04385 - History of Modern Philosophy

Learning outcomes

Students will be able to pinpoint and clarify the main problematic cruxes from the late Renaissance down to the Age of Enlightenment. The focus will be on the following areas: philosophy in the Renaissance after the rebirth of Platonism: interest in Hellenistic philosophy and modern scepticism; new models of rationality: the cosmological debate, mathematical learning, knowledge of the outside world, history torn between rhetoric and science; political philosophy: variations in the doctrine of natural law, the absolute State, a tempered monarchy, republican claims; the rise of economic science: protectionism, free exchange, theories of value; the encyclopaedic approach to learning. Via the reading of texts (some 300 pages in translation or the original) and via examination of the basic critical bibliography, students will learn to understand a philosophical text and grasp its significance from a historical angle.

Course contents

Religion and Philosophy in German Enlightenment

The course focuses on the eighteenth-century German debate around religion and its relationship with rational knowledge of a philosophical nature. In particular, the positions of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant will be examined.

The first module will be dedicated to the reading of Lessing’s Education of Mankind and Mendelssohn’s Phaedo. The second module will be dedicated to reading Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason.

 

 

 

Readings/Bibliography

1. Compulsory Readings:

- G.E. Lessing, L’educazione del genere umano, a cura di S. Ghisu e G. Cherchi, Mimesis, Milano 2018.

- M. Mendelssohn, Fedone. Sull’immortalità dell’anima, a cura di F. Tomasoni, Morcelliana, Brescia 2021.

- I. Kant, La religione entro i limiti della sola ragione, introduzione di M.M. Olivetti, traduzione di A. Poggi, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2004 (successive ristampe).

 

2. Choice of readings (at least two):

- K. Barth, La teologia protestante nel 19. secolo. Le origini: Loscher, Rousseau, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Novalis, Hegel, Jaca Book, Milano 1979.

- E. Colombo (a cura di), Etica e fede. Teologi leggono Kant, Unicopli, Milano 2008.-

- G. D’Alessandro, Kant e l’ermeneutica. La religione kantiana e gli inizi della sua recezione, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2000.

- L.A. Macor, Il mestiere di uomo. La concezione pratica della filosofia nel tardo illuminismo tedesco, Morcelliana, Brescia 2023.

- F. Mehring, La leggenda di Lessing. Per la storia e la critica del dispotismo prussiano e della letteratura classica, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1975.

 - N. Merker, L’illuminisno in Germania. L’età di Lessing, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1989.

- L. Parinetto, Alienazione e utopia in Lessing. Con la traduzione del Doktor Faust e altri scritti di G.E. Lessing, Unicopli, Milano 1981

.- M. Pera, Critica della ragion secolare. La modernità e il cristianesimo di Kant, Le Lettere, Firenze 2019.

- D. Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn. Il maestro dell’illuminismo ebraico, ECIG, Genova 2000.

- R. Suitner, I dialoghi dei morti del primo illuminismo tedesco, Edizioni ETS, Pisa 2021.

Non-attending students will have to read in addition E. Cassirer’s La filosofia dell’illuminismo (any edition).

 

3. Institutional Part 

Knowledge of the following authors of the history of philosophy between the 16th and 20th centuries will be required for the examination:

Bruno, Machiavelli, Bacone, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Montesquieu, Vico, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Croce, Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Lukács, la Scuola di Francoforte, Foucault, Arendt.

Students can use the textbook they prefer or that they already own, checking that all the authors included in the list below are covered and, if necessary, integrating it with other textbooks. For those who do not already have such texts we suggest:

Massimo Mori, Storia della filosofia moderna, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2005

Antonello La Vergata, Franco Trabattoni, Filosofia cultura cittadinanza, Rizzoli, Milano, 2011

Giuseppe Cambiano, Massimo Mori, Storia e antologia della filosofia, Laterza, Roma, 1993 e seguenti

Fabio Cioffi et al., Il testo filosofico, Mondadori, Milano 1992 e seguenti

Luca Guidetti, Giovanni Matteucci, Le grammatiche del pensiero, Zanichelli, Bologna, 2012

Students who have already taken an exam on a historical-philosophical topic with prof. Francesco Cerrato or with prof. Diego Donna will not have to take the institutional part of the exam.

 

 

Teaching methods

Ex cathedra Lessons

Assessment methods

The final oral exam focuses on the programme’s material and will be held in the Professor’s office, Via Zamboni, 38.

The critical evaluation considers the fundamental notions, the level of the analysis and the critical skills. On the basis of these three principal parameters an overall evaluation in thirtieths is expressed.

18-21/30: Sufficient

22-25/30: Average

26-28/30: Good

29-30/30: Very Good

30/30 with praise: Excellent

Teaching tools

Some lessons will be recorded and made available to all students.

Office hours

See the website of Giovanni Bonacina