Università Roma Tre

During the course, we will read parts of Hobbes' "De Cive" and "Leviathan," and parts of Spinoza's "Theological-Political Treatise" and "Ethics." The reading will focus on the respective theories of passions and virtues, in particular on the "vital" root of the passions, the relationship of continuity or discontinuity between the passions most clearly related to self-preservation and those related to the pursuit of recognition, the ability of these passions to act as a vector not only of disorder and conflict, but also of self-control and cooperation, and the conflict and possible synergy of the imaginative and rational dimensions. Through this reading, an attempt will be made to test the opposition between the two thinkers widely disseminated in the specialist literature and no less widely received in historiography, as welle as the evolution of both systems, and the influence of one on the other.

Selected passages from the following works will be commented on:
1) Thomas Hobbes, De cive (Editori Riuniti)
2) Baruch Spinoza, Trattato teologico-politico (Bompiani, Einaudi o Bibliopolis)
3) Thomas Hobbes, Leviatano, (Laterza o Bompiani)
4) Baruch Spinoza, Etica (Editori Riuniti o Bompiani).