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

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?
3. What did Marxists of Gramsci's time think about the origins of World War I?
4. Why does Mazzini prefer to talk of duties?
5. Why is association so important?
6. In what terms does Mazzini perceive of progress and liberty and how does these ideas distinguish him from other 19th-Century thinkers concerned with democracy and workers?
7. How does Mazzini envision the future of Italian workers, and with what means could they actively bring it about?
8. What aspects of "On the duties of man" can you relate to Mazzini's vision of the unification, and what points lead beyond the objective of national unity?
9. What idea of liberty is depicted in ‘Liberty” and how does this differ both from the one Gariablid brought to Sicily and the one envisioned by Mazzini?
10. What does “Liberty” suggest regarding some of the limitations of unification process?

JAN 28

1. What historical events and political circumstances conditioned the Turin communists' leadership and Gramsci's theoretical reflection on revolutionary action? In what ways did the Northern and the Southern situation differ?
2. How are we to understand Gramsci's concepts of "hegemony" and "historical bloc" and in what ways do they relate to the specific socio-economic and cultural context with which he engaged?
3. Why were Gramsci critical of syndicalist and southern intellectuals such as Croce? Why, on the other hand, did he embrace workers councils and the work of Piero Gobetti?
4. What were according to Gramsci the major problems in the South and what would be required to change the peasants' situation?
5. In what ways did Carlo Levi perceive of the Southern Problem and how does the solution he proposes differ from that of Gramsci?

JAN 30

1. According to Wood and Farrell, in what ways in Italian culture and political legitimacy anomalous?
2. How should we contextualize the Mafia within Italian culture?
3. What is prepared learning and gene-culture co-evolution?
4. What does "cognitive archaeology" tell us about some of the distinctive features of human culture?
5. How do morality and honor relate to individual and group selection, according to Wilson?What is starting point for Eco’s reflections?
6. What is the starting point for Eco's article?
7. What motivated the first anthropological studies?
8. What are, according to Eco, the major objective of anthropology?
9. Why would it be hard to claim the superiority of certain cultures?
10. What would be the benefits of inviting more non-Western anthropologists to study the West?
11. What are Eco’s thoughts on tolerance and diversity?

FEB 4

1. What kind of revolution was Fascism?
2. What is honor culture and how does Davis represent its natural opposition to the State?