STEFANO VELOTTI

First Semester
Classes begin: Thursday, October 2
Class schedule: Tuesday 6:00-8:00 p.m. classroom II; Thursday 6:00-8:00 p.m. classroom VIII

Office hours in person, room 202 a (from October 2 to December 18, 2025) Thursday 2:45-6:00 p.m.

Aesthetic experience, social actions, and the construction of common sense.
Artworks, festivals, performances, raves, heterotopias: this course, in seminar format, aims to explore certain forms of social action characterized by traits typically associated with aesthetic experience, which usually alter the spatial and/or temporal perception of everyday life. Regarding space in particular, we will analyze and discuss Michel Foucault's texts dedicated to "other spaces," to "heterotopias" ("real places [...] that constitute a sort of counter-places, kinds of utopias effectively realized in which [...] all the other real places found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and subverted"). Foucault himself connects heterotopias to "heterochronies," where, along with space, time is suspended or configured in a peculiar manner, as happens precisely in festivals (on which we will read texts by Aldo Capitini, Furio Jesi, H.G. Gadamer, and others), but also in certain artistic performances (for example, those by Tehching Hsieh, all lasting one year) and in rave parties (on which we will analyze, among others, texts by McKenzie Wark).
The questions that will be raised regarding these phenomena concern their conditions of possibility, their structure, their meaning, their potential attainability and relevance in our time, the role they can play in shifting some coordinates of the dominant common sense, their strength and their limits (a notion, that of "common sense," repeatedly questioned by philosophy, and particularly by Kant, and which here will be revisited through reading the text developed by the “Forum Disuguaglianze e diversità”, Squarci. L’arte nella contesa per il senso comune). These questions are linked to the role of social control, self-control, and their interweaving with the partial but essential dimension of uncontrollability that characterizes human experience and which emerges prominently in these phenomena, making itself visible.

Given the seminar character of the course, students will be invited to give a class presentation (20' approx.) on a topic relevant to the issues analyzed. The presentation will constitute 30% of the final evaluation and will serve to test the ideas that will be developed in the written paper, on which the remaining 70% of the evaluation will be based.
Non-attending students will only be evaluated on the written paper.
The paper (20.000-25.000 characters, spaces included) will focus on the analysis and critical assessment of one or more texts covered in the course. The topic of the paper must be agreed with the teacher on the student's proposal and must be delivered in definitive form at least two weeks before the exam.

ESEMPI DI DOMANDE E/O ESERCIZI FREQUENTI
Since there is no oral exam or written exam with predefined questions, it is not possible to provide examples of questions. However, it should be emphasized that students will need to propose, during the course of the seminar, topics for their oral presentation (in class) drawing inspiration from the themes discussed based on the course texts. This presentation may serve as the basis for writing the final paper.
Non-attending students must submit to the instructor, via email or in person, the outline of the topic they intend to address.

Testi adottati
The texts will be taken from the following books. In some cases, pdfs of the relevant pages will be provided
Capitini, Aldo Il potere di tutti, La nuova Italia, Firenze 1969, con un’introduzione di N. Bobbio.
Barca, F. e Zabatino, A. (eds.), Squarci. L’arte nella contesa per il senso commune, Fondazione Feltrinelli, Milano 2025.
Foucault, Michel, Eterotopia (1967), Mimesis, Milano 2018.
Gadamer, Hans Georg, L’attualità del bello. L’arte come gioco, simbolo, festa, (1975) Marietti, Bologna 2021.
Jesi, Furio, ll tempo della festa(1977), Nottetempo, Milano 2023.
Velotti, Stefano, Sotto la soglia del controllo, Laterza, Roma Bari 2024.
Wark, Mckenzie, Raving, Nero, Roma 2023.

Frontal teaching of the texts and topics covered. Oral presentations by the participants.Seminar discussion of the topics covered with possible “flipped classroom” experiments.
Attending the course is highly recommended

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Second Semester

Kant and the critical foundation of modern aesthetics.
Aesthetics emerged in Europe in the 18th century (“the century of criticism”) and found its foundational text in Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment. The course aims to offer an analytical reading of the entire first part of the work, the “Critique of the Aesthetic Faculty of Judgment,” against the background of the debate of the time. Following an introduction to the main currents of thought in Kant’s intellectual context, the course provides a concise overview of his philosophical development, with the aim of clarifying the motivations that led to the composition of his third critical work, the Critique of the Power of Judgment—the detailed textual analysis of which forms the core of the course. This work had an importance that can hardly be overestimated, not only for the aesthetic thought of his contemporaries and of German idealism, but for the entire philosophical tradition in general, up to the present day. Indeed, the text is indispensable not only for any reflection addressing the problem of taste, art, creativity, beauty and the sublime, but more generally, that of making sense of experience. The aesthetic, epistemological, ethical and political thought of our contemporary times continues to revisit this Kantian work, whose implications still seem fruitful and inexhaustible. In addition to the Kantian text, students will be required to study one of the listed optional works.

The course includes a final oral examination. The oral examination will be conducted from the punctual and in-depth commentary of passages of the student’s choice and will assess his or her ability to analyze the text punctually, both from a technical point of view (terminological and conceptual), and reformulating it in non-technical language, connecting it to the rest of the thought of the author. Beginning, then, with the commentary on the chosen passage, the exam will cover the entire program. In order to pass the tests the student will have to demonstrate that he/she: 1. knows the content of the text covered; 2. is able to return it clearly, correctly mastering the specialized vocabulary used by the author; 3. is able to identify the most relevant theoretical junctures and to discuss them critically; 4. is able to independently elaborate an argument related to the content covered. Satisfaction of points 1 and 2 is a necessary condition for passing the exam. Grades above 27 will be awarded to those students whose papers satisfy all four points indicated.

ESEMPI DI DOMANDE E/O ESERCIZI FREQUENTI
Choose a passage from the text under consideration, read it aloud, explain why you chose it (what is its importance and role within the work), what it means, what problems it raises, how it can be reformulated. Is it possible to give an example that illustrates its validity? Is it possible to raise objections to the author's way of arguing? What connections does the passage have with the rest of the text? What does the author mean by the phrase “xy”?

Lectures with reconstruction of the context and reading, analysis and commentary of the texts. Reference will be made to the original texts. Active student participation is highly encouraged and will be stimulated throughout the lessons.
Attending the course is highly recommended.

TESTI ADOTTATI

1) Immanuel Kant, Critica della facoltà di giudizio, Einaudi, Torino 1999 (recommended edition). Only the following parts: Preface by Kant, Introduction by Kant (§§ I-IX), §§ 1-60.
2) One book of your choice from the following texts:
Stefano Catucci, Sul filo, Quodlibet, Macerata 2024
Andrea D’Ammando, Emilio Garroni. Crisi e critica delle arti contemporanee, Quodlibet, Macerata 2025
Paolo D’Angelo, Estetica, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2011.
Emilio Garroni, Estetica. Uno sguardo-attraverso, (1992), Castelvecchi, Roma 2022.
Tommaso Morawski (ed.), Kant and Culture Studies on Kant’s Philosophy of Culture, Sapienza Università editrice 2022 (https://www.editricesapienza.it/sites/default/files/6088_Morawski_Kant_C...)
Stefano Velotti, La filosofia e le arti. Sentire, pensare, immaginare, Laterza, Roma-Bari (2012), 2022.
Stefano Velotti, Sotto la soglia del controllo. Pratiche artistiche e forme di vita, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2024.
 

http://www.lettere.uniroma1.it/users/stefano-velotti