"A little masterpiece of originality and clarity."--George Steiner
"A necessary book."--Roberto Saviano
"A wonderful little book that will delight you."--François Busnel
International Best Seller / Now in English for the First Time
In this thought-provoking and extremely timely work, Nuccio Ordine
convincingly argues for the utility of useless knowledge and against the
contemporary fixation on utilitarianism--for the fundamental importance
of the liberal arts and against the damage caused by their neglect.
Inspired by the reflections of great philosophers and writers (e.g.,
Plato, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Borges, and Calvino), Ordine
reveals how the obsession for material goods and the cult of utility
ultimately wither the spirit, jeopardizing not only schools and
universities, art, and creativity, but also our most fundamental
values--human dignity, love, and truth.
Also included is Abraham Flexner's 1939 essay "The Usefulness of Useless
Knowledge," which originally prompted Ordine to write this book.
Flexner--a founder and the first director of the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton--offers an impassioned defense of curiosity-driven
research and learning.
Nuccio Ordine is a professor of Italian Literature at the University
of Calabria and one of the world's leading experts on the Italian
Renaissance and the philosopher Giordano Bruno. He has taught at Yale,
New York University, the Sorbonne, the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris,
and the Warburg Institute London, among others. Professor Ordine has
been named a Knight of the French Legion of Honour, a Knight Commander
of the Republic of Italy, and given an honorary membership in the
Russian Academy of Sciences. His books have been translated into twenty
languages.
Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) was an educator and reformer whose work
helped transform higher education throughout North America. He was the
founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ,
one of the world's leading centers for intellectual inquiry and
research.
