HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE XX CENTURY (2007/2008)

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing the most important aspects of the philosophy of the twentieth century, so as to spotlight the fundamental questions and the pre-eminent tendencies of contemporary philosophical debate. Specifically, the focus will be on the comprehension and on the discussion of the theoretical orientations that have founded a new way of viewing the principal processes of formation, interpretation and commwpectives of the twentieth century.

The program will be divided in two parts:
1) - Formation of the beliefs and pragmatic validation of knowledge: Charles Sanders Peirce and William James
- Cognitive naturalism and phenomenology of knowledge: Edmund Husserl
- Existential analytics: Martin Heidegger
- Theory of language as representation: Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Dialectics and critical rationality: the Critical School of Frankfurt
- Theory of institutions and archaeology of knowledge: post-structuralism
- Derrida and deconstructionism
- Developments of the philosophy of science
- Putnam: representation, reality, language
- Cognitive sciences and philosophy of the mind.

2) Merleau-Ponty: Conscience, Behaviour and Knowledge
1. Experience and bodily dimension; 2. Syncretic, unmoveable and symbolic behaviours; 3. Learning and behaviour; 4. Knowledge as subjective act; 5. Perception and significance; 6. Knowledge and language; 7. Knowledge of the other

[Testi per l’esame]
1) G. Fornero-S. Tassinari, Le Filosofie del Novecento, Bruno Mondadori, Milano 2006, vol. I, chapters 11, 18-19, 21, 26; vol. II, chapters 37-38, 46, 48
2a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behaviour, Duquesne University Press, 1984 (or others editions), chapter 3.III and chapter 4.I-II.
2b) M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, transl. from French by C. Smith, Routledge, 1995, Vorword; Introd., c. IV; part 1, c. I, IV-V; part 2, c. IV, part 3, c. I-III.

Seminar activities and final oral examination. The optional reading of selected parts of the works of Merleau-Ponty in original language will also be valued positively. Similarly, the possible optional reading of one of the teachings contained in Merleau-Ponty à la Sorbonne (Cynara, Paris 1988) will also be valued positively. The texts are available at the Library of the Department of Philosophy, in via S. Francesco 22.