PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS I

Philosophical Hermeneutics belongs to the sector of Theoretical Philosophy and is focussed on the issues related to human interpretation, not intended as a cognitive representation but rather as a thinking experience of human beings as they are in the world. Philosophical Hermeneutics is not a mere discipline and transcends any simply methodological and epistemological problem relating to interpretative activity.
There are at least three crucial points decisive of Philosophical Hermeneutics within the Philosophy course:
(1) Philosophical Hermeneutics vividly rethinks the great questions of the philosophical tradition;
(2) Philosophical Hermeneutics insists on the concrete link of philosophical studies with the real existence of humans;
(3) Philosophical Hermeneutics cultivates the sense of the multiplicity and mobility of meaning of the discourses, especially in important texts.

Students are expected to learn how to deal with the polysemic and stratified character of the great texts of the past, considered classics.
Students are expected to learn to experience the distance of what belongs to philosophical (and literary and religious) discourses without therefore rushing to refer everything back to their own private and personal experience.

The course is not recommended for first-year students and in any case presupposes an acquired knowledge and mastery of the crucial categories and issues of the Western philosophical tradition.

The purpose of the course is to introduce students to some fundamental themes pertaining to the notions of humanity, humanism, and post-humanism. This introduction will revolve around a limited number of highly significant historical and theoretical episodes, in the following order: 1) the notion of humanitas in Cicero, 2) the emergence of the notion of "humanist" in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian culture and the conception of the human in Pico, 3) the debate on humanism between hermeneutics and existentialism, and 4) the contemporary debate on Posthumanism.

Cacciari M., La mente inquieta, Einaudi, 2019
Cicerone, I doveri, BUR Rizzoli, 2017
Heidegger M., Lettera sull’ «Umanismo», Adelphi 1995
Haraway, D. Manifesto cyborg, Feltrinelli, 2018
Husserl, E. L'idea di Europa, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 1999
Pico Della Mirandola, G. La dignità dell’uomo, Einaudi 2021
Rosi Braidotti, Il postumano (vol. 1) la vita oltre l’individuo, oltre la specie, oltre la morte, DeriveApprodi 2020
Sartre, J.-P. L’esistenzialismo è un umanismo, Armando Editore 2014

Students' preparation will be tested through an oral examination that will focus on the themes considered during the course. The lecturer will assess: 1) the general knowledge of the texts and authors, 2) the ability to understand and comment in detail the assigned texts, 3) the ability to personally develop and connect to one another the various themes covered

Lectures will give space to the direct reading of texts, projected on screen, and to a wide interlocution with the students.

Italian

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