73084 - History of Modern Philosophy (2) (LM)

Learning outcomes

The lectures allow the student to interpret the significant nodes of European thought in the fifteenth and eighteenth Centuries and to identify intersections with other areas of Western culture. Skills about the main interpretation and historiographical lines in order to modern philosophy and the concept of modernity, allow to recognize topics and themes' projections of modern thought in the contemporary philosophical debate, and to proceed retrospectively to the origin of subjects and long-running problems.

Course contents

                       Un homme n’est pas une machine…
                          une hypothèse n’est pas un fait
                   Diderot and the Enlightenment's reasons

II module

A qualitative conception of nature as an organism in perennial transformation, as a unitary and metamorphic body in which matter, life and knowledge are united, constitutes the most novel feature of the most versatile of the Philosophes, Denis Diderot, driver of the current of the French Enlightenment which opposes with full awareness of the mechanical philosophy of the previous century and proposes an idea of nature destined to influence the conceptions of the following century.

It is an idea of nature which is counterpointed by a model of knowledge that is suspicious of mechanical abstractions and mathematical reductionism, interested in experimenting and capable of integrating even the great spectra of Cartesian epistemology into the method of scientific knowledge. and Newtonian: the hypotheses and the heuristic potential of analogy.

The first module will focus in particular on the Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature (1753-1754), investigating the essential junctions of Diderotian naturalistic conception and the proposed method of investigation.

The second module will enter the heart of Diderot's gnoseology analyzed through the comparison with his friend-opponent Jean d'Alembert, mathematician and co-director of the Encyclopédie, the polemical objective of Le Rêve de D’Alembert (1769).

Readings/Bibliography

All students are expected

to know:

a) Le Rêve de d’Alembert (any edition in the original language or in English or Italian translation)

b) E. Cassirer, La filosofia dell’Illuminismo, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1932(any edition in the original language or in English or Italian translation)

b)  one of the following essays (two for students who have not attended the course) 
- P.Casini, Scienza, utopia e progresso: profilo dell'illuminismo Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1994

- H. Dieckmann, Il realismo di Diderot, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1977

- Illuminismo: storia di un'idea plurale, a cura di M. Mori e S. Veca, Roma, Carocci, 2019

 

Teaching methods

 

 15 lectures.
During the course central paragraphs of the Diderot's essay will be read and and compared with some sources and some critical interpretations of later philosophers. Students are required to provide the texts before the course begins.
Summaries and schemes of the classes will be periodically uploaded on AlmaDigital Library.
Students who attend classes are required to enroll, before the course begins, to the distribution list, ID: annarita.angelini.Diderot, password: Diderot
We recommend the students to see regulary the teacher's web page on which will be uploaded any information and change useful to those who attending the classes.
Students who have attended classes can replace the above texts with specific topics. These topics have to be agreed with the teacher at the end of the course.

Assessment methods

Oral examination: Students are recommended to bring the texts when examining.The interview focuses mainly on analysis and critical interpretation of the sources.
Students who have attended lectures may agree on exams (whether written or oral) devoted to specific topics.

Assessment criteria and thresholds of evaluation:

30 cum laude - Excellent as to knowledge, philosophical lexicon and critical expression.

30 – Excellent: knowledge is complete, well argued and correctly expressed, with some slight faults.

27-29 – Good: thorough and satisfactory knowledge; essentially correct expression.

24-26 - Fairly good: knowledge broadly acquired, and not always correctely expressed.

21-23 – Sufficient: superficial and partial knowledge; exposure and articulation are incomplete and often not sufficiently appropriate

18-21 - Almost sufficient: superficial and decontextualized knowledge. The exposure of the contents shows important gaps.

Exam failed - Students are requested to show up at a subsequent exam session if basic skills and knowledge are not sufficiently acquired and not placed in the historical-philosophical context.

Teaching tools

The text is an essential tool in order to actively participate in the classes. It is recommended to get hold of the text before classes.
The summaries of the lectures will be periodically (every three to six lectures) uploaded and allowed to the online consultation. Students have to enroll to the distribution list ID: annarita.angelini.diderot;  password:Diderot

Office hours

See the website of Annarita Angelini