CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT

The teaching is part of the training course of the Master's Degree in Philosophy. The training objectives are intended to provide the student with the tools for a critical understanding of the major texts of contemporary philosophy and a specific language appropriate to the topics dealt with. In the end, the student must be able to independently and critically manage a complex text of philosophy.

The course aims to provide a series of specific knowledge about contemporary philosophical thought. The student will have to acquire the skills, competences and knowledge useful for the critical comprehension and textual analysis of the major authors of contemporary philosophy, through the acquisition of a specific linguistic terminology, demonstrating to have developed communication skills and learning abilities.

General lines of the history of contemporary philosophy.

Modern collective identity and the national question

The course will pursue a reflection on the forms of collective identity based on political experience, and will more particularly question the form of “nation”, in the modern sense of the term, from this perspective.
It will mainly focus on the way in which this identity was constituted in the German and French traditions, starting from the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. In this first moment, we will focus on the Discourses to the German Nation by Fichte.
Then, we will analyze the way in which this theme becomes an object of social science much more than of political philosophy. We will follow its conceptualization in Max Weber initially, where the nation is characterized as a certain type of political community, in Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss on the other, where it reaches the rank of object par excellence of political sociology.
We will then contrast these conceptions with another view, coming from the confines of Europe, decentered in relation to classical sociology which takes as its base the Nation-State of Western Europe. It is about the Austro-Marxism of Otto Bauer, of which one will read The question of nationalities (1907), work centered rather on the construction of a multinational State, which implies another definition of the nation than those previously mentioned.
Finally, we will seek to build, from this journey, a model of interpretation for the contemporary situation, which is both a crisis of nation-states and the rise of nationalisms. We will then base ourselves mainly on the book by Norbert Elias, The Germans, published in 1990.

Otto Bauer, La questione nazionale, a cura di Nicolao Merker, Editori Riuniti, Roma 2016, capp. 9, 10, 11;
J. G. Fichte, Discorsi alla nazione tedesca, a cura di Gaetano Rametta, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2005, capp. I-IV;
Emmanuel-Joseph Siéyès, Che cosa è il terzo stato?, a cura di Umberto Cerroni, Editori Riuniti, Roma 2016.
Emile Durkheim, Lezioni di sociologia, a cura di Francesco Callegaro e Nicola Marcucci, Orthotes, 2016, Lezioni IV-IX.
M. Mauss, La nation (manuscrit de 1920, inachevé édité en 2012 par Marcel Fournier), I parte.
Max Weber. Economia e società. Comunità, Donzelli, Roma 2005 (Le comunità etniche, la comunità di mercato, le comunità politiche, prestigio di potere e sentimento nazionale).
Ernest Gellner, Nazioni e nazionalismo, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1997, capp. IV-V.
Norbert Elias, I tedeschi, il Mulino, Bologna 1991, seconda parte.
E. Balibar, I. Wallerstein, Razza, nazione, classe, Asterios, 2020, capp. III-V.

The exam takes place in oral form. During the interview the student must demonstrate the ability to summarize and understand the fundamental themes covered in the course, an adequate philosophical language, and a good knowledge of secondary literature.

Frontal lesson wich makes use of seminar support and materials available on the University e-learning plattform.

Italian

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