Sociology of Italian Culture, Gonzaga, Fall 2010

Well, yes: I like to take and post class pictures (the one I have). Last semester I was lucky: I had two great classes. Unfortunately I do not have the Identity & Culture class picture (International Studies Institute). Each time I proposed to take the picture some students did not want to, because of the hair, the make up etc. It is a pity and in the future I will be more authoritative for the picture, almost despotic!

Great Students

Surviving Finland: Confessions of an Underachiever.

This is the only occasion I have to share a treasure with all of you. I have many thoughtful autobiographical essays written by my students over the years. And, of course, I keep them all for myself, enshrined. Danielle, who was enrolled in my class Identity and Culture: A Narrative Approach, in the Research Master in Social Sciences (University of Helsinki) published the autobiographical essay in her blog. At the end of the story she writes: “I would like to add a special thanks to Professor Pierluca Birindelli.  It was his assignment to write this autobiographical essay. Thank you, it was better than therapy”. There are many important themes she faces with her beautiful English: self-identity, achievement, cultural differences, etc. I’ve talked and wrote her back, but this is going to remain between the two of us. Let me just say: thank you Danielle! And here you can find her autobiographical essay: Surviving Finland: Confessions of an Underachiever.

Berlusconi Faces Inquiry in Prostitution Case

What’s the top news in Italy this week? The economical crisis? The unemployment rate (30% among young people)? The ongoing Tunisia revolution (30 minutes fly from Sicily)? No. Everybody is, again, talking about Berlusconi. And, again, is a sex scandal. Our prime minister is facing an investigation in a prostitution case involving an under-age nightclub dancer. You can read about this in the New York Times Global Edition. In November Berlusconi denied doing anything improper during one of his parties at his house, and defended himself saying: “It’s better to like beautiful girls than to be gay”. 

The Holistic and Narrative Approach

Here I would like to share an idea for a course that strives to keep together what, unfortunately, is usually held separate: human beings, societies and cultures. A society — and who lives within/outside it — cannot be understood without its culture. And I am not just talking about socio-anthropological culture (values, attitudes etc.); literature, art, high and popular culture need to be addressed all together. The sociologist (cultural anthropologist, psychologist, etc.) shall adopt what I called a “Holistic and Narrative Approach”: social sciences and humanities ought to walk again hand in hand. For instance, I cannot understand Italians, Italian society and Italian culture without historical depth, philosophical insights and, of course, geography: the Italian peninsula stretches into the Mediterranean Sea and constitutes a natural conjunction between West and East. Obviously, in this intellectual enterprise you need to be creative: imagination is fundamental. Let me give you an example: just think about the Mediterranean Sea as the “Web” of a traditional world. You need these metaphors to catch the students sitting in front of you.  Let me give you a much more articulated example with a course description.
Social &Cultural Development from the Early Modern Age to the Age of Scientific Discovery: A Traveller’s View 

The course will have a seminar format. Lectures will introduce the main topic, with the support of slides synthesizing concepts, paradigms, theories and examples extracted from the readings. Sometimes students will carry out in-class exercises (individually or in groups) and report on them. Students’ social and cultural experiences will be used to elaborate concepts raised throughout the course. Therefore I will foster the students’ capacity of linking past, present and future, à la S. Augustine: present of the past, present of the present, present of the future. At the beginning of every week — adopting a maieutic approach — I will start the lesson asking for the students comments upon a social, cultural, political theme of the present that is clearly connected with our cognitive travel in the past. Furthermore, I will use the hermeneutic framework of “travel” and a narrative style to connect all the concepts, theories, paradigms. The course clearly allow for an interdisciplinary approach —including Philosophy, History, Sociology, Psychology and Cultural Anthropology.

Conceptual itinerary
The incipit of the course will focus on the passages dedicated by Dante in the Divine Comedy to Averroes and Avicenna. Then I will move to Al-Farabi underlying his break with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and the passage from metaphysics to methodology (as an anticipation of modernity). Particular attention will be given to al-Farabi’s treatment of the soul’s imaginative faculty and to the realization of “true happiness” in the ideal society (and, of course, to the notion of “vicious” and “virtuous” societies). The concept of “ignorant” societies —where the pursuit of happiness is supplanted by wealth, gratification or power — will offer an interesting comparison with the present of the so called knowledge society. A brief reference to Averroes’s “gender equality” constitutes another interesting link with the present.
Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae will also be introduced by a passage of the Divine Comedy. In this section of the course I will focus on:

-     the clarification of God’s absolute power (transcending any principles of logic, see Aristotle and Averroes);

-     the concept of virtue — the statement “Virtue denotes a certain perfection of a power. Now a thing’s perfection is considered chiefly in regard to its end. But the end of power is act” will lead us toward Machiavelli’s Prince;

-     the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues.

