2025

Modern Thought

Name: Modern Thought
Code: FIL14858L
6 ECTS
Duration: 15 weeks/156 hours
Scientific Area: Philosophy

Teaching languages: Portuguese
Languages of tutoring support: Portuguese
Regime de Frequência: Presencial

Sustainable Development Goals

Learning Goals

At the end of the curricular unit, the students should be able to:
- To identify the main characteristics of modernity compared to antiquity and middle age
- To identify the originality of the thought, the living experience and the representation that modern
man has from
himself
- To master the main concepts of modern and contemporary thought
- To use some of these notions in the hermeneutics of contemporary culture;
- To have read and discussed at least to fundamental texts of modern and contemporary thought
- Students should also become able to participate as active players in the public debate concerning the
relevance
of the philosophical tradition for the ongoing cultural processes of our time

Contents

I. The beginning of a new era
- The loss of the world and the conquest of new territories
- Science as an existential program of conquest of the infinite nature
- The new political order: between Machiavelli and Hobbes
II. Order, rationality, progress: The Enlightenment reaching for the world history
- Harmony and reasonability of nature Vs rational skepticism: Leibniz or Hume
- Natural religion, tolerance and natural rights
- From universal rights to social contract
- The birth of aesthetics or the prehistory of the creating man
- The light of the critique: the self-determination of modern times by Kant

Teaching Methods

The alternation between theoretical expositions and texts analysis aim to systematically introduce the
students to the specifics problematics and concept of modern philosophy

Assessment

TP Classes (assessed through two (2) tests – 80% of final grade); theoretical exposition and debate on
texts (20%)
The examination regime includes a final proof.

Teaching Staff

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