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

Learning outcomes

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

Course contents

Philosophical views on modernity

The seminar will take place in the third period (second semester).

It will consist of presentations and discussions of philosophical essays that are ideally linked by reference to the theme of modernity and its crisis.

A large bibliography of texts by leading authors in the contemporary panorama will be presented and discussed first. The texts to be examined and presented at subsequent meetings will then be assigned to members, on the basis of a calendar to be agreed collectively.

The main purposes of the seminar work consist, on the one hand, in verifying the aptitude of the individual participants to offer relevant summaries of complex texts and, on the other, in ensuring that the entire group of members actively engage in the interpretation and in the critical confrontation.

The seminar calendar is published in the Latest News section of this web page.

Readings/Bibliography

Given that the bibliography will also be defined on the basis of the number of subscribers and in the light of the discussion that the seminar will lead in the first meeting, a list of works likely to be the subject of individual and group work is provided below (by way of example):

Günther Anders, L’uomo è antiquato, vol I

Hannah Arendt, La banalità del male

Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith a Pechino. Genealogie del ventunesimo secolo

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernità liquida

Isaiah Berlin, Il potere delle idee

Marshall Berman, L’esperienza della modernità

Remo Bodei, Limite e scomposizioni. Forme dell’individuo moderno

Pierre Bourdieu, La miseria del mondo

Rosi Braidotti, Soggetto nomade. Femminismo e crisi della modernità

Colin Crouch, Postdemocrazia

Simone de Beauvoir, Il secondo sesso

Michel de Certeau, L’invenzione del quotidiano

Ernesto De Martino, La fine del mondo

Norbert Elias, Humana conditio. Osservazioni sullo sviluppo dell'umanità nel quarantesimo anniversario della fine della guerra

Jürgen Habermas, Discorso filosofico della modernità

Byung-chul Han, Psicopolitica. Il neoliberismo e le nuove tecniche del potere

David Harvey, La crisi della modernità

Ágnes Heller, Il potere della vergogna. Saggi sulla razionalità

Eric Hobsbawm, Il secolo breve. 1914-1991: l’era dei grandi cataclismi

Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati

Herbert Marcuse, L’uomo a una dimensione. L’ideologia della società industriale avanzata

Edgar Morin, Sette lezioni sul pensiero globale

Martha Nussbaum, Non per profitto. Perché le democrazie hanno bisogno della cultura umanistica

Karl Polanyi, La grande trasformazione

Amartya Sen, Globalizzazione e libertà

Wolfgang Sofsky, Saggio sulla violenza

Immanuel Wallerstein, Capitalismo storico e civiltà capitalistica

Maria Zambrano, Verso un sapere dell’anima

Teaching methods

The seminar will provide ample opportunities for discussion and comparison at the end of the speech offered by the individual speakers.

Assessment methods

The suitability of attending students will be ascertained on the basis of the quality of the interventions carried out in the course of individual and group work.

Teaching tools

Texts and any materials produced by the speakers.

Office hours

See the website of Alberto Burgio