HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY

Academic Year 2021/2022 - 2° Year
Teaching Staff: Salvatore VASTA
Credit Value: 9
Scientific field: M-FIL/06 - HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
Taught classes: 54 hours
Term / Semester:

Learning Objectives

To Understand and critically investigate the development of contemporary philosophy in the XIX and XX centuries through the most representative philosophers.

- To be able to have a critical look at the doctrines of the philosophers within an historical framework.

- To be able to argue on their thinking, using appropriate logical and linguistic tools.


Course Structure

Lectures (methodological strategy used: Active learning), Group work, Exercises on philosophical texts.


Detailed Course Content

The following matters will be examined: Mind, Knowledge, Language, Science, Morality, Politics, Law, Metaphysics, the re-enactment of the History of Philosophy.

Module A: The following thinkers will be dealt with through their biographical and philosophical development: Post-Hegelian Schools, Schopehauer, Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, Jaspers, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, Russell, Wittgenstein, The Vienna Circle, Popper.

Module B: The question of the History/Memory nexus in Water Benjamin's philosophy will be critically analysed.


Textbook Information

1) G. Cambiano, M. Mori, Storia della filosofia contemporanea, Laterza, Bari 2014.

2) W. Benjamin, Tesi di filosofia della storia, Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2012;

3) W. Benjamin, Angelus Novus, Einaudi, Torino, 2014.

(English versions of these texts are available for Erasmus Students).