History of Philosophy (2007/2008)

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 Descartes for 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.

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.
Specialised part: reading and commentary on Plato’s Gorgia and Descartes’ Discourse on Method; two different approaches to philosophical discourse will be analysed: an ethical-political one, related to the topic of good and just/fair, and a more strictly logical-methodological one, related to the topic of possibility and conditions of science.

Texts for the exam: |
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.

Specialised part: Plato, Gorgia, edited by G. Reale, Bompiani, Brescia 2001 (or any other edition, provided it is unabridged); R. Descartes, Discorso sul metodo, it. transl. M. Garin, introd. T. Gregory, Roma-Bari, Laterza 2004 (or any other edition, provided it is unabridged).

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