Spring 2014 Philosophy of Italian Culture Study Questions

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JAN 14

1st day - no study questions

JAN 16

1. How does "Girlfriend in a Coma" (GIC) good and bad qualities of Italian culture today?(within each segment of the film, identify the causes and explanations given for each aspect).
2. In what ways does the film confirm or disconfirm your ideas of Italy? What, in particular, was surprising in the film? What did you most appreciate?
3. What is the function of truth, honesty, creativity, community, law, and work in Italy's positive and negative conditions?
4. Why and how is it problematic to criticize a culture as opposed to the political decisions of its leaders?

JAN 21

Part Two

1. Why does Wilson think he can explain the general and unique characteristics of culture by looking at our evolutionary past?
2. Specifically, what sorts of task and functions might we expect culture to regulate based on our best evolutionary account of human eusociality?
3. How does culture potentially develop from a group and multi-level selection model of human evolution?
4. Is tribalism endemic to human culture? How does it vary across cultures?
5. What characterizes Italy in the first half of the 19th Century and what circumstances and events were particularly determining for its future?
6. What were the major objectives of Italian patriots in this period?
7. What role did Garibaldi, Mazzini, Cavour and Vittorio Emanuele II play in the unification and who would it in particular ways have been satisfied or disappointed?

JAN 23

1. What is Marx's basic analysis of capitalism and culture?
2. How do Marxists theorize "crises" of capitalism?