, therefore, persuasive efforts derive. There is more to the human than the rhetorical rationality of language. What is most distinctively human is not only the logos but that (dialogical) encounter that does not exclude linguistic rationality, because it is impregnated by it, but goes beyond it: something lies at the foundation of the mediating activity of logical-linguistic thinking. In this sense, "diatopical hermeneutics represents a radical departure from the narrower focus of rationalist hermeneutics" (Hall 2011, p. 114).
The educational challenge here has to do with how to teach for this encounter in which linguistic activity is not the primary activity at stake but rather an encounter of attitudes.
These must be of conversion, self-in-sufficiency, acceptance and openness to the discovery of the (ontological) truth of the other, which is revealed and at the same time is hidden, giving way to the recognition of the mystery, the ineffable character and the transcendent reality of beings.
This educational challenge lies in the ability to teach to resist persuasion, but this time not as a "victim" or recipient of it-by developing a critical attitude towards the source and persuasive mechanisms-but insofar as the subject tends to persuade, propagate and even impose her truth, her linguistic and cultural universe. Instead, people should be encouraged to develop an attitude of listening (Tietsort et al. 2021), not only and not even primarily of the language of others with their claims of (logical) truth but of their beings (ontological truth). The ontological truth that is manifested in interpersonal encounters goes beyond purely epistemic truth and has some priority over it since it reveals the significant presence of a human being that summons the others, whose nature is characterised by being-encountered and being-understood as a precondition for any subsequent linguistic behaviour. As long as man is not prepared to live this presence, only the subtle-or explicit-violence of the persuasive logos can persist.
Therefore, language provides a common ground from where to establish identities and differences, in which a worldview is represented, and allows a certain kind of communication. However, there is also understanding in the realm of the lived existence that is not yet judicatory-linguistic: "Knowing is an ontic and not only epistemic act… it means becoming the thing that is known" (Panikkar 2009, p. 179). In other words, there can be communication, in this case, intercultural (dialogical) dialogue between subjects, that is not solely based on rhetorical-dialectical rationality because we have a comprehending nature (if this means something more than linguistically comprehending): intercultural (dialogical) encounters can be communicatively successful if all the anthropological dimensions involved in it, not only the purely linguistic-rhetorical ones, have received educational attention.
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