“Certain knowledge can play a central role in shaping the spirit and improving the level of human culture. However, the logic of profit undermines the very foundations of institutions (schools, universities, research centers, laboratories, museums, libraries), as well as the knowledge subjects (humanities and sciences), the value of which adheres to the principle ‘knowledge for knowledge’ and not to the principle of immediate or practical efficiency. […] If we only listen to the sirens that sing for the lure of profit, we will simply create a set without memory that will lose the meaning of life and of reality itself.” NUCCIO ORDINE

The usefulness of knowledge that is not directly related to any utilitarian purpose but plays a decisive role in shaping the spirit and the culture of humanity was the subject of the lecture by philosopher and professor Nuccio Ordine, which took place on Monday, October 5, 2015, at the Athens Concert Hall in collaboration with the Public Foundation for Social and Cultural Work (K.I.K.P.E.).

This bilingual edition serves as the printed record of the distinguished Italian academic's speech in Athens (a major expert on the works of Giordano Bruno and editor of his Complete Works) and emphasizes the necessity of cultivating the humanities, classical languages, imagination, and art, using excerpts from texts by David Foster Wallace, Márquez, Victor Hugo, Einstein, Kakuzō Okakura, George Bernard Shaw, Yourcenar, John Locke, Saint-Exupéry, Montesquieu, Plato, and others. A wonderful journey through thought and knowledge across the centuries.

BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS

Nuccio Ordine (Diamante, Italy, born 1958) is a professor of Italian literature at the University of Calabria. His three studies on Giordano Bruno have been translated into eleven languages, including Chinese, Japanese, and Russian: La caballa dell ’ asino (1996), La soglia dell ’ ombra (2009), and Contro II Vangelo armato (2009). He has also published: Teoria della novela e teoria del riso nel Cinquecento (2009), Les rendez - vous des savoirs (2009), Trois couronnes pour un roi (2011, Bompiani, 2014), Les portraits de Gabriel Garcia M á rquez (2012).

He is a fellow at Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, and a visiting professor at various research centers and universities in the USA (Yale, NYU) and Europe (EHESS, ENS, Paris-IV Sorbonne, CESR in Tours, IEA Paris, Warburg Institute in London, Max-Planck Berlin).

In 2010, he was made an honorary member of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in 2012, he was awarded honors causa from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul di Porto Alegre. In 2009, he was honored in France with the Academic Phoenix, and in 2012, the President of the French Republic awarded him the Legion of Honor. In 2010, the President of the Italian Republic appointed him Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

In France, he directs, with Yves Hersant, three series of classics (Les Belles Lettres) and in Italy the series “Classics of European Literature” (Bompiani). He writes articles for Corriere della Sera.

In 2014, his book The Usefulness of the Useless was published by Agra Publications, translated by Antaeus Chrysostomidis.