Learning outcomes

Learning Objectives: The course aims to provide students with a knowledge of the main philosophical, scientific and religious subjects in the Renaissance period (15th-16th centuries). At the end of the course the student must be able to demonstrate that he has knowledge and ability to deepen the authors and the themes present in the examined texts.

Program

Prerequisites: knowledge of the history of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy

Content of the course: The Hermeticism in the Renaissance

The course in its first part provides for the exposition of the philosophical and religious themes of ancient Hermeticism (centuries II-III AD) with an in-depth study of the theological and cosmological concepts and doctrines as derived from the texts of the ‘Corpus Hermeticum’, the ‘Asclepius’, and the fragments contained in Stobaeus’ ‘Anthologhion’. The second part of the course will be devoted to the examination of the diffusion of Hermeticism in authors and texts of the Renaissance, period in which the hermetic doctrine spreads at European level, becoming used and assimilated by the greatest philosophers of that time, from Marsilio Ficino to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno.


Course contents: E. Garin, Ermetismo del Rinascimento, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1988; C. Moreschini, Storia dell'Ermetismo cristiano, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2000: Origini e autenticità dell'Ermetismo, pp. 8-49; Marsilio Ficino e l'Ermetismo, pp. 199-216; La Filosofia del Rinascimento. Figure e Probemi. A c. di G. Ernst, Roma, Carocci, 2015, chapters 9 (Magia e filosofia naturale) and 11 (La questione dell'astrologia nel Rinascimento).


Teaching methods: lectures

Examination Methods

Exam method: oral. The purpose of the exam is to verify the knowledge and understanding of the topics dealt with and to evaluate the analysis skills over the dealt subjects acquired by the students. The exam does not make any differences between attending and non-attending students.