Università Roma Tre

In the second part of the course we will focus on the question of the relationship between Christian Europe and Islam in the Mediterranean scenario. For early modern European states the Ottoman Empire traditionally represented the natural enemy, an obscure entity ready to destroy their culture and their religion. But Europe was able to mirror itself in the Islamic world, and it had with it very deep exchanges. Antagonistic and rivals cultures, not only from a religious point of view, Europe and Islam mutually examined each other for centuries, arousing in the observers and in the populations themselves feelings that went far beyond the inveterate hatred or the timeless fear. A story that everybody should to know in order to critically decipher the current dramatic developments in the relations between the West and the Islamic world.

N. Zemon Davis, La doppia vita di Leone l’Africano, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
G. Ricci, I turchi alle porte, Bologna, Il Mulino.
M. Formica, Lo specchio turco. Immagini dell'Altro e riflessi del Sé nella cultura italiana d'età moderna, Roma, Donzelli.

In the first part of the course the main critical and problematic issues of the history of Europe, from the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the modern age, will be tackled. The perspective to be adopted will try to single out the original characters and their complex identity processes of the European continent. Particular attention will be paid to the political-philosophical and political-institutional peculiarities that were taking shape in the European countries in the Early Modern age. Starting with the English Revolutions of the seventeenth century and, later, with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, in fact, parliamentary democracy, secularism, religious tolerance and the recognition of human rights became not only the key ideas of self-definition but the real guiding universal principles to be exported and, if necessary, imposed on the rest of the world.

P. Viola, L’Europa moderna. Storia di un’identità, Torino, Einaudi.
F. Chabod, Storia dell’idea di Europa, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
L. Hunt, La forza dell’empatia. Una storia dei diritti dell’uomo, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
V. Ferrone, Lo strano Illuminismo di Joseph Ratzinger. Chiesa, modernità e diritti dell’uomo, Roma-Bari, Laterza.