Teaching code

4S003645

Teacher

Olivia Guaraldo

Coordinator

Olivia Guaraldo

Credits

6

Language

Italian

Scientific Disciplinary Sector (SSD)

SPS/01 - POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Period

1° periodo lezioni - GEM dal Oct 1, 2021 al Dec 22, 2021.

Lessons timetable Moodle Seminars 0

Learning outcomes

The course aims at introducing and discussing some of the major issues concerning political philosophy, especially those related to the contemporary global challenges that interest this field of research. What are the main political challenges of our present? What are the conceptual tools at our disposal to understand and possibly solve new and unprecedented emergency crises, conflicts, global risks? The course will tackle these themes by using both philosophical texts and literary, cinematic tools in order to broaden the political and cultural comprehension of phenomena. At the end of this course students will have acquired the following skills: - Knowledge of the major concepts of modern and contemporary political theory - Ability to apply such concepts to the understanding of contemporary emergency phenomena of political nature (conflicts, wars, migrations, humanitarian crises, terrorist attacks). - Ability to elaborate complex analyses of emergency situations, able to include and relate to eachother theoretical, historico-political, and contingent aspects of emergency, in order to favour peaceful solutions of conflicts). - Ability to critically analyse media, governmental, and public representations o emergency phenomena. - Ability to project, implement and disseminate communicative products (cultural, humanitarian, civic) informed by respect for human dignity and cultural diversity.

Program

Conditio humana: risk in the global society.
"What is 'society' in the horizon of global risk, that is, of elemental insecurity caused by man? What politics or history are cannot be thought of as circumscribed to the national dimension and linked to a territory" (Beck, 2007).
The course will be devoted to the theme of "the global risk society", that is a society in which grows, in every field and at all levels, the need to understand, communicate and face different kinds of risks - environmental, economic, social and sanitary - that contemporary world produces and feeds, by amplifying the quantitative and qualitative frame of vulnerabilities.
Social, economic and cultural transformations in modernity (geographic discoveries, capitalist economy, secularization) have opened up horizons of transformations to which political theory has responded by developing a rational and efficient approach to human coexistence. The major actor of risk prevention and management has been traditionally the State. How does this scenario changes - and with it the role of risk - when a human condition of strict interdependence between different places and people renders obsolete the nation-state framework?
Which transformations occur at the State level in terms of risk prevention and management?
Moving from Ulrich Beck's analyses on the "global risk society" (2007) the course will provide the tools for a thorough comprehension of certain historical and theoretical phases of European modernity up to the present, in their different ways of understanding and dealing with danger, uncertainty, risk. It will furthermore provide a possible interpretation of contemporary society as 'cosmopolitan', where the blurring of national borders is on one hand an unavoidable condition of the present, on the other an opportunity to rethink society in the light of a new global solidarity.

Bibliography

Examination Methods

Oral exam that will start with a presentation of a case-study (concept, event, fact, phenomenon etc.) freely chosen by the student and prepared by relying on the texts of the course. Further questions on the specific case-study or other notions included in the tests can be part of the exam.
For attending students: the preparation of the oral exam presentation can move from class discussions of themes and cases, and eventually from extra material given during lectures.
Active participation in class discussion and personal or group oral presentation in class contribute for 30% to the final vote.
For non-attending students:
The program is the same, including extra texts and material given during the course (available on the moodle platform of the course). The oral examination will be entirely based on the texts but can equally begin from a specific case-study (see above).