Teacher
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TOTO FRANCESCO
(syllabus)
Reason and Passions: Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza
Understanding emotional life is an important test for philosophy. The theory of passions (emotions) implies ontological and epistemological premises of a general nature relating to the relationship between thought and matter, between mind and body, between reason and the imagination and between nature and freedom. At the same time it invests in the conception of the individual subject, in the nature of intersubjective relationships, in socialization and in morality.
The course will focus on Descartes’s, Hobbes’s and Spinoza’s theories in order to highlight the different answers they gave to the same questions. How are primitive and more complex affections categorised? Can nature be seen from the point of view of a causal or a final explanation and do passions serve something and if so what is their function?
Philosophy has always questioned the relationship between “the passions” and knowledge: for example, should emotions (the passions) be seen as an obstacle or an aid to the understanding of both the internal and external world? Likewise, philosophy has always taken into account how passions contribute to the structure of human relationships: for example, does the emotional cement of social co-operation reside in the drive for self-conservation and a fear of death or in the desire for recognition and approval by the other?
Finally, philosophy has explored the relationship between affective life and the virtues required in an associate life: are passions constitutionally voted to excess and therefore, constantly needing limitation and repression, or are they instead a resource which should be both cultivated and educated?
(reference books)
1) René Descartes, Le passioni dell’anima (Bompiani), Parti II e III. 2) Thomas Hobbes, Leviatano, (Laterza o Bompiani), Capitoli 6 e 10-15 3) Baruch Spinoza, Etica, Milano (Editori Riuniti o Bompiani), Parti III e IV.
Un testo a scelta tra i seguenti
1) F. Cerrato, Un secolo di passioni e politica. Hobbes, Descartes e Spinoza, Roma, DeriveApprodi, 2012. 2) S. Vegetti-Finzi (a cura di), Storia delle passioni, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2004. 3) E. Pulcini, L’individuo senza passioni. Individualismo moderno e perdita del legame sociale, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2001.
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