HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

Single discipline educational activity

Course Sheet

Course code:

MF0104

Academic Year of enrolment:

2020

Year of supply:

2021/2022

Type of Course:

Characterising

Degree:

Course of 2nd Cycle Degree in PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES

Disciplinary Sector:

HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

Location:

CHIETI

Credits:

Programme Year:

Professor and Collaborators:

FEOLA Giuseppe

Cycle:

First semester

Hours of classroom activity:

Individual study hours:

171

Prerequisites:

Acquaintance with the main conceptual and ideological structures and with the main material aspects of the Ancient Greek approach to the world.

Objectives

Being able to understand the semantic implications of the philosophic and scientific terminology of ancient philosophers and scientists.
To be able to immedesimate in the point of view of ancient scientists and philosophers, by seeing the problems they tried to solve from their own point of view.
To understand the metaphors from which the explanatory models used by ancient scientists and philosophers were derived.
To get an acquaintance with the main conceptual structures and argumentative strategies used by ancient philosophers and scientists in their theories.
To grasp the similarities and differences between ancient, medieval, modern and nowadays thought.
To be able to do an articulated and meaningful discourse about single ancient philosophers and about the main themes of ancient philosophy, and about the interpretations XIX and XX century scholars gave of their works.

Contents

Starting from Homer, and passing through archaic and classical cultures and cultural practices, we will examine the ways in which the Greek thought moved its first steps in the description of the lives of non-human animals. With Aristotle, with which we will deal for a huge part of the course, zoology becomes a science, of which we will explore the main themes and concepts.

Extended Syllabus

By “animal life” we will here mean not only the life of non-human animals, but the whole group of the life functions usually (both by us and by ancient Greeks) attributed to all the entities that Aristotle calls “animals” (zô(i)a). We will exclude from our research the Greek thought about animal anatomy (the animal body considered as mere object), the Greek thought about plants and the Greek thought about that kind of life-functions that were considered peculiar to human animals. We will concentrate on the way in which, from Homer to late Antiquity, the Greeks used to describe the behaviours, the life functions, the cognitive functions that were considered to be typical of (and common to) that kind of entities that still today we call “animals”.
Starting from Homer, whose depictions of non-human animals denote a careful observation and a semy-theoretical attitude, and in which we find relevant hints of conceptualization of the differences / resemblances between the human species and the other species, we will see the lyric, tragic, prosastic descriptions of animal, and we will discuss the amount of information we can extract from them about the beliefs of the writers and their publics. We will then treat Plato, the first thinker who explicitly articulated, in a philosophical perspective, the difference between humans animals and non-human animals. With Aristotle, whose corpus is devoted for ¼ to zoological researches, the interest in animal world comes to its scientific step: non human animals, also the wild ones, cease to be just objects of hunting, sporadical observations for pratical aims, manipulation, myth, and becomes a theoretical entity whose ontological status has a pivotal role in all aspects of philosophy: logic, epistemology, natural science, metaphysics, ontology, ethics. What is an animal? What distinguishes an animal from a living being which is not an animal? What distinguishes human animals from other animals? Which is the best way to describe and explain animal life? And finally: which is the relation that the single animal holds with its own environment – both the habitat in which it lives and that it explores with its senses, and the cosmos, which is the macro-habitat in which all living beings are included ? And can the cosmos, in its turn, be considered as a living being? Can it be considered as an animal?

Recommended Bibliography

The teacher will try to provide in advance the text of each lecture. Beside these texts, the bibliography consists in:
books to be partially examined or overviewed
they must be at hand during the lessons, in order to understand the professor’s lectures; but the exam will not be about these texts
Homer, Iliad, a translation of your choice.
Homer, Odissey, a translation of your choice.
Lami, A., I Presocratici. Testimonianze e frammenti da Talete ad Empedocle, BUR.
A complete translation of Plato’s works (one of your choice), e.g. one among these: Platone, Tutti gli scritti, a cura di G. Reale, Rusconi, or Platone, Tutte le opere, a cura di E. Maltese, Newton Compton.
Aristotele, Fisica, a cura di G. Radice, Bompiani.
Aristotele, Metafisica, a cura di G. Reale, Bompiani.

Foreign students will be allowed to substitute these Italian translations of Ancient works with English or French ones.

Bibliography for the exam (G. Feola’s texts will be provided by the professor, in pdf format)
Platone, Teeteto, a cura di F. Ferrari, BUR, con testo greco a fronte (just single pieces)
Aristotele, L’anima, a cura di G. Movia, Bompiani, con testo greco a fronte; or an English or French translation and commentary of the De anima.
Aristotele, Il sonno e i sogni. Il sonno e la veglia, I sogni, La divinazione durante il sonno, a cura di L. Repici, Marsilio, con testo greco a fronte; or an English or French translation of these Greek texts.
One of your choice between G. Feola, In confinio sensus et intellectus. APo. B 19 in “Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale”, 20, 2009, pp. 73-93, and G. Feola, Aristotele sull’intenzionalità elementare : la sensazione dei ‘proprî’ e la teoria della ‘medietà’, in “Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 25, 2014, pp. 1-28.
G. Feola, Phàntasma e Phantasìa. Illusione e apparenza sensibile nel De anima di Aristotele (Phàntasma and phantasìa. Illusion and sensory appearance in Aristotle’s De Anima), Loffredo editore, Napoli, 2012.
G. Feola, Orexis and phantasìa in Aristotle’s account of animal movement, in AAVV., Предизвикателството Аристотел. (The Challenge Aristotle), D. Gicheva-Gocheva, I. Kolev, H. Panicidis eds., Sofia, Sofia University Press "St. Kliment Ohridski", 2017, pp. 559-576.
One of your choice between G. Feola, De An. 1.1, 403a25 and the lógoi ényloi: an Heraclitean heritage in Aristotle’s psychology in AAVV., The Soul/Body Problem in Plato and Aristotle, R. Medda, D. Zucca eds., Akademie Verlag, 2019, pp. 95-113, and G. Feola, On the reciprocal translatability of the hylomorphic and instrumentalist descriptions of the living being, in « Revue Roumaine de Philosophie », 64-1, 2020, pp. 73-83.
G. Feola, Aristotle on the life of god, and on eternity of life and time, in « Journal of Hellenic Religion », 13, 2020, pp. 77-113.
One of your choice between G. Mingucci, La fisiologia del pensiero in Aristotele, il Mulino, Bologna, 2015, and D. Zucca, L' anima del vivente. Vita, cognizione e azione nella psicologia aristotelica, Morcelliana, 2015.
The texts (professor’s lectures) that the professor may send you.
Foreign students will be allowed to substitute Italian works with English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese ones: foreign students who will be willing to substitute Italian works with foreign ones will need to negotiate their own choices with the professor.

Teaching Methods

Frontal lecture (either online or presentially).
The teacher will try to provide the texts of his lectures with at least one day of advance.
Commentary on ancient texts. Comparison between ancient texts, and between ancient and modern or contemporary texts.
Debate.

Evaluation methods

Verification of learning:

Way of examination: dialogue.
Way in which the learning process will be tested: maieutical dialogue, followed by an exam of the texts.
Valutazione: final grade

Contacts/More Information

Università degli Studi
"G. d'Annunzio"

Chieti - Pescara

Aree