teaching

[University of Florence | DILEF - Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia]:
Noetica, cosmologia, escatologia. Per un'introduzione alla storia della filosofia araba medievale
[Storia della filosofia araba medievale]

Second semester, MA students, 36 hours (6 cfu)

Apr-May 2026 (a.y. 2025-2026)

The objective of the course is to introduce students to the history of Arabic-Islamic philosophy by presenting a key set of issues: noetic, eschatology, and cosmology. After a general introduction on the key authors of the Classical phase of Islamic falsafa, the course consists in direct readings of texts by al-Fārābī (Epistle on the Intellect, Risāla fī l-ʿaql) and Avicenna (Immolation Epistle or Epistle on Future Life, al-Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya fī l-maʿād). Through these texts, crucial topics of Islamic philosophy will be introduced, most notably cosmological emanationism, the threefold or fourfold partition of human intellect (in potency, in habitu, in actuality, acquired) and its relationship with the separate agent intellect, and the last fate of human soul after its separation from the body. In conclusion, the key topic of contemplative happiness and the full realisation of human nature via intellectual knowledge will be touched.

[IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca | Doctoral Course MBHT - Mind, Brain, and Human Thought | Track HT - Human Thought]
Science and Perception in Dante’s Commedia
[Medieval Epistemology]

Second semester, PhD students, 10 hours

Mar 2026 (a.y. 2025-2026)

Beside being the culminating masterpiece of medieval Italian literature, Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia is an invaluable source of information on, and collective repository of, late medieval scientific doctrines. Despite being cloaked in poetic language, which is frequently metaphorical yet maintains a remarkable degree of philosophical exactitude, Dante’s Commedia offers the reader a comprehensive array of concepts encompassing astronomy, astrology, medicine, meteorology, geomancy, physics, and mathematics. Moreover, Dante’s poetic representation of the afterlife, particularly in Paradiso, challenges commonly held assumptions about medieval perceptions of the world, truly stretching the limits of what is thinkable and describable. The course will examine some of the scientific ideas and the perceptual tour de force presented in Dante’s poetry, suggesting a more nuanced picture of the medieval intertwinement between philosophy, science, and literature.

[IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca | Doctoral Course MBHT - Mind, Brain, and Human Thought | Track HT - Human Thought]
Medieval Psychology
[Medieval Psychology]

First/second semester, PhD students, 20 hours

Jan-Mar 2026 (a.y. 2025-2026)

Psychology as the “science of the soul” (Greek psyche) is a key domain of ancient and medieval philosophy. This course will examine some of the most important medieval developments of this sector of philosophical knowledge, which, in the wake of Aristotle, came to be regarded as the study of the intrinsic principle and the formal actuality of all living being. The course will address the theory of the soul of the most significant thinker of the classical phase of Islamic philosophy, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037), who put to use his considerable medical knowledge and experience as a court physician to expand the number and the quality of faculties composing the human and animal soul. We will study in detail the articulate system of external and internal senses distinguished by Avicenna, examining the role, body and brain localization, and cognitive function of each of them. The discussion will then move on to the role of the intellect as an immaterial, overarching principle of rationality, independent from the body, and the reasons why Avicenna (as well as medieval thinkers in general) characterized it as such.

[IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca | Doctoral Course MBHT - Mind, Brain, and Human Thought | Track HT - Human Thought]
Classifications of the Sciences in Greek, Arabic and Latin
[Medieval Epistemology]

First semester, PhD students, 10 hours

Nov-Dec 2025 (a.y. 2025-2026)

The objective of the course is to present the issue of the classification of sciences in ancient and medieval philosophy, with particular emphasis on Greek, Arabic and Latin models of classification. The course will examine specific examples of knowledge classification, analysing the systematic organisation of philosophy ("architectonic") from Aristotle onwards. Furthermore, it will address the establishment of a standardised curriculum of studies during Late Antiquity and the Arabic and Latin Middle Ages, culminating in the modern concept of an “encyclopaedia” of the sciences – a concept that was notably emphasised by Enlightenment authors, but which arguably found its earliest instantiations in the medieval Arabic world. The issue of the organisation of science is of great interest from the point of view of the history of epistemology, since the way in which we classify knowledge reveals much also about the way in which we conceptualise our scientific enterprise. Furthermore, during the late antique and medieval periods the cognitive, or subjective, aspect of the question is distinctly and characteristically associated with an ontological, or objective, dimension. This is due to the fact that the leges mentis are frequently regarded by medieval thinkers as accurate representations of the leges entis, and the ordo sciendi is likewise considered a precise reflection of a fundamental ordo essendi. A thorough historical exploration of the problem of classification of the sciences thus paves the way to a deeper understanding of the development of human thought, up to its contemporary achievements.

