History and politics of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth century

Un manuale di Storia contemporanea (sul periodo dal 1815 ai giorni nostri) delle scuole superiori a scelta. Il manuale deve essere di edizione successiva al 2010.

Due libri a scelta fra i seguenti:
S. Aleksievic, La guerra non ha un volto di donna, Bompiani;
A. Basciani – E. Ivetic, Italia e Balcani. Storia di una prossimità, Il Mulino;
R. Brizzi – M. Marchi, Storia politica della Francia repubblicana (1871-2011), Le Monnier;
F. Chabod, Storia dell’idea d’Europa, Laterza;
D. Frescobaldi, Jugoslavia perché, Ponte alle Grazie;
U. Gentiloni Silveri, Storia dell’Italia contemporanea, Il Mulino;
G. Ieranò, Arcipelago. Isole e miti del Mar Egeo, Einaudi;
R. Morozzo della Rocca, Passaggio a Oriente. La modernità e l’Europa ortodossa, Morcelliana.

Soul, consciousness and body: Descartes and Kant

R. Chiaradonna, P. Pecere, Vivere la conoscenza, Mondadori Education, Milano, 2021, vol. 2, tutte le unità dal Rinascimento a Kant
R. Descartes, Discorso sul metodo, in Opere, Bompiani
I. Kant, Sull'organo dell'anima, Hoepli 2022
P. Pecere, La natura della mente, Carocci 2022, capitoli 1-4

The course will explore the new conception of nature and history inaugurated by the 18th century, focusing on two key concepts that enable us to understand the spirit of the Enlightenment: catastrophe and progress. Didactic Unit 1 will be devoted to the analysis of a series of short texts - by Voltaire, Rousseau and Kant - on a catastrophic natural event that had an enormous resonance in Europe at the time: the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Didactic Unit 2 will focus on the analysis of some short texts by Kant and Condorcet, which outline a philosophy of history based on the idea of progress. At the end of the course, there will be a space for reflection on the relevance of the questions raised by the Enlightenment about man's misuse of nature and progress as an effect of democratic governance of power and property.

D.U. 1:
1. Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Filosofie della catastrofe, ed. A. Tagliapietra, Milan, Raffaello Cortina, 2022.

D.U. 2:
2. I. Kant, Risposta alla domanda: Cos'è illuminismo? (1784), in I. Kant, Scritti di storia, politica e diritto, ed. F. Gonnelli, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2005, pp. 45-52.
3. I. Kant, Riproposizione della domanda: se il genere umano sia in costante progresso verso il meglio (1798), in I. Kant, Scritti di storia, politica e diritto, ed. F. Gonnelli, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2005, pp. 223-239.
4. M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat, marchese di Condorcet, Quadro storico dei progressi dello spirito umano, ed. R. Guiducci, Milan, Rizzoli, 1989, or ed. G. Calvi, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1978, or ed. M. Minerbi, Turin, Einaudi, 1969 (limitedly to: Decima epoca. I progressi futuri dello spirito umano).
5. T. Piketty, "Un'idea di progresso", in «Il Mulino», n. 2, 2015, pp. 192-202.

One article at choiche from:
6. F. Gonnelli, Il diritto come fine morale. Note sul concetto di «progresso» nella tarda filosofia kantiana, in «Rivista di Storia della Filosofia», Vol. 69, No. 3 (2014), pp. 443-474 (PLEASE NOTE: LIMITED TO PARAGRAPH NO. 4).
7. R. Bodei, La storia congetturale. Ipotesi di Condorcet su passato e futuro. In: Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, tome 108, n°2. 1996. pp. 457-468 (available at: https://www.persee.fr/doc/mefr_1123-9891_1996_num_108_2_4448)

A Course Module:
Socrates' Intellectualism and Theory of Agency.
The A Course Module will be held during the first part the semester (6 weeks) and will focus on the following issues:
Socrates' intellectualism and the philosophical debate in the 5th century BC.
Elenchos and the method of inquiry.
The Socratic Paradoxes.

B Course Module:
The divided Self in Plato's Republic
The B Course Module will be held during the second part of the semester (6 weeks) and will focus on the following issues:
Plato's doctrine of the tripartite soul.
Plato's theory of agency and motivation.
Socratic and Platonic rationalism.

A Course Module

[1] B. Centrone, Prima lezione di filosofia antica, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2015
R.Chiaradonna e P. Pecere, Vivere la Conoscenza, Mondadori Education, Milano, 2022, Volume 1A: Dalle origini ad Aristotele
R. Chiaradonna, Platonismo, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2017

[2] Platone, Platone, Eutifrone, Apologia di Socrate, Critone, a cura di B. Centrone e A. Taglia, Torino, Einaudi 2010, pp. 99-291
M. Bonazzi, Atene, la città inquieta, Einaudi, Torino 2017

[3] Students are required to prepare a written paper in Italian (2.500 words) about the texts listed at point [1].


