Giuliano Infantino

A sustained engagement with the opening movement of Hegel's Science of Logic, focusing on the transitions from pure indeterminacy to determinate being, becoming, and finitude. The material is approached as an inquiry into the minimal logical structures that make determination, modality, and change intelligible. Emphasis lies on Hegel's analyses of immediacy, negation, and limit, and on the internal dynamics through which categories generate their successors. The seminar situates the Doctrine of Being within debates on metaphysical fundamentality, modal explanation, and the logical presuppositions of any philosophy of nature.

A systematic reconstruction of Hegel's natural philosophy as articulated in the Encyclopaedia. Topics include space, time, matter, motion, and organism, alongside Hegel's critique of the explanatory limits of mechanistic science and mathematically formulated natural laws. Central is the question of nature's inner unity — presupposed by scientific inquiry yet not expressible within the form of natural law. The course positions Hegel's project within early 19th-century scientific debates and contemporary discussions of explanation, lawhood, and metaphysical structure in the philosophy of science.

An exploration of the evolving concept of the nature–spirit relation across key figures of German Idealism and its aftermath. Kant's analysis of natural purposiveness frames the discussion, followed by Hegel's attempt to integrate nature and spirit within a single conceptual logic. Further sessions examine Hölderlin's reflections on unity and estrangement and Marx's critique of alienated human activity. Themes include embodiment, self-consciousness, sociality, normativity, and historical formation.

A guided reading path through classical texts from antiquity to the Enlightenment, structured around problems of metaphysics, mind, knowledge, nature, and freedom. The tutorial reconstructs arguments from Plato and Aristotle through medieval thinkers to Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant, with emphasis on conceptual structure, argumentative strategy, and interpretive accuracy. Short writing exercises cultivate analytical precision and philosophical literacy.

A historical and systematic pathway through major epistemological debates from the early modern period to contemporary analytic theory. Readings include Descartes on certainty, Locke and Hume on the sources of knowledge, Kant on the conditions of possible experience, and later developments in theories of justification, perception, intellectual virtue, and social epistemology. Core distinctions between belief, certainty, knowledge, and evidence are examined alongside scepticism and epistemic normativity.