Methodologies in Philosophy
Code
73203100
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Filosofia
Credits
10
Teacher in charge
Diogo Pires Aurélio
Weekly hours
2
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) To acquire an advanced knowledge of the diversity of concepts, perspectives and currents in the problematic field of the relationship between philosophical objects and access procedures
b) To obtain a deep notion of the main methodological and doctrinal conflicts which have stabilized in the contemporary thought.
c) To acquire the ability to establish as strictly as possible the relations (of influence, opposition, etc.) which link the different methodological and doctrinal conceptions in contemporary thought.
d) To acquire the ability to delimit as systematically as possible the links and fractures that stress the contrast, the rupture and the continuity of the relationship between problems and methods both in contemporary times and before.
e) To acquire the skills to develop an autonomous perspective, in the framework of the methodological questions that are linked to the corresponding problems, and simultaneously to test it by creating consistent concepts.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
The syllabus is focused on a possible link between Ethics by Spinoza and On Certainty by Wittgenstein, as two experiments of thinking which question the limits of knowledge from an immanentist view, therefore launching ways of thinking that break with all kind of transcendence. Being «experiments» in which the grounds of thought and being are called into question, both Spinoza and Wittgenstein show the existent complicity between philosophical systems and the methodologies through which they are made up, hence raising the recurrent question about the very nature of philosophy.
Bibliography
Benett, J. (1984). A study of Spinoza’s Ethics, Cambridge (MA): Hackett Publishing.
Curley, E. (1988). Behind the Geometrical Method. An essay on Spinoza’s Ethics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Macherey, P. (1998,1997,1995,1997,1994). Introduction à l´Ethique de Sinoza, 5 vols. Paris: PUF.
Moore, G. E. (1959). Proof of an External World. In Philosophical Papers, New York: Macmillan
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2007). Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, London: Palgrave Macmillan
Moyal-Sharrock, D., and Brenner, D. (2007).Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pires Aurélio, D.(2014). O mais natural dos regimes. Espinosa e a democracia, Lisboa: Temas e Debates
Spinoza (1925).Tractatus de intellectus emendatione; Ethica more geometrico demonstrate In Carl Gebhardt (ed.) Spinoza Opera, vol. II, Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969), Über Gewissheit. On certainty. Biligual ed. by G. Anscombe e G. von Wright. Oxford: Blackwell.
Teaching method
Two main activities are developed in the course. During the first hour, there is an explanation of theoretical contents that will be followed by the presentation of questions by the students and a wide debate on the previously presented issues. In the second part of the class, there will be room for reading, interpretation and analysis of the texts on which the presented contents were based.
Evaluation method
The evaluation is chiefly focused on the elaboration of a paper that shall be previously proposed to and supervised by the lecturer (80%). Attendance and participation in class are also taken into account (20%).