INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

The aim of the course is to introduce students to some of the most important issues in Western philosophy, to develop an understanding of the nature of philosophical questions and the ways in which they can be answered.

The student will be expected to read and understand classic, modern and contemporary philosophical texts, and learn the conceptual vocabulary and logical tools to formulate and evaluate philosophical arguments.
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:
(a) know the meaning of important philosophical terms such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, rationalism, empiricism, idealism, dualism, materialism, reductionism, determinism;
(b) know the views of the philosophers studied;
(c) explain how these views were formulated in response to general problems and/or the views of other philosophers;
(d) read, summarize and interpret the positions exposed in the philosophical texts;
(e) identify the philosophical issues presented by the films under consideration;
(f) think critically and be able to argue clearly.

The course does not require prerequisites.

Philosophers are known for having been constantly arguing on a wide range of topics – mind’s structures, the norms of action, the principles of politics and ethics, the existence of God… The situation is even more complicated, since there is no common agreement about a precise answer to the broadest of the questions, namely: WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
The very term “philosophy” has meant different things in different historical periods, among different cultures and societies; even contemporary philosophical threads often provide dissimilar, and sometimes even contradicting, answers to this question.
We will embrace an approach consisting in treating “philosophy” as a set of texts sharing some “family resemblances” and not a precise and limited number of common features. Most of the philosophical texts treat “fundamental” problems or questions of “high generality,” although these questions change in meaning and structure according to the authors, the geographical zones and to the historical periods, and although the answers given to the questions are, most of the time, divergent and contradictory. Philosophers constantly express doubts about the pre-existing answers given to the questions, they constantly re-open questions previously considered as “closed.” They proceed differently than the scientists, whose work is, mostly, progressive and cumulative.
This course aims at introducing to some of the most significant and recurring of those questions.

The course adopts a HISTORICAL and THEORETHICAL approach since philosophy is empty without its history and its history is unintelligible without the knowledge of recurring problems and concepts. It will virtually consider of four aspects:

1. An analysis of QUESTIONS and sub-questions.
2. A contextualization of some philosophical FIGURES who posed them.
3. A dialectical description of CONTROVERSIES between philosophers.
4. The fixation of a VOCABULARY designating concepts, considered in their polysemy.

It will as well, progressively, treat four main questions, or problems:

1. EPISTEMOLOGICAL (the nature knowledge and methods of knowing).
2. ONTOLOGICAL/METAPHYSICAL (the existence of God, the most general structure of what exists).
3. COGNITIVE (the relation between mind and the body, human subjectivity).
4. ETHICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL (will necessity, good and bad, life in common).

The first 15 lectures (first period) will focus on the first two questions, the last 15 (second period) will consider the last two, but we will consider the necessary intertwinement between the four questions.

The main core of the course will consist in a theoretical/historical patient reading, commentary, and analysis of Descartes "Meditations" (the first three during the first period, and the second three during the second period). The reading will be integrated with digressions considering how Descartes’ predecessors (Plato, Aristotle, Augustin, St. Thomas, Bacon…), contemporaries and successors (Hobbes, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche…) treated some of the problems he dealt with. During the second period we will progressively adventure in more contemporary authors such as Canguilhem, Sartre, Deleuze, De Beauvoir, Fanon, dealing with more “concrete” questions.

Temporary programme which will be updated soon. Other texts and the required readings will be put in the course's moodle before the beginning of the classes.

(1) R. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641) (suggested edition ed. by J. Cottingham, Cambridge University Press*).
(2) J. Cottingham, Descartes, Malden: Blackwell, 1986.
(3) N. Warburton, Philosophy: The Basics, Routledge 2013.
A selection of other texts will be given during the classes and will be present on the moodle of the class.

Assessment will be based on a written examination with open questions on the texts and topics covered. Part of the final assessment will come from an essay discussing a book or some of the essays proposed during the lectures. The essay will have to be longer and more in-depth for non-enrolled students.

Lectures, readings, discussion of texts.

English

Accessibility, Disability and Inclusion

Ca' Foscari abides by Italian Law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) regarding support services and accommodation available to students with disabilities. This includes students with mobility, visual, hearing and other disabilities (Law 17/1999), and specific learning impairments (Law 170/2010). If you have a disability or impairment that requires accommodations (i.e., alternate testing, readers, note takers or interpreters) please contact the Disability and Accessibility Offices in Student Services: disabilita@unive.it.

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