Hermeneutics
The principal aim of the course is to give an adequate understanding of what philosophical hermeneutics properly is. Hermeneutics is usually understood as the discipline and art of interpretation. This type of hermeneutics arises from the exegesis of sacred and humanistic texts, which follows the rediscovery of Greek civilization with the Italian Renaissance and the free reading of the Bible with the German Reformation. The theory of interpretation is a variety of philological and religious hermeneutics, it is a tool for understanding the written text and the dogmatic subjectivity. Instead, properly philosophical hermeneutics is not a theory of interpretation and has nothing to do with text and language. Philosophical hermeneutics was born in the twentieth century with Husserl - which defines phenomenology as a “hermeneutics of conscious life” – and with Heidegger, for whom the exercise of philosophy is a “hermeneutics of facticity”, i.e. the understanding existence has of itself. Such hermeneutics is not “interpretation” but “explication” and “unfolding” (Auslegung), i.e. spontaneous articulation of being, an event that precedes language and in which Being unfolds and participates in all possible ways of being.
At the end of the course, students will be able to follow the twisting paths of 20th century hermeneutics with greater awareness and agility, thus enhancing their knowledge of contemporary philosophical debate. They will have the capacity to autonomously comprehend texts and subjects addressed during the course, to employ a proper philosophical terminology, to communicate philosophical topics with specialists and non-specialists, and the ability to to continue studies at a MA level.