B Course Module

[1] B. Centrone, Prima lezione di filosofia antica, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2015
R.Chiaradonna e P. Pecere, Vivere la Conoscenza, Mondadori Education, Milano, 2022, Volume 1A
R. Chiaradonna, Platonismo, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2017

[2] Platone, La Repubblica, a cura di M. Vegetti, Rizzoli, Milano 2006, pp. 536-629 and pp. 1014-1091 (Book IV and Book IX)
F. Ferrari, La Repubblica di Platone, Il Mulino, Bologna 2022
F. Trabattoni, Platone, Carocci, Roma 2009 ("I Pensatori")

[3] Students are required to prepare a written paper in Italian (2.500 words) about the texts listed at point [1].

The course aims at introducing the key questions of the philosophy and methodology of science, among these the competing theories of scientific explanation, the nature of scientific method, the relation between hypotheses and evidence and the cognitive content of scientific theories in light of their historical change. While the first part of the course will consist in an introduction to these general topics (by using Godfrey-Smith's text), in the second, longer part we will read and comment on two of the classics authors of 20th-century philosophy of science, namely Karl Popper, e Hans Reichenbach

Godfrey-Smith P., Theory and Reality Chicago University Press 2021, second Edition
Popper K. Science and Philosophy.
Reichenbach, The rise of scientific discovery, University of California, 1951

Introduction to reasoning and argumentation, with a special focus on the key features, domain of application and potential fallacies of each type of inference.
Part I: Deduction. Part II: Non-deductive inferences.

F. D’Agostini, Le ali al pensiero, Carocci.
A. Iacona, L'argomentazione, Einaudi.
A. Coliva, E. Lalumera, Pensare. Leggi ed errori del ragionamento, Carocci.

Theme of this year's course: Making home in mobility.

Ways and forms of how people "build" their lives.
Biographical paths, individual paths and collective exchanges.
Individual strategies and social organization.
Perfomative systems: from subjectivity to community.

1. A textbook for the general part:
Ugo Fabietti, Elementi di antropologia culturale, Milano, Mondadori, 2015.

2. The monographic part includes:
Stefano De Matteis, La forza della vulnerabilità, Milano, Meltemi.
Giuseppe Grimaldi. Fuorigioco. Figli di migranti e italianità. Un’etnografia tra Milano, Addis Abeba e Londra. Ombre corte, Verona, 2022.
Andrea Staid, Essere natura. Uno sguardo antropologico per cambiare il nostro rapporto con l'ambiente, UTET, 2022.

a) Pier Paolo Pasolini, La Divina Mimesis, Milano, Mondadori, 2019

b) Pier Paolo Pasolini, Petrolio, edited by Walter Siti, Milano, Garzanti, 2022

c) Marco Antonio Bazzocchi, Alfabeto Pasolini, Roma, Carocci, 2022

d) Vedere, Pasolini, edited by Andrea Cortellessa and Silvia De Laude, Vicenza, Ronzani, 2022; or Andrea Cortellessa, Una ragione in più per andare all’Inferno. Vedere, Pasolini, forthcoming; or Marco Belpoliti, Pasolini e il suo doppio, Milano, Guanda, 2022

e) to give a context in 20th century italian literary history:
Giulio Ferroni, Storia della letteratura italiana, quarto volume: Il Novecento e il nuovo millennio, Milano, Mondadori Università, 2012

In general, the course will focus on the history and philosophy of space and time, giving particular emphasis to the relationship between physical and experiential time. Within this relationship, the nature of the present moment is particularly important: while physics can safely ignore such a moment, in our experience it separates an immutable past from a future that is not conceived deterministically or fatalistically but is rather regarded as open to our free decisions.

B. Dainton Time and Space, second edition, McGill e Queens, 2010

The messianism of Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin.

The course will examinate the messianic theory of Gershom Scholem in his peculiarities and the relation with the messianism of Walter Benjamin

G. Scholem "The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality"
W. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-1940.

The course is structured into lectures aimed at acquiring knowledge about interpersonal communication process, its different layers, and languages. The program will highlight the 'rules' communication and human actions follow, the influence of context, possible distortions in the attribution of meaning and psychopathological effects.

Watzlawitck, P., & Beavin, J. H. (1978). Pragmantica della comunicazione umana. Studio dei modelli interattivi, delle patologie e dei paradossi. Astrolabio.

