C8882 - History of Philosophy (LM)

Learning outcomes

The course aims to provide advanced knowledge about authors, movements, and key issues related to the history of philosophy. The lectures will focus on specific themes, contextualizing their analysis within the framework of long-term traditions. The objective of the course is to enable students to independently engage with classical texts and to navigate the main interpretative and historiographical approaches.

Course contents

Love is the "affection of Being" (Affekt des Seins).

From Plato to Fichte: The Way Towards the Blessed Life in the Context of Western Philosophy

Duration: 60 hours

Course Objectives

This course aims to reconstruct the philosophical genealogy of the concept of love, culminating in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's The Way Towards the Blessed Life (Anweisung zum seligen Leben, 1806).

Its principal objective is to demonstrate that Fichte's conception of love is not a marginal theme within his moral philosophy but rather the ontological principle through which the relationship between God, subjectivity, freedom, and life is fundamentally rethought.

In Fichte, love arises neither from lack nor from knowledge. Rather, it is the mode in which Absolute Being manifests itself as life. Love is therefore the primary mode of the Absolute's self-manifestation, rather than a merely human affection or emotional state.

For this reason, the expression Affekt des Seins ("affection of Being") may be regarded as one of the most original formulations of Fichte's philosophy of religion. Love is the self-affection of Being itself, the manner in which living Being communicates and reveals itself within consciousness. From this also follows the possibility of Seligkeit(blessedness), which consists not in the possession of an external good but in the human participation in this divine life.

 

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• understand the major philosophical theories of love;
• situate Fichte's philosophy within the Platonic and Christian traditions;
• develop a critical interpretation of The Way Towards the Blessed Life;
• analyze the relationship between love, knowledge, and freedom.

 

 

Cross-Cutting Theoretical Themes

Throughout the course, a number of fundamental theoretical issues will be revisited and discussed across the different historical and systematic contexts. These include:

• desire and lack
• love and freedom
• love and knowledge
• love and the will
• love and personhood
• love and the Absolute
• love and community
• blessedness (Seligkeit)
• mysticism and philosophy
• love as an ontological principle

 

 

 

Readings/Bibliography

Fundamental Bibliography (with Selected Readings)

 

I. Plato

 

I.a Symposium, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff. Hackett Publishing.

 

**Required Reading**

 

* 172a–180b: Introduction and the first speeches

* 199c–212c: Diotima's speech

* 215a–223d: Alcibiades' speech

 

The Symposium provides the foundational philosophical account of eros and serves as the starting point for the genealogy of love developed throughout the course.

 

I.b Phaedrus, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff. Hackett Publishing.

 

**Required Reading**

 

* 227a–257b

* 259d–279c

 

Particular attention will be devoted to:

 

* the myth of the charioteer;

* eros as divine madness (theia mania);

* the relationship between love and knowledge.

 

II. Christianity and Neoplatonism

 

Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros. Westminster Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

* Introduction

* Book I

* Chapters 1–5

 

A classic study on the distinction between eros and agape and its influence on the Christian tradition.

 

 

 

III a. Augustine The Trinity (De Trinitate). Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy.

 

**Required Reading**

 

* Books VIII–X

 

These books develop Augustine's influential conception of love as constitutive of the inner life of the soul and of the image of the Trinity.

 

III.b Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Complete Works. Trans. Colm Luibheid. Paulist Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

*The Divine Names*

 

* Chapters IV

* V

* XIII

 

Special attention will be given to the metaphysical understanding of divine love.

 

---

IV Spinoza, Ethics, trans. Edwin Curley.

Penguin Classics or Princeton University Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

### Part III

 

* Definitions of the Affects

* Propositions 1–59

 

### Part V

 

* Propositions 20–42

 

with particular emphasis on

 

* Propositions 32–36

* Propositions 42

 

These texts introduce the concept of the *amor intellectualis Dei*, which provides one of the principal philosophical interlocutors for Fichte's conception of love.

 

 

V. G. W. F. Hegel, Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox. University of Pennsylvania Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

"The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate" (entire text)

 

This is the key text for understanding Hegel's early conception of love.

 

G.W.F. Hegel, Fragment on Love (Nohl, pp. 378-82)

 

G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Terry Pinkard. Cambridge University Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

Selected sections:

 

* Preface (selected passages)

* Self-Consciousness

* Spirit

 

VI. Fichte

 

The final part of the course will concentrate on Fichte's mature philosophy of religion.

 

VI a.Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Way Towards the Blessed Life (*Anweisung zum seligen Leben*).

 

**Required Reading**

 

The entire work.

 

 

VI b. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, *The Vocation of Man.*

 

Hackett Publishing.

 

**Required Reading**

 

Book III

 

"Faith"

 

This text provides the most accessible introduction to Fichte's mature philosophy of religion.

 

VI c. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Science of Knowing (1804), trans. Walter E. Wright.

State University of New York Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

* Introduction

* Lectures I–V

* Lecture XIV

* Concluding Lecture

 

These lectures provide the metaphysical framework presupposed by *The Way Towards the Blessed Life*.

Secundary Bibliography (for introduction and help)

 

 

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

* Chapters 6–8

 

These chapters offer a philosophical interpretations of Plato's theory of love.

 

 

Steven Nadler, Spinoza’s Ethics: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

• Chapters 5–8

 

 

Günter Zöller

 

*Fichte's Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will.*

 

Cambridge University Press.

 

**Required Reading**

 

* Chapter 1

* Chapter 5

* Chapter 7

* Conclusion

 

Teaching methods

The course will be taught primarily through lectures, complemented by close readings of primary texts and class discussions.

Teaching tools

The syllabus and the bibliography may be subject to minor modifications during the course of the semester.

Office hours

See the website of Giorgia Cecchinato