Summer 2014 Philosophy of Italian Culture Class Notes 1

Class Dates

Monday May 19, 2014

First Day notes

• Introductions

• Name, major, goals, motivation, relevant experiences.

• Course overview

• Course topics and research questions TH
• Movie distribution MA
• Wiki Instruction MA
• Assignments in this course TH

• Start Course

• Show clip from GIC
• Answer questions for Tuesday

Tuesday May 20, 2014

Davies, "6 Things Wrong with Italy"

• Economy:
• A stagnating economy, corruption, organized crime, political apathy, misogyny, youth unemployment
• "the economy having contracted for the last six consecutive quarters and languished in more than a decade of almost non-existent growth. Unemployment is at more than 11%; for under-25s, it is more than 36%. Italy has the second highest ratio of sovereign debt to GDP in the EU."
• lack of competitiveness --
• Treatment of women: "Italy's female employment rate is, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 46.5% – better only than Greece, Mexico and Turkey among advanced economies, and 12 percentage points below the EU average."
• Justice system: "Italy is one of the most litigious countries in Europe, with more than 2.8m cases brought in 2011 alone, and has by far the most lawyers of any EU country – around 240,000" also, overcrowded prisons.
• Organized Crime: "The 'Ndrangheta, for instance, has its roots in Calabria but dominates the European cocaine trade and the huge contracts being put out for tender at Milan's Expo 2015 are under particular scrutiny for signs of mafia involvement." (new "Tangentopoli"): update May 2014 executives questioned/jailed; anti corruption task force assigned by PM Renzi to former Antimafia magistrate Raffaele Cantone
• Politics: lack of stable governments (Wikipedia: over 50 since WWII)
• North/South division: "GDP per person is more than 40% lower in the south than in the centre and north "

• Act one la mala Italia:
• political corruption

• extra-state and state terrorism
• organized crime, political connivance, control of elections, money washing in legal enterprises

• Bomb attacks on antimafia magistrates Falcone and Borsellini, 1992,
• Ndrangheta, controllo territoriale; justice and education to fight organized crime
• origins of B's money

• Discrimination of women
• Liva in Taranto, jobs and lives depend on bad government and bad capitalism

• Act II Buona Italia

• The South Project - confiscated property becomes community for differently abled

• GOEL female workforce

• If not now when: women's resistance to B

• Familial/good capitalism
• Marchionne + Elkmann, FIAT

• Ferraro, nutella. Ethics of Sharing with community

• Eataly, slow food, local, fair

• Cultura, Torino museum of cinema occupation of theatres

• Act III Sloth
• Sloth the major and worst of sins; easily absolvable
• Berlusconicmo has put everyone in the purgatory; all are equally involved and all are as solved

• Mauizio Viroli - Machiavelli - church has made weakness "sancta religione: (holy religion) - Leaders of the Unification (1861) were morally strong and critical of the church's tendency to make deals with political power

• Umberto Eco: the lacking sense of the state, church's influence on politics

• Brain drain - new immigration patterns
• search for opportunity and meritocracy; repatriation as import of intellectual resources; attention to Italy reinforces democracy
• Eataly, slow food, local, fair

• truth: Saviano segment, also effect of church (viroli)

• honesty
• creativity
• community: women's movement, disabled community,
• law
• work

Wednesday May 21, 2014

Il risorgimento

• Wood and Farell

Introduction 

• Anomaly: e.g. One party government  of First Republic (1948-1992 tangentopoli)
• lacking monopoly of violence 
• Idiosyncratic attribution of legitimacy 
• Contesting voices and dissent against the state's monopoly of legitimacy from different groups 
• Risorgimento:,state speared,absent or adversary to many 
• Strong regional identities 
• Antonio Gramsci failed revolution: lack of popular culture to forge unity 
• Refusal of federalism during the Risorgimento,

Power sharing with the mafia 

• Christian democrats 
• Cooperation minstries and masoneries P2; politicians extreme left wing forces 
• Connivance with organised,crime syndicates,of different nature - increased legitimacy of the illegitimate part 
• Corruption and acceptance of violence undermine appeals to,justice and order 
• Bruschetta's testimony    A culture in the antropological,sense; structures of command   (pyramidal)
• The family is the state of the Sicilian Sciascia 
• Diivisiond North South; imposition of,Piemontese law founded on French Rev. :*European liberalism 
• Honour/omertà  the major currency in mafia culture 
• Exchange of votes - electoral backing exchange for free enterprise 

• Following the Congress of Vienna/Restoration of Pre-revolutionary Europe 1815, 1861,1870, 1919
• http://tuttojedi.blogspot.com/2011/05/cartina-geopolitica-dellitalia-nel-1815.html