Un ulteriore testo a scelta tra:
Granieri, A., Albasi, C. (2003). Il linguaggio delle emozioni. Lavoro clinico e ricerca psicoanalitica. UTET.
Lowen, A. (2022). Il linguaggio del corpo. Economica Feltrinelli.

The course introduces the relationship between language and politics, and the different dimensions of this relationship.
The course will develop with a focus on the different forms of the political space, in history and in contemporary times.

Introductory part:
2022 Handouts
F. Giardini, L'alleanza inquieta. Dimensioni politiche del linguaggio, Le lettere, 2011

Advanced part:
H. Arendt, Truth and politics (any edition)
F. Castelli, Lo Spazio Pubblico, Ediesse 2019
Ursula K. Le Guin, Bryn Mawr Commencement Address (1986)

The course introduces the different forms of social and political relations.
Further focus will concern a specific issue or author.

Introductory part:
Dispense (nuova versione 2022)
F. Giardini, I nomi della crisi (pdf disponibile on line)

Advanced part:
M. Foucault, L'ordine del discorso
Una selezione di testi brevi sul concetto di "subalternità"

Reading and commentary on some classical texts of History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy.

Bibliography provided by the teachers during the lessons.

For the section on ancient philosophy: Elements of History of Ancient Philosophy with a special focus on centuries 5th-4th BC.

For the section on ancient philosophy:

B. Centrone, Prima lezione di filosofia antica, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2015
R.Chiaradonna e P. Pecere, Vivere la Conoscenza, Mondadori Education, Milano, 2022, Volume 1A: Dalle origini ad Aristotele (per intero)
R. Chiaradonna, Platonismo, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2017.

For papers on ancient philosophy, students can choose one of the following subjects:

[i] Eleatism and its critics: Parmenides, Zeno, Gorgias, Plato
[ii] Being and causes: Plato and Aristotle
[iii] The soul and ethics: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
[iv] The studi of nature: the early naturalists, Anaxagoras, Democritus

Details about the preparation of the paper are specified in the web-page for the History of Ancient Philosophy BA course 2022/2023.

Historical overview of the main lines of thought of medieval philosophy.
Tommaso d'Aquino and Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, in the philosophical context of the debate between Augustinians and Aristotelians between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

E. Gilson, La filosofia nel Medioevo, Rizzoli, Milano, 2011.
R. Garrigou-Lagrange, La sintesi tomistica, Fede & Cultura, Verona, 2020.
S. Vanni Rovighi, Introduzione a Tommaso d’Aquino, Laterza, Bari, 1973.
S. L. Brock, Percorsi di sapienza naturale. Dodici lezioni sulla metafisica di San Tommaso, Edusc, Roma, 2022.
A.A.V.V., L'analogia dell'essere, a cura di G. Catapano, C. Martini Bonadeo, R. Salis, Padova University Press, Padova, 2020.
Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, Itinerario della mente in Dio, Bompiani, Milano, 1996.
Tommaso d’Aquino, L’ente e l’essenza, Bompiani, Milano, 2002.

The first part of the course introduces the most relevant theories of communication, with a specific focus on interpersonal communication. The following topics are considered: verbal and non-verbal communication, interaction rituals, framing practices, rules of conversation, the relation between communication and social identities, pathological forms of communicative interaction.
The second part of the course introduces the main models of media analysis and the main theoretical perspectives of sociology of media, with a specific focus on the audience analysis, the media reception and the main theories related to media effects. In particular, the social changes led by digital media in the contemporary society and the medial representations of identities will be considered.

a) Anna Lisa Tota, 2020, Ecologia della Parola. Il piacere della Conversazione, Einaudi, Torino.

b) Denis McQuail, 2007, Sociologia dei media, Il Mulino, Bologna (only the following chapters: 1. Introduzione; 2. La nascita dei mezzi di comunicazione di massa; 3. Concetti e modelli per le comunicazioni di massa; 4. Teorie dei media e teorie della società; 5. Comunicazione di massa e cultura; 16. La ricerca sugli effetti; 17. Effetti socio-culturali).

c) Stuart Hall, 1980, "Codifica e decodifica", in Tele-visioni, edited by A. Marinelli, G. Fatelli (2000), Meltemi, Roma, pp. 67-84.

d) José Van Dijck, Thomas Poell, Martijn de Waal (2019), Platform Society. Valori pubblici e società connessa, edited by G. Boccia Artieri e A. Marinelli (only the introduction, “Per un’economia politica delle piattaforme” e the first chapther , “Platform Society: un concetto controverso”), Guerini, Milano, pp. 9-21 e 35-74.

