85105 - ITALIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT (1) (LM)

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

At the end of the course, students will have the tools for gaining a basic understanding of the theoretical and practical issues debated in the history of Italian political thought in the modern and contemporary ages. By directly analysing the sources, students will define the theoretical specificities of the main authors of the history of Italian political thought and relate these to one another, communicating them in an effective, coherent way.

Contenuti

 

The course focuses on four crucial moments in Italian history: the Sixteenth century, the period from the French Revolution to the Italian Unity, the period from the Russian Revolution to the rise of Fascism, the '60s and '70s resurgence of a revolutionary movement. For each of these periods a couple of authors will be examined, that theorized different options of how to come to grip with crisis and revolution, stressing either the element of conflict or that of stability.

The first part will focus on the works of Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini. Their works will be read as presenting two different ways out from the irreversible crisis of the Italian republics: while the first assumes transformation and conflict as the basis of politics, the second underlines the need to enhance the government to secure the stability of the body politics.

The second part will consider the political legacy of the French Revolution and the period of Risorgimento through the eyes of the two main Italian writers of the Nineteenth century, that is Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni. The ontological critique of politics in favor of a much more radical ethical «resurgence» elaborated by Leopardi will be confronted with Manzoni's insistence on the need of both mobilizing society towards national unity and neutralizing the more radical effects of the French Revolution by balancing them with Christian morality.

The third part will dive into the first decades of the Twentieth century through the works of Gaetano Mosca and Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci's project of a new understanding of the revolution in light of the transformations of society and State brought about by the assertion of the bourgeois hegemony will be considered through a comparison with Mosca's plan of building a political science which can be the tool for the material and ideological consolidation of the ruling class, in order to put an end to the possibility of revolutionary transformations.

The fourth part will focus on Mario Tronti, one of the founders of Italian workerism, and on Carla Lonzi, the feminist artist and philosopher which counts as the point of reference of Italian difference feminism, against the backdrop of the wave of struggles taking place in Italy starting from the '60. While for Tronti the revolution has the working class as its privileged subject, able to exercise a decisive refusal of integration into the capitalist society, Lonzi's feminist critique puts into question the unitary character of this subject, proposing a refusal of politics as such and the need to rebuild the fundaments of social life starting from the feminine experience of life.

Testi/Bibliografia

Students that will attend classes:

The following reading list is divided into four parts, each one dedicated to the four couples of authors described above. More precise information on the sections of the books included in the bibliography will be presented during classes. The following texts will also constitute the basic bibliography to be studied for the final examination. Students can write a paper concerning some of the topics addressed during the classes and discuss it as part of the oral exam.

Part I

N. Machiavelli, F. Guicciardini, The Sweetness of Power. Machiavelli's Discourses and Guicciardini's Considerations, edited by J. Atkinson - D. Sices, Dekalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 2002.

Part II

G. Leopardi, Operette morali – Essays and Dialogues, ed. by G. Cecchetti, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982.

G. Leopardi, passages from Zibaldone, ed. by M. Caesar - F. D'Intino, New York, Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

A. Mazoni, The Count of Carmagnola and Adelchis, ed. by F. B. Deigan, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

A. Manzoni, passages from The Bethroted (any edition).

Part III

A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. by Q. Hoare - G. Nowell Smith, New York, New York International Publisher, 2014.

G. Mosca, The Ruling Class, ed. by H.D. Kahn, Charleston, Nabu Press, 2013.

Part IV

M. Tronti, a selection from Workers and Capital (available on libcom.org).

C. Lonzi, Let's spit on Hegel, in Feminist Interpretations of Hegel, ed. by P. Jagentowicz Mills, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

Students that will not attend classes:

Students that will not attend classes with regularity will have to choose three of the groups of texts listed below (e.g. A + B + C or B + D + E etc.).

Group A

N. Machiavelli, The Discourses (any edition)

N. Machiavelli, The Prince (any edition)

Q. Skinner, Machiavelli. A very short introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.

F. Del Lucchese, The Political Philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2015.

Group B

G. Leopardi, Operette morali – Essays and Dialogues, ed. by G. Cecchetti, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982.

G. Leopardi, Canti (any edition)

A. Negri, Flower of the Desert. Giacomo Leopardi's Poetic Ontology, New York, State University of New York Press, 2016.

Group C

A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. by Q. Hoare - G. Nowell Smith, New York, New York International Publisher, 2014.

J. Schwarzmantel, The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, London-New York, Routledge, 2015.

Group D

G. Mosca, The Ruling Class, ed. by H.D. Kahn, Charleston, Nabu Press, 2013.

A. E. Albertoni, Mosca and the Theory of Elitism, Oxford-New York, Blackwell, 1987

J.-H. Meisel (ed. by), Pareto and Mosca, New York, Parentice Hall, 1965.

Group E

M. Tronti, selections from Workers and Capital [to be found in English translation on: Initial Hypothesis; A New Style of Political Experiment; Initial Thesis].

C. Lonzi, Let's spit on Hegel, in Feminist Interpretations of Hegel, ed. by P. Jagentowicz Mills, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

S. Wright, Storming Heaven. Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, London, Pluto Press, 2002.

G. Parati-R. West, Italian Feminist Theory and Practice. Equality and Sexual Difference, Madison, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002.

Metodi didattici

Lectures, collective reading of texts and discussions in class.

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Oral or written and oral exam.

In order to receive a high final grade, students should show their capacity to correctly analyze the sources and to clearly and critically discuss about the issues that we will address during classes. An acceptable knowledge of the texts and the capacity of grasping the basic content of the lectures will receive a lower or sufficient assessment. An unclear or significantly inaccurate exposition of the texts and the course's contents will be evaluated as insufficient to pass the examination. 

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Antonio Del Vecchio