Aquinas’s opposition to non-procreative sexual activity will also be discussed.  Macintyre’s viewpoint (After Virtue) on Aquinas’s virtue ethics (as way to avoid utilitarianism) will be briefly mentioned.

The idea of Niccolò Machiavelli (Prince) as an “originator” of modernity (Leo Strauss 1958) will be discussed and critically tackled. The importance of Machiavelli’s “realism” will be comprehended also through the conceptual lenses of Bacon, Descartes, Rousseau, Hume. Mansfield’s viewpoint on Machiavelli’s Political Science will also be discussed.

Gramsci’s inspiration from Machiavelli’s writings on ethics, morals, and how they relate to the State (Passive Revolution) will conclude this section. Finally — if we are lucky in such imaginary course — I would like to take my imaginary students to see The Mandrake.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and his De hominis dignitate (1486) — the Manifesto of the Renaissance — will complete this part of the course.  Pico’s underlying of the importance of the human quest for knowledge, a key passage for Renaissance humanism — and the universalism of the pursuit of perfection (as moral self-discipline) — will be discussed and linked to key themes of today’s debate upon Globalization: Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism (Rapport 2007). A brief introduction to Utopia, and a possible interpretation of Thomas More’s masterpiece from the youngster human development point of view — a research project that I am carrying on and that is too difficult to explain in two words — will also be made.

Erasmus initial sympathy with Martin Luther’s criticism of the Catholic Church will constitute the incipit for the introduction to the Reformation. Consequently, we will concentrate on the critique contained in De libero arbitrio (1524) and the Martin Luther’s answer De servo arbitrio. The “spirit” of the Reform will be examined and linked to modernity with Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic. Another fil rouge of the course — the student intellectual growth and the vitality of these readings for his/her passage towards adulthood — will be conveyed thorough Eric Erikson’s Young Man Luther. A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (1967) and Erich Fromm’s The Fear of Freedom (1941). Late Luther’s  anti-semitism will conclude this section and, after a brief discussion of  Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust, we will move towards Thomas Hobbes —analyzed through the contributions of Leo Strauss The Political Philosophy of Hobbes; Its Basis and Its Genesis (1936) and Ferdinand Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft.

John Locke (1690) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, will be discussed as one of the origins of modern conception of the concept of identity and self. Locke arguing against both Augustinian and Cartesian view will allow us to touch even these two fundamentals thinkers. The “Tabula Rasa” idea will be examined in profundity and be linked to the past — the influence of the 17^th century Latin translation Philosophus Autodidactus of the Arabic philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Ibn Tufail) — and to the modern thinker  George Herbert Mead (“John Locke”, in  Oberlin Review).
References

Aquinas, Summa theologiae

Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy

Macchiavelli, The Prince

MacIntyre, After Virtue.

Rapport, Cosmopolitan Turn - or Return?

Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration

Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate

Mansfield, Machiavelli's Political Science

Hendrix, The Controversial Luther

Thomas More, Utopia

Erasmus, De libero arbitrio 

Martin Luther, De servo arbitrio

Eric Erikson, Young man Luther

Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes

George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society

Fromm, The Fear of Freedom 

Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust; Does ethic have a chance in a world of consumers

Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft.

Montaigne, Essays

Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe

Calvin, The Necessity of Reforming the Church

The Penguin Atlas of World History, Prehistory to the Eve of the French Revolution; From the French Revolution to the Present

… Have a nice day J

The Myth of Florence. Conflict of Identities in a Changing Urban Landscape

“The Myth of Florence”, a roundtable organized by ASAUI (Association of Scholars at American Universities in Italy),  will take place Wednesday 24th November 2010, 6 PM,  at Chiesa di San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini (Lorenzo de’ Medici Institute, Via Faenza 43). Anthropologists, Sociologists, Art Historians and Architects will portray some peculiar urban, social and cultural features of nowadays Florence – and its legacy with the past. This is the abstract of my intervention “Contemporary collective representations of Florence”.