The first part of the course introduces the main theories of communication, with reference to interpersonal communication. Key tppics discussed during this part of the course include: communication systems, interaction rituals, social frames, conversation rules, the relationship between communication and social identities, pathological forms of communication.
The second part of the course illustrates the main models of media analysis and the main theoretical perspectives of media sociology, making reference to the processes of audience formation, media use and the main theories relating to media effects. In particular, the social changes introduced by digital media in contemporary society and the media representations of identities conveyed by the media are analysed.

The final evaluation will be based on the following texts:
a) Anna Lisa Tota, 2020, Ecologia della Parola. Il piacere della Conversazione, Einaudi, Torino.
b) Denis McQuail, 2007, Sociologia dei media, Il Mulino, Bologna (soltanto i capitoli: 1. Introduzione; 2. La nascita dei mezzi di comunicazione di massa; 3. Concetti e modelli per le comunicazioni di massa; 4. Teorie dei media e teorie della società; 5. Comunicazione di massa e cultura; 16. La ricerca sugli effetti; 17. Effetti socio-culturali).
c) Stuart Hall, 1980, "Codifica e decodifica", in Tele-visioni, a cura di A. Marinelli e G. Fatelli (2000), Meltemi, Roma, pp. 67-84.
d) José Van Dijck, Thomas Poell, Martijn de Waal (2019), Platform Society. Valori pubblici e società connessa, edizione italiana a cura di G. Boccia Artieri e A. Marinelli (soltanto l'introduzione, “Per un’economia politica delle piattaforme” e il capitolo 1, “Platform Society: un concetto controverso”), Guerini, Milano, pp. 9-21 e 35-74.

Students will also have access the teaching materials used by the teacher (power points and images) and a series of suggested readings, whose reading is optional.

All materials are available on the website http://filosofiacomunicazionespettacolo.uniroma3.it on the teacher's personal page.

Topics are broadly divided into two sets: 1) general physics, which is useful to develop the basic methodology, 2) modern research topics, which are useful to illustrate current research topics and the attitude of physics researches in dealing with open questions in the study of the natural world. Each part of the course is given in about 18 hours of classes, including exercises in class and at the blackboard. Classes will present general physics subject: classical mechanics, gravitation, electrostatics, physics of waves and light. In the part on modern physics will be presented the following subjects: microscopic theory of thermodynamics, special relativity, quantum mechanics, the nature of antimatter, the issue of the dark matter of the universe.
A detailed listing of all topics and textbooks chapters followed for each topics is available on the web at the address http://webusers.fis.uniroma3.it/franceschini/iff.html

Marion - Physics and the Physical Universe – Wiley (general and modern physics)
Feynman, Leighton, Sands - The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol. 3 (quantum mechanics)
Born - Einstein's theory of relativity – Dover (mechanics, relativity)

Notes on the web http://webusers.fis.uniroma3.it/franceschini/iff.html

The course outlines the formation and the development of the main capitalistic economies both in Europe and out of Europe between 19th and 20th centuries.

I. The first and second industrial revolution
- The preconditions for capitalist development in modern Eastern Atlantic, Centuries 17-18th.
- Expanded commercial agricultural revolution and industrial revolution in Britain in the eighteenth century.
- The process of capitalist concentration in the nineteenth century and the second industrial revolution.
II. Economic development in the 20th century
- Industry, trade networks, financial markets on the eve of the First World War.
- The economic cycles in the post-war period
- The crisis of 1929 and national policies in the '30s.

Attending students:

G. Feliu, C. Sudrià, Introduzione alla storia economica mondiale, Padova, CADEM, 2013, capp. 1 – 11.
G. Conte, Il credito di una nazione. Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2021.

plus a further book:

F. Braudel, Espansione europea e capitalismo. 1450-1650, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2015.
L. Conte, V. Torreggiani, Istituzioni, capitali e moneta. Storia dei sistemi finanziari contemporanei, Milano, Mondadori, 2017, Introduzione + capp. 1-3.

Non-attending students (add to above-mentioned books):

M. Fornasari, La banca, la borsa, lo Stato. Una storia della finanza (secc. XIII-XXI), Torino, Giappichelli, 2017, pp. 1-154.

The course will first of all offer an overview of the main aesthetic categories - from beautiful to ugly, from interesting to Kitsch, from sublime to horror and terror - in order to assess their relevance in contemporary artistic practices. In addition, the conception of the classical and of beauty in G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy of art will be explored.

1.F. Iannelli: Dissonanze contemporanee. Arte e vita in un tempo inconciliato. Quodlibet 2010 (up to p. 206).
S. Settis. Il futuro del classico, EINAUDI, Turin, 2004.

