A book that is worth highlighting: the usefulness of the useless, by Nuccio Ordine has just appeared in the cliff editorial. This Italian author is a professor, philosopher, and one of the biggest connoisseurs of the Renaissance. He currently exercises as a professor of literature at the University of Calabria. His previous books have been translated into many languages, and have received various awards throughout Europe.
According to the words of the author himself, “the oxymoron evoked by the title the usefulness of the useless deserves clarification. The paradoxical utility to which I mean is not the same in whose name humanistic knowledge is considered useless and, more generally, all knowledge that does not produce benefits. In a very different and much broader meaning, I wanted to put in the center of my reflections the idea of utility of those knowledge whose essential value is completely oblivious to any utilitarian purpose. [...] If we let the free die, if we renounce the force generating the useless, if we listen only to the deadly song of sirens that impelate us to pursue the benefit, we will only be able to produce a sick and without memory collective that, lost, will end up losing meaning of itself and life. And at that time, when the desertification of the spirit has already aged us, it will really be difficult to imagine that the ignorant Homo Sapiens can still play a role in the task of making humanity more human. ”
Curious society, in effect, in which a toolbox is worth more than a poem or a symphony, in which more importance is given to what we serve than to what we are. A book to help us reflect on the truly important. Now that we are in gifts, it would not be to get someone to give it to us.
