Learning outcomes

The course on History of Philosophy is aimed at providing the basic notions that are indispensable to frame and critically understand the contemporary issues concerning historical and social sciences. Special attention will be dedicated to the classics, in order to highlight a developing and deepening line of Philosophy’s fundamental speculative nuclei, though in changed historical conditions. As usual, this year as well two philosophers will be taken as a reference point: Plato for ancient philosophy and Kantfor modern philosophy. The course will favour a direct approach to the texts of the classics, in order to show that philosophical discourse arises from concrete problems and needs and that it prospects solutions which can still be subject to useful reflection.

Program

The course is articulated in two (equally loaded) parts.
Basic part: knowledge on the following topics is required: pre-Socratics and Socrates; Plato’s thought; Aristotle and Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Epicureanism; Roman philosophy and Neoplatonism (Plotinus); Christian philosophy and St. Augustine; Scholastics and St. Thomas; William Occam and the end of the Medieval thought; modern science: Galileo Galilei and Francis Bacon; modern philosophy: René Descartes; Spinoza’s monism; English empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, Hume; Leibniz’s monadology; G.B. Vico’s historicism; Kant’s criticism; German idealism: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel; Positivism: Comte, Stuart Mill; Schopenhauer’s thought; Marx’s historical materialism; Nietzsche’s thought.
Specialized part: reading and commentary on Plato’s "Protagora" and Kant's "Fondazione della metafisica dei costumi"; Part: a good secondary education handbook – “licei classici” or “licei scientifici” - (for instance, Antiseri-Reale, or Berti-Volpi, or Adorno-Gregory-Verra, or Moravia, or the latest: L’esperienza del pensiero. La filosofia: storia, temi, attualità, Loescher, Torino 2006, voll. 5), with reference to the chapters related to the above mentioned topics.

Specialized part: Basic Part: a good secondary education handbook – “licei classici” or “licei scientifici” - (for instance, Antiseri-Reale, or Berti-Volpi, or Adorno-Gregory-Verra, or Moravia, or the latest: L’esperienza del pensiero. La filosofia: storia, temi, attualità, Loescher, Torino 2006, voll. 5), with reference to the chapters related to the above mentioned topics.

Specialized part: Platone, "Protagora", Bompiani, Milano (various reprints, or another edition but complete).
I. Kant, "Fondazione della metafisica dei costumi", Laterza, Roma-Bari 1997 (and reprints).

Examination Methods

The first module (basic course) will be evaluated through a written exam, the second module (specialized course) will be evaluated through an oral examination.