3a.G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics. Winter semester 1820/21 (manuscript by Wilhelm von Ascheberg and Willem Sax van Terborg) edited by F. Iannelli and M. Farina, with translations by G. Schimmenti, E. Caramelli, F. Pitillo, M. Farina, F. Iannelli, Markus Ophaelders, Giulia Battistoni, Elena Nardelli, Paolo D'Angelo, F. Campana, Orthotes, Naples 2023, in press (only the part on classical art).

OR

3b.G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Art. The Hotho transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, ed. by R.F. Brown, together with an introduction by A. Gethmann-Siefert, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014 (only the section "the Classical art form"), p. 311-330.

Information theory and coding, elaboration and data structuring.
Introduction to programming languages, in particular the Python language and the NLTK tool

slides and handouts available on the course webpage https://sites.google.com/view/intro-info-rm3/home

Identity and recognition

The subject of the course is one of the central concepts of the philosophical tradition: the notion of recognition. At the center of the analysis will be the reconstruction of the metamorphoses that have invested this crucial theme in the course of modernity: from the slave-master dialectic introduced by Hegel in section IV of the "Phenomenology of the spirit" to the most recent theorizations in a hermeneutic and social-philosophical key to work by Paul Ricoeur, Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth. The course also intends to highlight the crucial importance that the problem of transcultural recognition has come to assume in our present.

A. Honneth, Recognition, Cambridge University Press 2020.
N. Fraser-A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, Verso 2004.
P. Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, Harvard University Press 2007.

Recommended readings:

F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, University of Notre Dame Press 2019.
A. Kojève, Introductione to the Reading of Hegel, Cornell University Press.

Emotions and the Arts

Gallese, Guerra Lo schermo empatico, Cortina
D'Angelo La tirannia delle emozioni, Il Mulino

The course of ethics and cognitive sciences aims to present and discuss some basic ethical notions, focusing on the contemporary debate and on the relationship between moral philosophy and the cognitive sciences. The course includes two parts. In the first part, we will discuss some key notions in the interdisciplinary ethical debate at the interplay between moral philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Among the themes that will be discussed: free will and moral responsibility, neurolaw, the role of emotions and reasons in moral judgments, social cooperation. In the second part, we will focus on the role of unconscious psychological mechanisms in driving human behaviours.

FOR STUDENTS WHO ATTEND THE COURSE, THE PROGRAM INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING TEXTS:
1 – M. De Caro, M. Marraffa (2016). Mente e morale. Una piccola introduzione, Luiss University Press
2 – Parts from: G. Gigerenzer (2015). Imparare a rischiare. Come prendere decisioni giuste, Cortina; R.H. Thaler & C. Sunstein, Nudge. La spinta gentile, Feltrinelli

FOR STUDENTS WHO DO NOT ATTEND THE COURSE, THE PROGRAM INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING TEXTS:
1 – M. De Caro, M. Marraffa (2016). Mente e morale. Una piccola introduzione, Luiss University Press
2 – G. Gigerenzer (2015). Imparare a rischiare. Come prendere decisioni giuste, Cortina (whole text);
3 - R.H. Thaler & C. Sunstein, Nudge. La spinta gentile, Feltrinelli (whole text)

The course will present and discuss some basic notions of philosophical anthropology, a discipline that focuses on the investigation of the central aspects of what it is to be human. The first part of the course aims at providing an overview of classic questions in philosophical anthropology. The second part will focus on the themes of personal identity and the relation with others in the contemporary debate.

FOR STUDENTS WHO ATTEND THE COURSE, THE PROGRAM INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING TEXTS:
1. M. Montaigne (1580). “Delle carrozze”, in M. Montaigne, Saggi, Tutte le edizioni
2. M. Montaigne (1580). “I cannibali”, in M. Montaigne, Saggi, Tutte le edizioni
3. T. Todorov (1984/2014). La conquista dell’America. Il problema dell’altro, Einaudi
4. Booklet including short excerpts from various texts, including: I. Kant (1798/2010). Antropologia dal punto di vista pragmatico, Einaudi; M. Scheler (1928/2006). La posizione dell'uomo nel cosmo, Armando; A. Gehlen (1940/2010). L’uomo. La sua natura e il suo posto nel mondo, Mimesis; S. Landucci (2014). I filosofi e i selvaggi, Einaudi; A. Campodonico (2013). L'uomo. Lineamenti di antropologia filosofica, Rubbettino

