29424 - Seminars (1) (LM) (G.B)

Learning outcomes

The Philosophy Seminars have as their educational objectives those specific to seminar teaching: (1) to train students in philosophical argumentation by soliciting discussions on the topics and texts, including in the original language, presented in meetings with Italian and foreign scholars; (2) to broaden and deepen philosophical knowledge through participation in lectures given by specialists in the various fields of philosophical knowledge; (3) to compare the different methodological approaches to philosophy as a complement to curricular teaching.

Course contents

The Song of the Mortal Soul: The Metaphysics of the Person in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura

This seminar will take the form of a reality task. The reality task is a challenge for students and young people in training that has been progressively accepted by the Italian School as a useful tool to test and evaluate the degree of responsibility and autonomy of the student in combining the different knowledge and skills acquired during their studies, applying them to one or more situations specific to the real world. The task consists in simulating – on a smaller scale – a complex situation that raises a real problem to be solved, and therefore has an essential interdisciplinary character. Extending the reality task to the university environment allows to reduce the gap between simulation and reality: the proposed task is a research exercise that completes, integrating them, the curricular internship activities, offering master’s students the opportunity to experience university work, transforming themselves, for the duration of the task, into young researchers.

This year's seminar will focus on Epicurus' argument for the mortality of the soul as presented in Book III of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. In his celebrated dissertation on the difference between the philosophies of nature of Democritus and Epicurus, the young Marx opens with the following remark: "Greek philosophy seems to experience what should never happen to a good tragedy: a weak ending" (emphasis added). The "weak ending" to which Marx alludes—though one with which he explicitly disagrees—is, strikingly enough, the philosophy of the Hellenistic period, often dismissed as little more than a derivative amalgam of the great philosophical systems of the past. For Marx, however, the Hellenistic schools are instead "the prototypes of the Roman spirit," "the form in which Greece migrates to Rome," whose intellectual character is distinctive, incisive, and enduring.

Lucretius' verses on the Epicurean metaphysics of the self and the ethics of death offer one of the most remarkable expressions of this philosophical legacy. His celebration of the mortality of the soul belongs to a long intellectual tradition whose roots reach back to Homeric epic and which first emerges in explicit philosophical form with Socrates' reflections on death in Plato's Apology. There Socrates advances two closely related theses: an ethical thesis concerning the value of death—that we may reasonably hope that death is a good—and a metaphysical thesis concerning the nature of death, which serves as the premise for the ethical one. This metaphysical thesis takes the form of a disjunction: death is either complete non-existence and the total absence of sensation, like a dreamless sleep, or it is a migration, a passage of the soul from this world to a better one.

The second alternative would become the thesis Plato sets out to defend in the Phaedo, where the character of Socrates undertakes to demonstrate, through four elaborate arguments, that the human soul is immortal, thereby dispelling the fear of death in favour of the "great hope" (pollē elpis) of eternal good. The first alternative, by contrast, contains the opposing view: the belief—already widespread in Socrates' own day, as a passage of the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus makes clear—that the soul is mortal. This is precisely the thesis that Epicurus would soon develop into a fully articulated philosophical doctrine. It is, in this sense, a thesis of distinctly Socratic origin, since Socrates himself refrains from deciding which of the two alternatives is true. Lucretius offers the fullest and most sophisticated defence of this position in Book III of the De Rerum Natura, responding, as it were, before the broad audience traditionally addressed by philosophical poetry, to the Platonic arguments of the Phaedo.

The first part of the seminar will consist of a series of guest lectures by invited specialists. Each session will include a one-hour presentation followed by one hour of discussion, with the aim of tracing the major stages in the history of the so-called mind-body problem. Together we will examine the various explicit and implicit theories that have been proposed, the philosophical difficulties they raise, and the different ways in which those difficulties have been addressed. A short preparatory reading will be assigned for each meeting.

The second part of the seminar will be devoted to student presentations. Working individually, in pairs, or in small groups—depending on the number of participants—students will read, analyse, and present selected passages from Book III of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, applying to the interpretation of the text the philosophical perspectives developed through the discussions with the invited speakers. Each group or individual participant will be supervised by a tutor.

The seminar is designed to introduce students to the practice of academic research in philosophy. More specifically, it aims to develop two complementary sets of skills: first, the ability to discuss a major philosophical problem from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective; and second, the ability to deliver a scholarly presentation in the context of a research seminar devoted to the close reading of a philosophical text.

A detailed schedule of activities will be published before the beginning of the seminar.

__________ 

The seminar will take place during the Second Semester, Third Teaching Period.

First meeting: Wednesday, 3 February 2027, 5:00–7:00 p.m., Room A.

 

Schedule:

• Wednesday, 5:00–7:00 p.m., Room A (Via Zamboni 34);

• Thursday, 5:00–7:00 p.m., Room A;

• Friday, 5:00–7:00 p.m., Room A.

 

* Attendance is mandatory (at least 12 sessions out of 15).

** Any supplementary activities (conferences, seminars, etc.) will be reported on the Filosofia Antica a Bologna Facebook page.

Readings/Bibliography

Texts

• Lucrezio, La natura delle cose, introduzione di Gian Biagio Conte, traduzione di Luca Canali, testo e commento a cura di Ivano Dionigi, Milano: BUR, 1994.

Critical Readings

• Luciano Canfora, Vita di Lucrezio, Palermo: Sellerio, 2024.
• Hendrik Lorenz, Ancient Theories of Soul, in Edward N. Zalta (a cura di), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), URL =https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/.

 

* The bibliography can be supplemented.

Teaching methods

LECTURES

Adopted methods:

• Conferences by specialists.
• Group discussion.

PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING SEMINAR

• Editing guidelines.
• Reading essay of an ancient work: form and contents.

SLOW READING SEMINAR

Adopted methods:

• Slow reading of the sources in the original language.
• Group work.
• Drafting of a handout.
• Oral presentations.
• Group discussion.

Assessment methods

EXAM SYLLABUS 

The exam includes one of these two tests, chosen by the student:

(1) The written test consists of a paper concerning the ancient work read and discussed during the seminar. The paper must be at least 5 maximum 7,5 standard Word pages, plus the bibliography. During the seminar the details will be clarified.

(2) The oral exam includes the study of the following texts:

(a) Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book III (see above, Testi/Bibliografia).

(b) A monograph or two short essays concerning one of the topics covered during the seminar, to be agreed with the teacher.

 

EXAM ASSESSMENT

The exam will be considered overall sufficient only if the final test (oral or written) and the oral presentation (individual or group) held during the seminar will be both considered as sufficient.

 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

• Students with SLD or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is necessary to contact the relevant University office with ample time in advance: the office will propose some adjustments, which must in any case be submitted 15 days in advance to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of these in relation to the teaching objectives.

• Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a useful tool to support independent study by providing additional explanations, summaries, and opportunities for self-assessment. With regard to the assessment of learning: (1) During in-person examinations, the use of AI is strictly prohibited. Any use of AI will be considered a violation of academic integrity. (2) The use of AI is also prohibited in take-home assessments (papers). Such work will be validated through the review of the required preparatory materials submitted by students and, where appropriate, by means of an oral discussion.

Teaching tools

• Handouts and slides.
• Partition diagrams and concept maps.
• Handbooks.
• Web sites.
• TLG, databases and bibliographical repertoires.

Office hours

See the website of Carlotta Capuccino