2010-2011 Academic Year
Fundamental Issues in Philosophy (20003)
Degree/study: Degree in Humanities
Year: 1st
Term: 1st
Number of ECTS credits: 4
Hours of student dedication: 100
Teaching language or languages: Spanish (group 1, 3), Catalan (group 2)
Teaching Staff: Antonino Firenze (group 1)/ Jordi Ibañez (group 2)/ Daniele Cozzoli (group 3)
1. Presentation of the subject
The course consists of a general introduction to philosophy and, at the same time, of a propaedeutic exposition of some of the fundamental issues characterising its historical development from its Greek origins to modernity.
Day and hours of class:
Group 1: Tuesday from 09.00 to 11.00 and Thursday from 09.00 to 11.00.
Group 2: Tuesday from 12.00 to 14.00 and Thursday from 12.00 to 14.00
Group 3: Tuesday from 12.00 to 14.00 and Thursday from 12.00 to 14.00
Visiting hours:
Group 1: Tuesday and Thursday from 11.00 to 12.00 (office 20.275)
Group 2: Wednesday from 10.00 to 12.00 (office 20.2e38)
Group 3: Tuesday and Thursday from 15.00 to 19.00 (office 20.259)
Professors' e-mail addresses:
[email protected]
2. Competences to be attained
|
General competences |
Specific competences |
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1. Analysis and synthesis skills. 2. Organisation and planning skills. 3. Oral and written communication. 4. Group working skills. 5. Analytical reasoning. 6. Ethical compromise. 7. Autonomous learning. 8. Adaptation to new situations. 9. Motivation towards quality. 10. Sensitivity towards socio-environmental issues. |
1. Selecting and consulting specific bibliography from philosophical tradition. 2. Organising, planning and developing an analytical discourse about a text. 3. Skills in commenting a philosophical text: working on analysing and relating elements, understanding the main thesis in the text and its relation to secondary ideas and its meaning. 4. Accuracy and good use of technical terms and of philosophical concepts. 5. Judgement skills in arguing about the value or the meaning of the doctrines dealt with. 6. Skills in relating the thinking of an author with posterior antecedents, opponents, followers or schools. 7. Skills in putting the text in its historical and cultural context and in describing the world conception of authors in relation to those of their eras. 8. Written and oral transmission of the acquired knowledge. 9. Written and oral argumentation, defence and justification skills of a concrete position |
3. Contents
Group 1:
After an introductory part during which the methodological premises for the subject will be stated, the course will divide in two thematic blocks dealing, firstly, with the gnosiologic opposition between truth and opinion and, secondly, with the ethical-political conflict between individual and community. Thus, through the textual analysis of fragments from some of the works that best represent the western philosophical tradition, some of the most relevant issues in the philosophical debate articulated by both the ancients and the modernists will be analysed, while providing the basic theoretical tools to familiarise students with the specificity of this discipline.
The course consists of 12 plenary two-hour sessions, where the content of the subjects' program will be presented, and of 4 two-hour seminars for each of the two subgroups into which Group 1 is divided: 101 (family names A-L) and 102 (family names M-Z).
INTRODUCTION
Methodological premise
The Greek roots of the philosophical thought
BLOCK 1: Truth - Opinion
1.1: The Ancients and the objective foundations of truth: from doxa to episteme.
1.2: The modernists and the subjective foundations of truth: from reality to representation.
BLOCK 2: Individual - Community
2.1: The Ancients and the research of a hierarchical-natural harmony between psyche and polis.
2.2: The modernists and the artificial institution of the political community: from the state of nature to the civil state.
Group 2:
In this group the course is articulated around four topics: Nature, History, Truth and Appearance. These four areas will be developed historically, though not systematically nor exhaustively, with the purpose of demonstrating both the historicity of the philosophical issues and its topicality and its conceptual meaning. Through these issues we will deal with the question of the meaning and the value of philosophy nowadays, distinguishing the philosophical practice from the mere philosophical culture, the use of information. These four topics will be worked on through texts by authors such as Plato and Aristotle, to philosophers from the 20th century such as Benjamin, Davidson or Rorty, and they will be related to other fields in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, such as History, Science History, Politics and Arts. The student will be required to read, during the course, two classical philosophical texts (by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer or Nietzsche). The course, thus, at their disposal, will be a means for students to reflect about those texts.
The structure of the course will be as follows: on Tuesdays from 12.00 to 14.00 and Thursdays from 12.00 to 13.00, theoretical hours, with master classes always open to questions posed by students; on Thursdays from 13.00 to 14.00, practice hours, used to comment and discuss the texts, in small groups of about 16 students, at two sessions for each group (5 16-student groups during a 10-week term).
The topics discussed during the course will be (weekly, approximately):
1. General introduction. Philosophy as a profession and the logic in philosophical problems. Philosophy in the Humanities or the historical meaning of thinking.
2. The concept of Nature in the ancient world, Christianity and Middle Age world.
3. Why dualism or monism?
4. Naturalism and historicism.
5. In what sense can we talk about a natural history?
6. Theories of Truth.
7. The problem of universals.
8. Philosophy and interculturality (languages, cultures and translation).
9. Being, game, meaning and letter.
10. Philosophy and politics.
Group 3:
In this group some of the most important issues in philosophy will be discussed. On the basis of the reading of two short classical texts, Metaphysical Meditations by Renée Descartes and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding by David Hume, some of the most debated issues in contemporary philosophy will be developed. Particularly, the course will discuss the issue of scepticism, the issue of knowledge, the issue mind-body, the issue of what are natural intelligence and artificial intelligence, scientific knowledge, the issue of causality and that of induction. The subject essays to demonstrate how issues put to debate during the 17th and 18th centuries have influenced our comprehension skills of current philosophical issues.
The first hour of each session will be a master class, and the second hour, a seminar. All students will follow the master classes taking place on Tuesday and Thursday from 12.00 to 13.00. The seminars are smaller discussion groups. That is why, in the seminars, students will be divided into 2 groups: 301 and 302. Students with a family name starting with letters A-L belong to group 301, and students with a family name starting with letters M-Z belong to group 302. Learning will develop through the participation and a constant dialogue with the professor. Thus, the goal is helping students to develop their own interests. All through the course, students will learn how to present a philosophical article, how to debate about philosophical issues and how to write an analytical text following the standards of well-known international journals.
The topics in the course will be:
1. The philosophy of Descartes.
2. Scepticism.
3. The theories of knowledge.
4. The mind: the issue mind-body.
5. What is intelligence? Natural intelligence or artificial intelligence?
6. The philosophy of David Hume
7. Scientific knowledge.
*The full version with the sections 4. Assessment, 5. Bibliography and teaching resources, 6. Methodology, and 7. Planning of activities is available in the original version.