FOR STUDENTS WHO DO NOT ATTEND THE COURSE, THE PROGRAM INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING TEXTS:
1. M. Montaigne (1580). “Delle carrozze”, in M. Montaigne, Saggi, Tutte le edizioni
2. M. Montaigne (1580). “I cannibali”, in M. Montaigne, Saggi, Tutte le edizioni
3. T. Todorov (1984/2014). La conquista dell’America. Il problema dell’altro, Einaudi
4. Dispensa con brevi estratti da vari testi, inclusi: I. Kant (1798/2010). Antropologia dal punto di vista pragmatico, Einaudi; M. Scheler (1928/2006). La posizione dell'uomo nel cosmo, Armando; A. Gehlen (1940/2010). L’uomo. La sua natura e il suo posto nel mondo, Mimesis; S. Landucci (2014). I filosofi e i selvaggi, Einaudi; A. Campodonico (2013). L'uomo. Lineamenti di antropologia filosofica, Rubbettino
5. S. Landucci (2014). I filosofi e i selvaggi, Einaudi

During the course, students will deal with an excursus in different philosophers, focusing on moral responsibility. Through the reading and analysis of texts, students deal with moral responsibility in the following authors:
1. Gorgias
2. Socrates and Plato
3. Aristotle
4. Stoics
5. Alexander of Aphrodisias

Aristotele, Etica Nicomachea, libri I-III a cura di C. Natali, Laterza, Bari 1999, libro III, pp. 77-124

Roberta Ioli (ed.), Encomio di Elena. In Gorgia. Testimonianze e frammenti. Introduzione, traduzione e commento, Roma, Carocci editore, 2013

Platone, Protagora, a cura di M. L. Chiesara, BUR

De Caro, M.; Spinelli, E.; Mori, M. (2014) Il libero arbitrio, Storia di una Controversia Filosofica, cap. I-V, Carocci

The course aims to provide conceptual and historical tools around the philosophy of action, focusing on the analysis of the relationship between free will, determinism, intentionality, everyday life and the clothes of action. The first module is aimed at providing both a synthetic overview of the theories on free will in correlation also with the contemporary debate. The second module will focus on the specificity of habitual actions, which philosophy, also of analytical matrix, has only recently resumed to deal with, in a close dialogue with psychology, sociology and neuroscience. To this end, Bill Pollard's recent theory on habitual actions will be compared with elements derived from the nineteenth and twentieth century philosophical and psychological tradition, in order to identify the key elements for reflection on the relationship between action, freedom and habits.

Unit 1:
1. M. De Caro, A. Lavazza, G. Sartori (a cura di), Siamo davvero liberi? Le neuroscienze e il mistero del libero arbitrio, Torino, Codice, 2019 (limitedly to Chapters 2, 3, 4, 9 and 12)

Unit 2:
2. M. Piazza, “Credenze, disposizioni, effetti e regimi”, in Id., Creature dell’abitudine. Abito, costume, seconda natura da Aristotele alle scienze cognitive, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2018, pp. 131-165 (§§ 1-5).
3. B. Pollard, “Habitual Actions”, in T. O’Connor, C. Sandis (ed. by), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 74-81 (an Italian translation will be provided by the teacher for educational purposes).
4. B. Pollard, “Identification, Psychology, and Habits”, in New Waves in Philosophy of Action, edited by J. Aguilar, A. Buckareff and K. Frankish, 8 New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 81–97 (an Italian translation will be provided by the teacher for educational purposes).

The Course Teaching Methodologies of Philosophy aims at providing a general knowledge of the main issues and problems related to the teaching of philosophy at school level. Therefore, the course focuses on: a) illustrating the main legal frameworks governing the teaching of philosophy in Italy; b) presenting possible models of teaching philosophy and the main teaching methodologies; c) to develop the ability to design a teaching activity in accordance with the methodologies learned; d) providing the lexical and conceptual tools necessary to correctly explain, both orally and in writing, the fundamental issues of teaching philosophy.
The course will be divided into three modules: the first module will attempt to reconstruct the recent debate on the teaching of philosophy, with particular reference to the Italian legislative framework (National Indications for high schools; Guidelines for the learning of Philosophy); the second module will present the main didactic approaches of philosophy (historical; problematic; theoretical; existential, etc.) and the main didactic methodologies (cooperative learning; role play; metacognition; case study; debate, etc.). The third module consists of workshops aimed at designing teaching units that explicitly apply the methodologies learned.

