Learning outcomes

The course aims at giving the conceptual, methodological and cultural grounds to promote a phenomenological inquiry on the affective experience and on the importance of emotional sharing for the relations of care, the individual formation (Bildung) and the foundation of social ontology.
In this course, crucial importance will be given to the role that desire plays in the relations of care and in the process of the human formation.

At the end of the course, students will have to prove: their adequate knowledge of the texts; critical assessment; to know how to communicate their knowledge in a clear, coherent and well-supported way; to know how to interact in the discussions with the professor and the other students.

Program

Emotional sharing and the leap to the symbolic thought
The recent developments in cultural anthropology and the empirical research of the American psychologist Michael Tomasello on the formative process during the first months of life in newborns of chimpanzees and humans have revealed the importance of the practices of emotional sharing for the leap towards the symbolic thought, the core of the human enigma.


TEACHING AND LEARNING METHODS
Frontal lessons and seminar discussions on the papers written by the participants. The students attending the course, according to their experiences and interests, will be asked to assess critically some of the scheduled texts, in order to write a short, well-reasoned summary on some sections of them.

Examination Methods

For attending students:
A personalized program will be set together at the beginning of the course.

For non-attending students:
Two of the following options:
1) M. Scheler, Ordo amoris; Amore e conoscenza; Il valore della vita emotiva
2) M. Scheler, La Posizione dell'uomo nel cosmo
3) M. Tomasello, Le origini della comunicazione umana
4) Gallagher & Zahavi, La mente fenomenologica
5) Cusinato, Periagoge
The exam is in oral form and aims at verifying the adequate knowledge of the scheduled texts. In order to access the oral examination, students must submit a paper of 20000 characters. The paper must be previously agreed on with the professor during his office hours – after students have read the texts – and is to be submitted at least 7 days before the exam. The paper must be submitted via email, with a .doc document containing the student’s name, surname and identification number.

The paper should be thought as a well-reasoned summary of the sections of the scheduled texts that have raised the student’s interest, but it does not exonerate her to study the remaining parts as well. Specific attention should be payed to the pertinence and the precision in quoting. The paper is to be concluded with a short critical consideration of a couple of pages.