Learning outcomes
This course is an introduction to the most important themes and the most influential tendences of thought in the Enlightenment, through the study of a selection of texts and of specific secondary literature.
Course contents
Rousseau: state of nature and origin of inequality.
The course is monographic, and aims to illustrate the Rousseau’s thought, and particulary the Discourse of the Origin of Inequality Among Men (1755), which will be carefully commented.
Reccomended or required readings
1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discorsi. Sulle scienze e sulle arti - Sull’origine della disuguaglianza fra gli uomini, introduzione e note di Luigi Luporini, Milano, Rizzoli, 2007;
2. Annamaria Loche, Immagini dello stato di natura in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2003;
3. Gianni Francioni, Gli illuministi e lo Stato. I modelli politici fra utopia e riforma, Como-Pavia, Ibis, 2012.
To sit the exam, in addiction to the books listed above, students unable to attend the lectures will also be queried on Robert Wokler, Rousseau, Bologna, il Mulino, 2001.