A. Caputo, Manuale di didattica della filosofia, Armando editore, Roma 2019.
A. Caputo, Ripensare le competenze filosofiche a scuola, Carocci, Roma 2019.
Indicazioni nazionali per i licei (https://www.indire.it/lucabas/lkmw_file/licei2010/indicazioni_nuovo_impaginato/_decreto_indicazioni_nazionali.pdf)
Orientamenti per l’apprendimento della Filosofia nella società della conoscenza (https://www.miur.gov.it/-/documento-orientamenti-per-l-apprendimento-della-filosofia-nella-societa-della-conoscenza)

We will read a number of texts on the relation between I and magic in the 20th century
The interpretation and comment of the texts will focus on the following points:
1) E. De Martino's "The world of magic" and the historico-philosophical debate on the book
2) Magical and astrological belief in Cassirer
3) The actuality of Nietzsche's "Dyonisian" between philosophy, psychology and ethnology

1) E. De Martino, "Il mondo magico" (edizione Boringhieri o nuova ediz. Einaudi)
2) E. Cassirer, "La forma del concetto nel pensiero mitico" (Mimesis 2021)
3) P. Rossi, Il tempo dei maghi, Raffaello Cortina 2006: Premessa, capitoli 1, 8
4) P. Pecere, Il dio che danza, nottetempo 2021

The seminar addresses issues related to the territory and the city. The story of cardinal concepts such as cities, communities, habitats, nature, territory, landscapes, and projects will be presented, discussed and updated, from different perspectives: philosophy, art, political theory, sociology, history, geography, architecture, law, economics, political ecology, communication.

A selection of readings will be suggested. Eventually students will have to write and present a short paper.

Coord. Paolo Virno, Marco Mazzeo e Federica Giardini


The political problems of modernity illustrated by Hobbes or Spinoza can be addressed by reconstructing the logic and genealogy of the concept of "ethos." The goal of the workshop is to build a toolbox capable of analyzing what we might call the "garments of the present": the characteristic modes of behavior, the specific passions, the particular modes of social (and antisocial) interaction typical of this end of the millennium. What is the ethics of neoliberal capitalism in the 21st century?
To answer this question will require a preliminary theoretical move, to understand more clearly what is meant by "ethics." Better to be clear: the workshop will dismiss the moralistic meaning of the term (ethics as morality, a norm that establishes good and sanctions evil). For this very reason, it will be necessary to sketch a starting identikit of a notion that risks, once the moralistic option is expunged, to be elusive. A selection of excerpts from Aristotle's Ethics to a reading of an essay by linguist E. Benveniste about "the free man" in the Vocabulary of Indo-European Institutions will help to understand the intertwining of ethos and habit, a key passage for both a theory of political action and a linguistic anthropology. What, in fact, is the animal that needs habits? In need of historical-cultural forms of organizing behavior is the animal lacking specialized instincts (Gehlen), the life form that needs to produce the means of survival (Marx). What the Greeks called "ethos" could be the link between the two classical definitions of human beings: sapiens are political animals and animals that talk.
However, the term "habit" risks generating a misunderstanding, alluding to a flat, appeasing repetition that can only establish custom. The term "ethos" seems to indicate, instead, a side b of the problem, a decisive dimension that overturns the customary one so dear to the empiricist of the eighteenth century or the fashionable pragmatist of the century just past. Ethos is such only if it is able to subvert, to put into crisis, itself. As habitual, ethos is the possibility of showing the threatening and disturbing face of habit ("disturbing" a finally political Freud would call it). For this reason, the workshop will investigate two areas in which the ambivalence of ethos reaches a climax: ritual practices and the intertwining of faculties of language and world perception. The first area will be investigated thanks to a text by one of the most important philosophers of the Italian twentieth century: E. De Martino's The Magical World. Magical rituality consists in the organization of habits of crisis, in the formation of anonymous and collective ethical structures (fire ordeals, shamanic trances) capable of showing the bewildering face of rain and wind, fire and thought. The second will find proof in L. Wittgenstein's reflections (Philosophical Investigations Part II; Observations on the Philosophy of Psychology) about the so-called "bistable figures" in which it is possible to see, alternately and mutually exclusive, the face of a hare or a rabbit, two human profiles or the outline of an amphora. What if bistability, the continually possible play of reversal between figure and background, is a defining feature of ethos?
Working on these questions, the workshop will try to return to the present and its ontology. With a swaggering goal that can rely on earlier work done in the late 1980s (AAVV, Feelings of the Aldiqua, 1990): to identify some of the ethical forms typical of linguistic-financial capitalism in order to adoints its inherent possibilities for overthrow. What is the subversive rabbit lurking in the duck called "life in the neoliberal age"? What amphora emerges from the double profile that present-day enthusiasts call "lifelong learning" and "precarious work"?

A bibliographic selection will be provided by the teachers during the course of the workshop.
For now it is appropriate to indicate at least:

AAVV, Sentimenti dell'aldiqua. Opportunismo, paura, cinismo, nell'età del disincanto, Theoria 1990 (DeriveApprodi 2023)
Aristotele, Etica Nicomachea, passi scelti.
De Martino E., Il mondo magico, Bollati Boringhieri.
L. Wittgenstein, Ricerche filosofiche, parte II, Einaudi.
Virno P., Il perturbante contro Freud, in M. Mazzeo, A. Bertollini (a cura di), Sintomi. Per un'antropologia linguistica del mondo contemporaneo, DeriveApprodi 2023.

