TRAINING, CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN MODERN AGE

Academic Year 2022/2023 - Teacher: Salvatore Roberto TUFANO

Expected Learning Outcomes

The course is designed with integrable modules.

1) The first module (5CFU) deals with the theme of law as a social structure and expression of collective mentalities in a comparative European key. Part of the course is dedicated to reflecting on how the Age of Enlightenment with its peculiar Humanism - substantiated by the discovery of freedom but also of man's individual responsibility - originally interpreted and transformed decisive aspects of the Scientific Revolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from Montaigne to Galilei, the Scientific Revolution affirmed the need to freely seek the truth about natural phenomena through adequate empirical evidence against ipse dixit. With the crisis of the "European conscience", then, rationalism allowed the passage from a conception of Reason, strictly conceived as the casket containing the first principles, to a "method" Reason, that is, as a way to derive inductive rules from reality. Thus all aspects of life were subjected to the critical scrutiny of Reason: politics and forms of state, social organization, human history, the structure of knowledge.

2) The second module (1 CFU) explores the theme of the formation of European elites through the examination of the Grand Tour between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, in particular, of a travel experience for women

Course Structure

Lectures and seminars

Required Prerequisites

basic knowledge of the main themes of modern history from the period of ocean navigation to the Napoleonic age

Detailed Course Content

The course is designed with integrable modules.


1) The first module (5CFU) deals with the theme of law as a social structure and expression of collective mentalities in a comparative European key. Part of the course is dedicated to reflecting on how the Age of Enlightenment with its peculiar Humanism - substantiated by the discovery of freedom but also of man's individual responsibility - originally interpreted and transformed decisive aspects of the Scientific Revolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from Montaigne to Galilei, the Scientific Revolution affirmed the need to freely seek the truth about natural phenomena through adequate empirical evidence against ipse dixit. With the crisis of the "European conscience", then, rationalism allowed the passage from a conception of Reason, strictly conceived as the casket containing the first principles, to a "method" Reason, that is, as a way to derive inductive rules from reality. Thus all aspects of life were subjected to the critical scrutiny of Reason: politics and forms of state, social organization, human history, the structure of knowledge.


2) The second module (1 CFU) explores the theme of the formation of European elites through the examination of the Grand Tour between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, in particular, of a travel experience for women

Textbook Information

Testi: Testi: Raffaele AJELLO, Dalla magia al patto sociale. Profilo storico dell’esperienza istituzionale e giuridica, Arte Tipografica editrice, Napoli 2013, pp. 1-404]

Roberto TUFANO, La Francia e le Sicilie. Stato e disgregazione sociale da Luigi XIV alla Rivoluzione, Arte Tipografica, Napoli 2009

Roberto Tufano, Illuminismo e governamentalità. Riformismo e dispotismo nelle Sicilie da Filippo V a Ferdinando IV, Aracne, Roma, 2018

E. Frasca, L'eco di Brown. Teorie mediche e prassi politiche, Roma, Carocci, 2014

E. FRASCA, For the cultivation of the mind. Il racconti di un Gran Tour immaginario, Gunzbug, Oakmond Publishing, 2022-

Learning Assessment

Learning Assessment Procedures

written and term papers (to be agreed with the teacher exclusively for those attending the lessons)