29424 - Seminars (1) (LM) (G.E)

Course contents

For a History of the Concept of Destiny: From the Homeric Heroes to Cicero’s De Fato

The Seminar will take place in the Second Semester, Fourth Period.

Hours:

Tuesday, 3-5pm, Classroom C (Via Zamboni, 34);

Wednesday, 11am-1pm, Classroom C;

Friday, 11am-1pm, Classroom C.

 

Start: Tuesday, April 1 2025, 3pm, Classroom C.

 

Seminar programme

This seminar will take the form of a reality task. The reality task is a challenge for students and young people in training that has been progressively accepted by the Italian School as a useful tool to test and evaluate the degree of responsibility and autonomy of the student in combining the different knowledge and skills acquired during their studies, applying them to one or more situations specific to the real world. The task consists in simulating – on a smaller scale – a complex situation that raises a real problem to be solved, and therefore has an essential interdisciplinary character. Extending the reality task to the university environment allows to reduce the gap between simulation and reality: the proposed task is a research exercise that completes, integrating them, the curricular internship activities, offering master’s students the opportunity to experience university work, transforming themselves, for the duration of the task, into young researchers.

The seminar topic will be the relationship between necessity and fate or destiny, on the one hand, and what we today call ‘freedom’, on the other. The ancient Greeks, who did not use the Greek word corresponding to the English ‘freedom’ (eleutheria) to indicate the freedom to act, but only to refer to freedom from constraint (freedom from slavery, first and foremost), preferred to contrast ‘necessity’ (ananke) and ‘destiny’ (heimarmene) with the expression ‘that which depends on us’ (in Greek eph’hemin, in Latin id quod est in nobis). It is the philosophical problem known by the reversible binomial ‘Free Will and Determinism’ or ‘Determinism and Free Will’, whose origins we will investigate in the ancient world, starting from the fate of the Homeric heroes up to – at least – the work on which the students will carry out the task of reality: the short treatise by Marcus Tullius Cicero on fate. In a now famous essay, the contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel converted the problem of Free Will into the following question:

 

“Suppose you’re going through a cafeteria line and whwn you come to the desserts, you hesitate between a peach and a big wedge of chocolate cake with creamy icing. The cake looks good, but you know it’s fattening. Still, you take it and eat it with pleasure. The next day you look in the mirror or get on the scale and think, ‘I wish I hadn’t eaten that chocolate cake. I could have had a peach instead.’

‘I could have had a peach instead.’ What das that mean, and is it true?” (Nagel 1987, p. 47)

 

What exactly ‘I could have’ means? Through this simple question, Nagel managed to show the daily and pervasive nature of the problem: it is something that concerns all of us and our everyday life, therefore it is of crucial importance.

The first part of the seminar includes a series of presentations by specialists in ancient philosophy. Each presentation will last one hour and will be followed by another hour of group discussion, in order to retrace the first fundamental stages in the history of the concept of destiny, examining the different theories, the aporias they raise and the possible answers provided by subsequent theories; a short preparatory reading will be suggested in view of each meeting. The second part of the seminar will instead be curated by the students who, distributed in working groups, in pairs or individually – based on the number of participants – will read and present to the class the most relevant passages of Cicero’s De Fato, applying to the analysis of the Ciceronian text what they have learned from the dialogue with the specialists. Each group, pair or individual student will be followed by a tutor.

The aim of the seminar is therefore learning how to carry out the profession of a university researcher and in particular to acquire two different orders of skills: the ability to discuss a classical philosophical topic in a synchronic and diachronic way; and the ability to give a presentation in a reading seminar of a philosophical work.

The detailed program of activities will be published before the seminar starts.

 

* Attendance is mandatory (at least 12 sessions out of 15).

** Any supplementary activities (conferences, seminars, etc.) will be reported on the Filosofia Antica a Bologna Facebook page.

Readings/Bibliography

Texts

• Cicerone, De Fato, Introduzione, edizione, traduzione e commento di Stefano Maso, Roma: Carocci, 2014.

Critical Readings

• Aldo Magris, Destino, provvidenza, predestinazione: Dal mondo antico al Cristianesimo, Morcelliana, 2023.
• Thomas Nagel, Libero arbitrio, in Id., Una brevissima introduzione alla filosofia: I grandi interrogativi della mente umana (1987), Prefazione di Salvatore Veca, trad. it. di Antonella Bebussi, Milano: il Saggiatore, 1989, pp. 59-70.

* The bibliography can be supplemented.

Teaching methods

LECTURES

Adopted methods:

• Conferences by specialists.
• Group discussion.

PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING SEMINAR

• Editing guidelines.
• Reading essay of an ancient work: form and contents.

SLOW READING SEMINAR

Adopted methods:

• Slow reading of the sources in the original language.
• Group work.
• Drafting of a handout.
• Oral presentations.
• Group discussion.

Assessment methods

EXAM PROGRAMME

The exam includes one of these two tests, chosen by the student:

(1) The written test consists of a paper concerning the ancient work read and discussed during the seminar. The paper must be at least 5 maximum 7,5 standard Word pages, plus the bibliography. During the seminar the details will be clarified.

(2) The oral exam includes the study of the following texts:

(a) Cicerone, De fato (see above, Testi/Bibliografia).

(b) A monograph or two short essays concerning one of the topics covered during the seminar, to be agreed with the teacher.

 

EXAM EVALUATION

The exam will be considered overall sufficient only if the final test (oral or written) and the oral presentation (individual or group) held during the seminar will be both considered as sufficient. 

 

* Students with SLD or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is necessary to contact the relevant University office with ample time in advance: the office will propose some adjustments, which must in any case be submitted 15 days in advance to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of these in relation to the teaching objectives.

Teaching tools

• Handouts and slides.
• Partition diagrams and concept maps.
• Handbooks.
• Web sites.
• TLG, databases and bibliographical repertoires.

Office hours

See the website of Carlotta Capuccino