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“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.
“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.
Price: $16.00
Pages: 175
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
Imprint: Paul Dry Books
Publication Date:
07 March 2017
Trim Size: 7.00 X 4.50 in
ISBN: 9781589881167
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
PHILOSOPHY / Essays, PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Readers, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays
"This small, brilliantly argued work champions frivolousness and the enjoyable activities that serve no useful purpose as imperative if one hopes to understand art, love, truth, and human dignity." —Foreword Reviews
"Nuccio’s wonderful, small book is a compilation of the many things from antiquity to nowadays, making this call, not to make a mistake. Already in the 18th century Schiller—in his Letters on an Aesthetic Education—informs us that utility has become the idol of our time. So this is not about arguing something new or original. As a great archivist, Nuccio has put it together in an extremely readable and accessible way." —Rob Riemen, Five Books, selected The Usefulness of the Useless as one of the Five Best Humanist Books of 2017
"Nuccio’s wonderful, small book is a compilation of the many things from antiquity to nowadays, making this call, not to make a mistake. Already in the 18th century Schiller—in his Letters on an Aesthetic Education—informs us that utility has become the idol of our time. So this is not about arguing something new or original. As a great archivist, Nuccio has put it together in an extremely readable and accessible way." —Rob Riemen, Five Books, selected The Usefulness of the Useless as one of the Five Best Humanist Books of 2017
Nuccio Ordine is a professor of literature at the University of Calabria, and is an expert on Giordano Bruno.
Contents
Introduction by Nuccio Ordine
Part One
The Useful Uselessness of Literature
1. “He who has not is not”
2. Knowledge without profit is useless!
3. What’s water? An anecdote from David Foster Wallace
4. Colonel Buendía’s little gold fish
5. Dante and Petrarch: literature should not be subservient to profit
6. The literature of utopia and golden chamber pots
7. Jim Hawkins: treasure hunter or numismatist?
8. The Merchant of Venice: the pound of flesh, the kingdom of Belmont and the hermeneutics of Socrates
9. Aristotle: learning has no practical usefulness
10. Pure theorist or philosopher-king? Plato’s contradictions
11. Kant: the pleasure of beauty is disinterested
12. Ovid: nothing is more useful than the useless arts
13. Montaigne: “nothing is useless,” “not even uselessness itself”
14. Leopardi the flâneur: the choice of the useless against the utilitarianism of a “proud and foolish age”
15. Théophile Gautier: “what is useful is ugly” as “the jakes”
16. Baudelaire: a useful man is a squalid one
17. John Locke against poetry
18. Boccaccio: “bread” and poetry
19. García Lorca: it is unwise to live without the madness of poetry
20. The madness of Don Quixote, the hero of the useless and the gratuitous
21. The Facts of Coketown: Dickens’s criticism of utilitarianism
22. Heidegger: it is hard to understand the useless
23. Uselessness and the essence of life: Zhuang-zi and Kakuzo Okakura
24. Eugène Ionesco: the useful is a useless burden
25. Italo Calvino: the gratuitous is revealed to be essential
26. Emile Cioran and Socrates’ flute
Part Two
The University as Company
The Student as Client
1. The disengagement of the state
2. The student as client
3. Universities as companies and teachers as bureaucrats
4. Hugo: the crisis can be beaten not by cutting the culture budget but by doubling it
5. Tocqueville: “easy beauties” and the perils of commercial democracies
6. Herzen: timeless merchants
7. Bataille: the limits of utility and the vitality of the superfluous
8. Against the professionalizing university: John Henry Newman
9. What is the use of dead languages? John Locke and Antonio Gramsci
10. The planned disappearance of the classics
11. The encounter with a classic can change your life
12. Libraries at risk: the sensational case of the Warburg Institute
13. The disappearance of historic bookstores
14. The unexpected utility of the useless sciences
15. What do you get from a theorem? From Euclid to Archimedes.
16. Poincaré: “science does not study nature” to look for “utility”
17. “Knowledge is an asset that can be transmitted without becoming poor”
Part Three
Possession Kills:
Dignitas Hominis, Love, Truth
1. The voice of the classics
2. Dignitas hominis: the illusion of wealth and the prostitution of knowledge
3. Loving in order to possess is the death of love
4. The possession of truth is the death of truth
Bibliography
Introduction by Nuccio Ordine
Part One
The Useful Uselessness of Literature
1. “He who has not is not”
2. Knowledge without profit is useless!
3. What’s water? An anecdote from David Foster Wallace
4. Colonel Buendía’s little gold fish
5. Dante and Petrarch: literature should not be subservient to profit
6. The literature of utopia and golden chamber pots
7. Jim Hawkins: treasure hunter or numismatist?
8. The Merchant of Venice: the pound of flesh, the kingdom of Belmont and the hermeneutics of Socrates
9. Aristotle: learning has no practical usefulness
10. Pure theorist or philosopher-king? Plato’s contradictions
11. Kant: the pleasure of beauty is disinterested
12. Ovid: nothing is more useful than the useless arts
13. Montaigne: “nothing is useless,” “not even uselessness itself”
14. Leopardi the flâneur: the choice of the useless against the utilitarianism of a “proud and foolish age”
15. Théophile Gautier: “what is useful is ugly” as “the jakes”
16. Baudelaire: a useful man is a squalid one
17. John Locke against poetry
18. Boccaccio: “bread” and poetry
19. García Lorca: it is unwise to live without the madness of poetry
20. The madness of Don Quixote, the hero of the useless and the gratuitous
21. The Facts of Coketown: Dickens’s criticism of utilitarianism
22. Heidegger: it is hard to understand the useless
23. Uselessness and the essence of life: Zhuang-zi and Kakuzo Okakura
24. Eugène Ionesco: the useful is a useless burden
25. Italo Calvino: the gratuitous is revealed to be essential
26. Emile Cioran and Socrates’ flute
Part Two
The University as Company
The Student as Client
1. The disengagement of the state
2. The student as client
3. Universities as companies and teachers as bureaucrats
4. Hugo: the crisis can be beaten not by cutting the culture budget but by doubling it
5. Tocqueville: “easy beauties” and the perils of commercial democracies
6. Herzen: timeless merchants
7. Bataille: the limits of utility and the vitality of the superfluous
8. Against the professionalizing university: John Henry Newman
9. What is the use of dead languages? John Locke and Antonio Gramsci
10. The planned disappearance of the classics
11. The encounter with a classic can change your life
12. Libraries at risk: the sensational case of the Warburg Institute
13. The disappearance of historic bookstores
14. The unexpected utility of the useless sciences
15. What do you get from a theorem? From Euclid to Archimedes.
16. Poincaré: “science does not study nature” to look for “utility”
17. “Knowledge is an asset that can be transmitted without becoming poor”
Part Three
Possession Kills:
Dignitas Hominis, Love, Truth
1. The voice of the classics
2. Dignitas hominis: the illusion of wealth and the prostitution of knowledge
3. Loving in order to possess is the death of love
4. The possession of truth is the death of truth
Bibliography