This course provides an introduction to:
(1) the role played by reasoning in rational interaction (discussions, exchanges of theses), in the solution of problems of logic and mathematics, and the consequence of a lack of adequate reasoning procedures in these areas;
(2) ratioanl argomentation and the logical structure underlying valid arguments;
(3) a rigorous approach to deductive reasoning, based on the formal tools provided by propositional and quantified (deductive) logic.
The course also wishes to alert participants of the consequences of a lack of a rational course in the context of mass communication, information society, and online interaction, while developing the ability to correctly apply the basic rules of reasoning that are distinctive of deductive reasoning.

The course will apply, as far as possible, a `bottom-up' approach: from reasoning problems, to the tools required to solve them, to the theories in which such tools are defined, understood, and discussed. The course is divided into two modules:

Module A: It will approach and discuss the definition of an argument and of a good argument, the role played by arguments in our reactions to disagreement and in rational discussions, and the rational strategies for reacting to disagreement. It will then focus on deductive reasoning and on propositional logic in particular. In this context the course will introduce and discuss the basic rules of reasoning of propositional logic and it will discuss the notion of derivability, introduce the procedures for building a formal language, it will explore the semantics of propositional logic, the notions of logical consequence and validity, and the possible connections between derivability, logical consequence, and validity.

Module B: It will introduce the notion of a system of rules and that of an axiomatics system, together with the notions of soundness and completeness, and it will then focus on natural deduction and its soundness and completeness with respect to the semantics of classical propositional logic. It will then present basic facts, notions, and definitions of set theory, which are indispensible when it comes to an understanding of quantified logic. After that, the course will focus on quantified logic, by explaining the way in which quantified logic 'reads' predicates and quantifiers (expressions like 'Every' and 'Some'), it will introduce basic rules for reasoning with the quantifiers, and it will introduce the semantics of quantified logic. The course will then discuss soundness and completeness of natural deduction for quantified classical logic with resepct to the semantics of quantified classical logic. Russell paradox will also be introduced and discussed.

The achievement of 12 CFU requires presenting the program of both modules; achievement of 6 CFU requires presenting the program of one of the two modules only.

Main texts:

Critical Thinking. Un’introduzione, a cura di D. Canale, R. Ciuni, A. Frigerio, G. Tuzet, Egea, Milano 2021
(Capitoli 1 - 5).
E. J. Lemmon. Elementi di Logica, Laterza, Roma 2021

The Philosophy of Literature course aims to explore the transdisciplinary intersection between philosophy and literature from a theoretical perspective, highlighting concepts and themes that testify how philosophical thought relates to literature in different ways, not so much as an object of analysis, rather in terms of their interaction and proximity.
The course will examine the link between philosophical enquiry and its pathological declination in the fiction and non-fiction of the American writer David Foster Wallace, highlighting some conceptual knots - solipsism, addiction, boredom, self-deception - that reveal the fascinating yet problematic interweaving between philosophizing and writing.
The programme will focus on the following topics:
- Introduction to the relationship between philosophy and literature.
- Introduction to the life and work of D.F. Wallace
- Critical analysis of the concepts of solipsism, alienation, boredom in their problematic intertwining of philosophy, literature and pathology
- Exposition of the relationship between addiction, self-deception, and logical paradoxes

Texts for examination

D.F. Wallace, The Empty Plenum: David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress, in Both Flesh and Not, Little, Brown and Co 2012.
D.F. Wallace, Good Old Neon, in Oblivion, Little Brown & Co 2004.
D.F. Wallace, The Planet Trillaphon as It Stands in Relation to the Bad Thing, in The Amherst Review, vol. XII (1984).
G. Baggio, Filosofia e patologia in D.F. Wallace. Solipsismo, noia, alienazione… e altre cose (poco) divertenti, Rosenberg & Sellier 2022.
D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, Penguin 2005 (first part).
C. Scarlato, Attraverso il corpo. Filosofia e letteratura in David Foster Wallace, Mimesis 2020 (primo capitolo)
M. Piazza, La scrittura dei filosofi e la filosofia degli scrittori, in «Bollettino Filosofico», n. 210, 2013.

A short story to be chosen from:
D.F. Wallace, Here and there, in Girl With Curious Hair, W.W. Norton 1989.
D.F. Wallace, The depressed person, in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Back Bay Books 2000.
D.F. Wallace, Suicide as a sort of present, in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Back Bay Books 2000.