[University of Florence | DILEF - Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia]:
I rami del sapere. La classificazione delle scienze nel mondo arabo
[Storia della filosofia araba medievale]

Second semester, MA students, 36 hours (6 cfu)

Feb-Apr 2025 (a.y. 2024-2025)

The objective of the course is to present the issue of the classification of sciences in ancient and medieval philosophy, with particular emphasis on Greek, Arabic and Latin models of classification. The course will examine specific examples of knowledge classification, analysing the systematic organisation of philosophy ("architectonic") from Aristotle onwards. Furthermore, it will address the establishment of a standardised curriculum of studies during Late Antiquity and the Arabic and Latin Middle Ages, culminating in the modern concept of an “encyclopaedia” of the sciences – a concept that was notably emphasised by Enlightenment authors, but which arguably found its earliest instantiations in the medieval Arabic world. The issue of the organisation of science is of great interest from the point of view of the history of epistemology, since the way in which we classify knowledge reveals much also about the way in which we conceptualise our scientific enterprise. Furthermore, during the late antique and medieval periods the cognitive, or subjective, aspect of the question is distinctly and characteristically associated with an ontological, or objective, dimension. This is due to the fact that the leges mentis are frequently regarded by medieval thinkers as accurate representations of the leges entis, and the ordo sciendi is likewise considered a precise reflection of a fundamental ordo essendi. A thorough historical exploration of the problem of classification of the sciences thus paves the way to a deeper understanding of the development of human thought, up to its contemporary achievements.

[IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca | Doctoral Track AMCH - Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage]
Five Studies on Dante and the Arabic World
[Introduction to East and West][co-teaching with Amos Bertolacci]

First semester, PhD students, 10 hours

Nov-Feb 2024-2025 (a.y. 2024-2025)

1. Angels and Intellects. We will discuss topics of philosophical cosmology vis-à-vis revelation, with a specific attention to the interaction of religious lexicon and philosophical jargon. We will explore the texts on the topic of two crucial Arabic-speaking authors, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037) and Algazel (al-Ġazālī, d. 1111), and trace their influence up to the Latin world. There will also be an excursus on interreligious representations of angels in 14th-century art.

2. Classifying Knowledge. We will discuss Dante Alighieri’s classification of the sciences as proposed in his philosophical treatise, the Convivio, exploring it against the background of the Arabic classifications and enumerations of the different kinds of philosophical wisdom, especially Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī’s (d. 951) Catalogue of the Sciences and Avicenna’s Divisions of the Intellectual Sciences.

3. Happiness. A key concept for medieval philosophy, happiness is a universal human notion set at the crossroads of a religious and a more philosophical approach to life. We will trace a brief history of the crucial idea of intellectual happiness, from Aristotle to Dante, paying particular attention to its interaction with the limits of knowledge and the desire of God in 13th-century Latin thought.

4. Divine Rainbows. The two final classes share a common interest in the relationship between natural philosophy, especially meteorology, and Dante’s masterpiece, the Divina Commedia. In this class, the focus will be on the imagery of the double rainbow as a visible metaphor for Trinity in the last canto of Dante’s Paradiso. We will explore Dante’s text against the background of Aristotelian ideas and coeval art, with many examples from Pisa.

5. Lightnings in the Mind. The final class will explore a further, surprising instance of meteorological imagery at the end of Dante’s Commedia, tracing back to al-Ġazālī’s (and perhaps Albert the Great’s) theory of prophecy the sudden fulgore that strikes Dante’s mind at the end of his journey towards God.

[University of Pisa | IPH - International Programme in Humanities]:
Happiness and the Happy Life in Medieval Cultures
[Introduction to the History of Medieval Philosophy]

First semester, BA students, 36 hours (6 cfu)

Oct-Dec 2024 (a.y. 2024-2025)

What does it take to be happy? Is happiness the true goal of humankind? What exactly is true happiness? Is it moral, intellectual, or both? And what does God have to do with it? These are just some of the questions that this introductory course to the history of medieval philosophy will try to answer, through a selection of readings of medieval thinkers who analyzed in depth the concept of happiness and its implications for the self-actualization of human life. We will follow the idea of happiness from its Greek foundations and through its various cultural and linguistic iterations in the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian milieus, thereby also showing the distinctive role that the notions of desire, pleasure, virtue, contemplation, and the limits of knowledge play for its meaningful definition.

[IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca | Doctoral Track AMCH - Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage]
The Philosopher, the Theologian, and the Poet. A Path from Avicenna to Dante
[Philosophy, Theology, and Literature Between East and West]

Second semester, PhD students, 10 hours

Feb-Mar 2024 (a.y. 2023-2024)

The course aims to offer an outline of some unusual paths of medieval thought, located at the crossroads of different disciplines, such as philosophy, theology, and literature. By analysing case studies taken from as diverse fields as meteorology, prophecy, and psychology, we will try and trace some long-lasting lines of historical influence, from the Greek philosopher Aristotle to the Arabic polymath Avicenna, from the Islamic theologian al-Ġazālī to the Christian poet Dante Alighieri. We will explore how in the Middle Ages philosophical material was reworked into theology and poetry, as well as how literature could be used to embed and express scientific knowledge in a compelling and fascinating way.

[University of Pisa | IPH - International Programme in Humanities]:
Happiness and the Happy Life in Medieval Cultures
[Introduction to the History of Medieval Philosophy]

First semester, BA students, 36 hours (6 cfu)

Oct-Dec 2023 (a.y. 2023-2024)

What does it take to be happy? Is happiness the true goal of humankind? What exactly is true happiness? Is it moral, intellectual, or both? And what does God have to do with it? These are just some of the questions that this introductory course to the history of medieval philosophy will try to answer, through a selection of readings of medieval thinkers who analyzed in depth the concept of happiness and its implications for the self-actualization of human life. We will follow the idea of happiness from its Greek foundations and through its various cultural and linguistic iterations in the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian milieus, thereby also showing the distinctive role that the notions of desire, pleasure, virtue, contemplation, and the limits of knowledge play for its meaningful definition.