Università Roma Tre

The main aim of this teaching is to investigate the constitutive role of language in shaping human nature. The study of the peculiar characters of our species, in fact, has always involved the analysis of the specificities of language. The reflection about the distinctive features of humans is primarily tied to the analysis of the properties that make our species different from all the others: because of the fact that only humans are able to speak (other animals communicate only), language represents an ideal candidate to support the thesis of 'uniqueness' of human beings in the natural world. Starting from the Darwinian tradition, the aim is to show that language, even if set to guarantee the specificity of the humans, cannot justify the claim of the specialty of human nature.