HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY - I

The course falls within the common core subjects of the degree course in philosophy and aims at providing students with the necessary methodological tools for a critical learning of the main historical-philosophical issues of contemporary times, also in connection with other knowledge and research fields. In particular, the teaching objectives are aimed at the acquisition of the understanding, knowledge and critical interpretation of the main contemporary philosophical texts.

The course aims to provide in-depth knowledge of the philosophers and the most important historical and cultural contexts, of the problems of contemporary times and of the increasingly close interrelationship between the various 'specialised' fields of knowledge.
For these reasons, the didactic task is to provide knowledge and to train comprehension skills so that the student can build a critical autonomy of judgement and correct linguistic and communicative skills.

General knowledge of the processes and dynamics of modern philosophical history.

Course title: Dialectics as a critical model: crisis thinking, crisis of thinking

Description: From a major device of Sophist rhetoric to a combined process of criticism and foundation proper to a realism that does not want to embrace correspondentialist theories of truth, dialectics was certainly one of the most decisive and controversial philosophical operations of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its consolidation as a critical device modified not only the configurations of theory, but opened up real possibilities in the field of practices of social transformation. A considerable part of the history of social revolutions in the 20th century was described, by its own agents, through the mobilization of dialectics.
However, often reduced to a bureaucratic 'method', other times denounced as the expression of modern reason's aspirations to identity without remainders, dialectics has, in recent decades, been discredited for allegedly being a figure of a thought incapable of relating to difference and singularity. This leaves the question of whether the understanding of dialectics currently hegemonic effectively takes into account the potential that emerges from the texts of its main authors.
With this question in mind, this course aims to rethink dialectics as a privileged form of critical thinking from the rereading of three of its main protagonists: Hegel, Marx and Adorno. The aim is to defend the hypothesis that, between Hegelian dialectics, Marxist dialectics and negative dialectics, the lines of continuity are deeper than they initially appear. It is enough to be more attentive to the relationship between dialectics and social crises. Hegelian dialectics is the dialectics necessary for the historical possibilities of the early nineteenth century, just as Marxist dialectics is for the mid-nineteenth century and negative dialectics is for the late twentieth century. As an ontology whose systems of position and presupposition change in response to the modifications of historical configurations, as an "ontology in situation", dialectics is reoriented in continuous movement.
In this course, we will operate through a dynamic of permanent confrontation in which dialectical criticism will be confronted with important questions coming from sectors of 19th and 20th century philosophy. This will allow us to address the central question of this course, namely: is it possible to understand dialectics as a fundamental critical model for the historical configurations of the present, with its crises, ruptures and paralysis?

Bibliography for the exam:

ADORNO, Theodor et HORKHEIMER, Max; Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Verso, 1998 (Dialettica dell’Illuminismo, Einaudi, 2010).
HEGEL, G.W.F.; The phenomenology of Spirit, Cambridge University Press, 2019 (Fenomenologia dello spirito, Bompiani, 2000).
MARX, Karl; Capital: a critique of political economy (volume I), Penguin Classics, 1992 (Il Capitale, volume I, UTET, 2017).

Course title: Dialectics as a critical model: crisis thinking, crisis of thinking

Description: From a major device of Sophist rhetoric to a combined process of criticism and foundation proper to a realism that does not want to embrace correspondentialist theories of truth, dialectics was certainly one of the most decisive and controversial philosophical operations of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its consolidation as a critical device modified not only the configurations of theory, but opened up real possibilities in the field of practices of social transformation. A considerable part of the history of social revolutions in the 20th century was described, by its own agents, through the mobilization of dialectics.
However, often reduced to a bureaucratic 'method', other times denounced as the expression of modern reason's aspirations to identity without remainders, dialectics has, in recent decades, been discredited for allegedly being a figure of a thought incapable of relating to difference and singularity. This leaves the question of whether the understanding of dialectics currently hegemonic effectively takes into account the potential that emerges from the texts of its main authors.
With this question in mind, this course aims to rethink dialectics as a privileged form of critical thinking from the rereading of three of its main protagonists: Hegel, Marx and Adorno. The aim is to defend the hypothesis that, between Hegelian dialectics, Marxist dialectics and negative dialectics, the lines of continuity are deeper than they initially appear. It is enough to be more attentive to the relationship between dialectics and social crises. Hegelian dialectics is the dialectics necessary for the historical possibilities of the early nineteenth century, just as Marxist dialectics is for the mid-nineteenth century and negative dialectics is for the late twentieth century. As an ontology whose systems of position and presupposition change in response to the modifications of historical configurations, as an "ontology in situation", dialectics is reoriented in continuous movement.
In this course, we will operate through a dynamic of permanent confrontation in which dialectical criticism will be confronted with important questions coming from sectors of 19th and 20th century philosophy. This will allow us to address the central question of this course, namely: is it possible to understand dialectics as a fundamental critical model for the historical configurations of the present, with its crises, ruptures and paralysis?

Bibliography for the exam:

ADORNO, Theodor et HORKHEIMER, Max; Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Verso, 1998 (Dialettica dell’Illuminismo, Einaudi, 2010)
HEGEL, G.W.F.; The phenomenology of Spirit, Cambridge University Press, 2019 (Fenomenologia dello spirito, Bompiani, 2000)
MARX, Karl; Capital: a critique of political economy (volume I), Penguin Classics, 1992 (Il Capitale, volume I, UTET, 2017)

The evaluation of the students will certainly take into account participation in class and discussions.

Lectures, commentary on selected texts, collective discussions.

Italian

oral