D'Epiro Giuseppe Garibaldi

• The seven pre-unitary states - Austria dominates Lombardo Veneto directly; indirect rule over the duchies in central Italy.
• Regno Lombardo-Veneto (Milano, Venezia, Trentino, Hapsburg Empire.)
• Ducato di Parma e Vicenza
• Ducato di Modena e Reggio
• Granducato (archduchy) di Toscana

• Regno di Sardegna (Sardegna and Piedmont)
• Regno delle due Sicilie (Napoli, Palermo, led by Borboni of Spanish origins )
• Papal state

• Mazzini patriotic idealism; exiled revolutionary founded Giovine italia in 1831; visions of unity as republic
• Elected ruling Triumvit in 1849 Rome republic
• Stirs popular unrest following Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily

• King Vittorio Emanuele - monarch of French origins; claims Southern Italy from Garibaldi in fear the Mazzini will establish a republic
• King of Italy in 1861; Rome becomes capital in 1870

• Count Cavour real-politic, Turinese aristocrat and King Vittorio Emanuele's prime minister. Allows Garibaldi's return to Italy and takes advantage of Garibaldi's expedition

• Garibaldi bravery; progressive political ideas, born in Nice, Annexed to Piedmont.
• Member of GIovine Italian and part of Mazzini's anti-piedmont insurrection in Genova 1833, both condemned to death, and 1848 revolution in Milan
• Declared a Colonel in Republic of Rome 1849; forced to retreat in 1851; Austrian and Napoleon III's French army in defense of the Pope's return
• 1859 Fight for the King as head of volunteer brigade against Austrian rule of Lombardy
• 1860 leads the spedizione dei mille - volunteers of diverse regional and social origins
• http://taglidotme.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/la-spedizione-dei-mille.jpg
• Benefits from the Sicilian's opposition to Bourbon rulers and inspires popular unrest when Sicily is conquered
• 1866 Leads volunteers in battle against Austria
• 1867Defeated and arrested in attempt to conquer Rome

Thursday May 22, 2014

Mazzini's Argument in, "On the Duties of Man"

• Duties before Rights: Why?

• Competing voices (from revolutionary Europe): improve the material well being of oppressed workers. rights first.
• But, says Mazzini, you can have rights without the possibility of exercising them. privileged classes can use rights talk to oppress (82)
• material well being cannot be the end of social revolution.

• Mazzini's "cosmic compolitanism" (linking eschatology (God's plan for humans) to political life)

• Knowing God's plan -- through individual conscience -- fallible and variable
• Need to work by "association" through a concept of Humanity
• Duties aren't merely negative. But positive to promote social well-being
• Need to invoke the "Reason of Humanity" (a kind of collective social conscience which is progressive)
• Duties to state and family are still egoistic. Need to be informed by God's plan which is universal humanism.

• p. 90 - quasi-Hegelian history of our self-knowledge of God's plan

• Fetishism, polytheism, Christianity

• Liberty (96-99)

• List of liberties
• Liberty is a means, not an end

• Conclusion

• More than a summary, actually a list of legitimate state functions, interestingly, including confiscation of Church property!
• Role of government is formative: big role in education, support of Worker's Associations

Gentile

• Fascism – totalitarian aim to effect an anthropological revolution; Mussolini desired to create a “new man” for the Italian image. Saw themselves as ‘builders of the future.’
• Risorgimento, movements of nationalism, World War I. Mussolini desired to reshape “traditional defects” of Italians.
• Mussolini believed you had to start from birth and shape the Italians throughout their lives to change “not only somatic features or height, but also character.” This could be accomplished with a

 strong leader and a revolution. Utopia-esk.

• The Fascist principle – the state creates the nation. Took over the lives of Italians from a young age. Everything is the state, everything human or spiritual desire does NOT exist – “citizen soldier”
• Opera Nazionale Balilla (1926) – laboratory experiment that raised children from birth in an environment to be trained as soldiers for life.
• Different classes of people established. Two classes: those chosen to be part of the new aristocracy and those raised as docile instruments to work for the totalitarian state.
• “New woman” was a successful wife and mother who bred many citizen soldiers, but could also be cittadina militante – female militant citizen.
• 2nd half of the 1930s – anti-bourgeois campaign and intensified racism – strengthened the idea of Fascists and anti-Fascists, not compatible with each other.
• “New Man” was collective and organized, education by totalitarian pedagogy to identify spontaneously with the community and the state. Freed from individualism and supported collectivism.
• Mussolini saw the Italian people as his antagonist, the church had softened him. Made their change his life goal until the fall of the regime. Military failure in WWII started to drive him crazy – you can’t

 turn a people that has been an anvil for 16 centuries into a hammer with one revolution. He felt failed by his people. Succeeded for 2 decades and attracted Italians.

Wednesday May 28, 2014

Who is the Best Super Hero

• Spiderman
• Iron Man
• Superman
• Green Lantern
• Batman

The winner is...

Monday June 2, 2014

Holiday

Tuesday June 24, 2014

Holiday