Fundamental Topics of Philosophy (20003)
Degree/study: Degree in Humanities
Year: 1st
Term:1st
Number of ECTS credits: 4 credits
Hours of studi dedication: 100 hours
Teaching language or languages: spanish (group 1 and 3), catalan (group 2)
Teaching Staff: Antonino Firenze (group 1 and 3) / Jordi Ibáñez (group 2)
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
Professors' e-mail addresses:
[email protected]; [email protected]
2. Competences to be attained
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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 and 3:
This course is an introduction to philosophy through the exhibition of some of its main topics that have characterized its historical development from its Greek origins to modern age. In this sense, after raising the methodological premises of the subject, topics will be discussed, through textual analysis of fragments of works of Plato and Aristotle, as the gnoseological problem subject of the opposition between truth and opinion and the ethical-political problem of the conflict between the individual and the community, describing the complete change of perspective, which with regard to these issues characterizes modern philosophy. Thus, at the time that it will highlight the historicity of philosophical problems, students will be given the basic theoretical tools to be familiarized themselves 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 groups 1 and 3 are divided (subgroups 101-102 and 301-302).
The units of this course will be the next ones:
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Methodological premise
1.2 The Greek roots of the philosophical thought
BLOCK 1: Plato
Unit 1.1
The problem of knowledge: truth-opinion.
- The Platonic foundation of philosophical knowledge and the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible world.
- Dialectics and the idea of Good: the myth of the cave as a metaphor of the cognitive-moral progress towards to the philosophic truth.
Unit 1.2
The ethical-political problem: individual - community
- The ethical-political problem in Plato: the structural analogy between city and soul.
- The mission of the philosopher and the possibility of a moral reform of the political community.
PART 2: Aristotle
unit 2.1
The problem of knowledge: truth-opinion
- Aristotelian rehabilitation of the experience within the cognitive process to the philosophical knowledge.
- Theoretical and happiness contemplative life: the philosopher's moral superiority to all other men.
unit 2.2
The ethical-political problem: individual - community
- Epistemological autonomy of practical philosophy in Aristotle: the ethical virtue and the ambiguous legitimation of the political power.
- The definition of man as a political animal and the naturalization of social hierarchies.
CONCLUSIONS
C.1 The modern and the subjective foundation of the truth: from the reality to the representation.
C.2 The modern and the artificial institution of the political community: from the state of nature to marital status.
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.
*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.
4. Assessment
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5. Bibliography and teaching resources
5.1. Basic bibliography
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5.2. Complementary bibliography
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5.3. Teaching resources
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6. Metodology
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