Renaissance is “the” myth of Florence, shared by people all over the world. The aesthetic appreciation of art is perhaps the main facet guiding people’s expectations in their encounter with our cultural reality. Some other social, political and philosophical aspects of Renaissance, and their relation to the present, are overshadowed. In this speech I will try to point out some possible modern myths guiding both tourists and foreigners in their decision to visit or to live in Florence (for a while or forever). Is it possible to detect some shared, collective representations of contemporary Florence? If that is the case, how are these myths “working” in the midst of the city’s everyday life? Do they differ from some other usual “made in Italy” images? Finally: can we imagine a set of typical (or archetypical) biographical motives leading foreigners to Florence and thus depict some distinctive identity traits?

Education in the 21st Century

The advent of the Internet allows people to engage in a lifelong pursuit of knowledge — for example getting a Master's degree online or using the Internet to participate in dialogue and discussion with a community people would have never otherwise had access to. The Internet is also a place where great thoughts can be collected and distributed. To keep up with tradition, here is a collection of thoughts on the pursuit of knowledge. 

-        Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire (William Butler Yeats).

-        Principles for the development of a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Develop your senses — especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else (Leonardo Da Vinci.).

-        A man is well educated when he knows where to find what he doesn’t know (Georg Simmel).

-        All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price (Juvenal). 

-        In all affairs, it is a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted (Bertrand Russell).

-        The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder... Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world (Albert Einstein).

-        The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes (Marcel Proust).  

-        Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me (Sigmund Freud). 

-        Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties (Erich Fromm).

-        Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination (John Dewey).

-        Mistakes are the portals of discovery (James Joyce). 

-        It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows (Epictetus).

-        Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself (John Dewey).

-        Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants (John W. Gardner)

-        It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education (Albert Einstein).

-        Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself (Chinese Proverb)

-        The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him (Niccolò Machiavelli). 

The Road not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken (Robert Frost, Mountain Interval, 1916).

Almost all critics  thought  the  sigh  to  indicate  regret: “is not  a sigh  of  regret  over  a right  choice;  it  is a  sigh  of  regret  that  both  choices  were  not  possible” (Laurence Perrine, Explicator,  XIX, Feb.,  1961,  Item  28.); according to Eleanor  Sickels  the  poem  is  about  "the  human  tendency  to  wobble  illogically in  decision  and  later  to  assume  that  the  decision  was,  after  all,  logical  and  enormously  important,  but  forever  to  tell  of  it  'with  a sigh'  as depriving  the  speaker  of  who-knows-what  interesting” (Explicator,  Item  28); the  speaker  of  the  poem  is  "one who habitually  wastes  energy  in regretting  any  choice  made: belatedly  but  wistfully  he  sighs  over  the  attractive  alternative  rejected."  (Lawrance  Thompson,  Robert  Frost. Minneapolis, 1959). Then Frost answers to a young girl (Finger 1978)…

"SOMETIME IN  APRIL  of  I925,  while  teaching  at Amherst  College, Robert  Frost  answered  a letter  he had received  from  Crystine Yates,  a young  girl  in Dickson,  Tennessee. According  to  her,  she wrote  Frost  to  inquire  about  the  "sigh"  in  the  last  stanza  of  "The  Road Not  Taken."  Assuming  the  speaker  of  the  poem  to  be  Frost  himself,  she  wanted  to know  whether  the  sigh  meant  that  he regretted  having  chosen  to  be  a poet.  The  following  letter  Frost  wrote in  response  to Ms. Yates's…

Dear  Miss  Yates:

No wonder  you  were  a little  puzzled  over  the  end  of  my  Road  Not Taken.  It  was  my  rather  private  jest  at  the  expense  of  those  who  might think  I would  yet  live  to  be  sorry  for  the  way  I had  taken  in  life.  I  suppose I was  gently  teasing  them.  I'm  not  really  a very  regretful  person,  but  for your solicitousness  on  my  behalf  I'm

your  friend  always

Robert  Frost" 

Finger, Larry L. (1978) Frost's "The Road Not Taken": A 1925 Letter Come to Light, in “American Literature”, Vol. 50, No. 3: 478-479.

International Conference: Young and the Challenges of the Future

Young & Future

The International Conference Young and the Challenges of the Future will take place November 3 and 4, at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.
Inauguration greetings on behalf of the institutions from: Catherine Margaret Ashton (Vice-President of the European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy), Androulla Vassiliou (European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth),  Giorgia Meloni (Italian Minister of Youth). Among many leading European scholars in the field, Marisa Ferrari Occhionero and  Olivier Galland – Director of the “Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique” (CNRS) – will deliver the lecture Adolescence: a new age group? (Social-political Participation and Communication Workshop). In the Workshop  “Consumption, Lifestyles and Cultural Patterns”, I will address my lecture Playing as reality: youngsters experience in late modernity.