The course aims at providing the necessary skills in order to grasp a philosophical text from the modern and contemporary ages. To this purpose, the course provides students with the necessary tools in order to:

- elaborate an appropriate historical-social contextualization of a modern philosophical text;

- identify the prior philosophical streams setting up the framework of a given philosophical work and be confident with the text’s features that make them identifiable (by focusing in particular on the traits of lexical permanence, on the recursion of argumentative methods, on shared philosophical objectives).

- pick out the original features that characterize a single work of modern philosophy within its philosophical tradition;

- be able to grasp the stratified character of a philosophical text and to subsequently, possibly identify its weaknesses;

- identify the weak points of a philosophical text also concerning logical fallacies (e.g. incoherence between assumptions and consequences; begging the question; semantic vagueness);

- identify the possible weaknesses of a philosophical work that are due to the simultaneous presence of divergent and incoherent philosophical traditions within the text (that may also stand beyond the explicit author’s purposes).

1. Gramsci and Machiavelli: questions of method.

2. The Machiavellian metaphor and Machiavellism in 1920s Italy.

3. "The 'politician in general', good for all times".

4. Marx and Machiavelli, Machiavelli and Marx

5. Machiavelli and the "philosophy of praxis"

7. The "Modern Prince"

8. Why did Machiavelli write The Prince? The "democratic" reading.

Knowledge and understanding

- Acknowledgment of the importance of the political-social context for the elaboration of philosophical theories of the contemporary age;

- Ability to detect the peculiar features among alternative forms of philosophical argumentation within a shared philosophical, political and cultural tradition.    

 Applying knowledge and understanding

- The student will be able to master the essential theoretical and lexical tools in order to gain the ability to autonomously read and interpret a philosophical work of the contemporary age;

- The student will be able to appreciate the important role of a correct socio-historical contextualisation for an adequate understanding of the texts of the contemporary age.      

 Making judgements

- The student will develop an appropriate critical ability in order to identify the eventual discrepancies between single philosophical texts and their philosophical tradition;

- The student will develop an autonomous capacity in order to properly evaluate the contradictions and the weak reasoning of a philosophical argumentation.   

 Communication skills

- The student will be provided with the necessary skills in order to present to an audience, even not a specialized one, the core issues of a contemporary philosophical text, by focusing in particular on the historical context, on the lexical and argumentative peculiarities within a given philosophical tradition, on the contradictions, weakness and shortcomings from a logical-argumentative point of view.

 Learning skills

- At the end of the course the student will be provided with the necessary tools for an autonomous study of a philosophical text of the contemporary age;

- The student will understand the meaning and importance of the philosophical lexicon, and of extra-philosophical materials, that are essential in order to gain a deep insight of the political-cultural context of a text. This knowledge will allow the student to autonomously approach to the appropriate bibliographical researches.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

Teaching

The course will combine lectures with innovative teaching and learning methods.

Innovative teaching methods

Teaching methods

The course includes:

    * lectures
    * group work and written work
    * oral presentations
    * participatory lectures in which the work presented will be discussed.

Course books

A. Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, edizione critica dell'Istituto Gramsci a cura di V. Gerratana, Torino, Einaudi, 1975 (scelta a cura del docente)

R. Mordenti, "Quaderni del carcere" di A. Gramsci, in Letteratura italiana: Le opere, IV.2, dir. da A. Asor Rosa, Einaudi, Torino 1996, pp. 553-629.

In addition:

F. Antonini, Cosmopolitismo, nazionale-popolare e corporativismo. Gramsci e il problema della modernità politica, "Filosofia politica", 2021, n. 1, pp. 133-52

A. B. Davidson, Gramsci and Reading Machiavelli, "Science & Society", Vol. 37, 1973, n. 1, pp. 56-80

F. Frosini, Gramsci e la filosofia. Saggio sui Quaderni del carcere, Roma, Carocci, 2003 (cap. 8)

F. Frosini, Luigi Russo e Georges Sorel: sulla genesi del "moderno Principe" nei "Quaderni del carcere" di Antonio Gramsci, "Studi storici", 2013, n. 3, pp. 545-90

G. Liguori, Machiavelli politico e rivoluzionario nei "Quaderni" di Antonio Gramsci, in «Filosofia politica», 2019, n. 1, pp. 153-72

L. Paggi, Machiavelli e Gramsci, "Studi Storici", X, 1969, n. 4, pp. 833-76

J. C. Portantiero, Gramsci, lector de Maquiavelo, in Fortuna y Virtud en la República Democrática: Ensayos sobre Maquiavelo, comp. por T. Várnagy, Buenos Aires, CLACSO, 2003, pp. 149-54

A. Premoli, Gramsci, Luigi Russo e l'indirizzo nazional-popolare, "Belfagor", Vol. 37, 1982, n. 5, pp. 497-51

P. Thomas, Gramsci’s Machiavellian Metaphor: Restaging The Prince, in The Radical Machiavelli. Politics, Philosophy, and Language, ed. by F. Del Lucchese, F. Frosini, V. Morfino, Leiden, Brill, 2015, pp. 440-55.