Foundations Of European Thought 2015/2016

The course aims at providing students with a common background about the origin and development of the most important features peculiar to European thought, and at giving them the intellectual instruments to understand the issues which make Europe different from, or similar to, other cultures. Students will gain knowledge of the foundations and conceptual base of western political systems (democracy), science, law, philosophy, ethics, and other issues, in their mutual relation.

the birth and first development of democracy as a political system

the method of scientific research and the notion of science. Axiomatic-deductive method vs. arguments based on images

the role of religion in society and its competitiveness towards rational thought

Inference, induction, deduction.

the circulation of knowledge and the idea of progress

C. Ginzburg, Clues: Roots of a Scientific Paradigm, in C. Ginzburg, Clues, myth and the historical paradigm, Johns Hopkins University Press 1989, pp. 96-125; M. Finley, Democracy ancient and modern, London 1985; R. Kapuscinki, Travels with Herodotus, Knopf, New York 2004. Selected pages from E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley 1951; G.E.R. Lloyd–N. Sivin, The way and the word. Science and medicine in ancient China and Greece, Yale 2003. Further bibliography and other material will be made available during the class.