The value of tradition has no taste of nostalgia, the future is a product of engineers, philosophers and artists
“Only those who have a village in their memory can have a true cosmopolitan experience.” The quote belongs to Ernesto de Martino, one of Europe’s foremost anthropologists. And it applies to all those who try, albeit with difficulty, to hold together the value of roots with that of discovery and adventure, the identity of origins with the new identities of work, family, friends and companions that are gradually found. Multiple identities, in motion. Without forgetting. And without falling into the trap of nostalgia. We should also remember another essential lesson, that of the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, who taught us how and how much identity lies in relationships, “in the eyes of the other”. In short, the local dimension that faces the world. The pride in one’s roots, which opens up to a deeper understanding of the relationships between oneself and others, and thus of the community, the civitas, the other and the various social and cultural collectives. After all, no man is an island. Neither an isolated, fearful and hostile valley.
In these tense days, when there is much debate about Italian identity and the historical roots of our culture, the words of de Martino and Lévinas come to mind and should be heeded with increasing commitment. And that means changing the training processes and the content of what we teach in our schools.
The Minister for Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara, has announced that from 2026-2027, Latin will be reintroduced in middle school (albeit as an optional subject, for one hour a week), history will focus on the “Italic peoples”, the Greeks and Romans, and the origins of Christianity (in high school, the focus will be extended to the rest of world history). And once again, the work of our poets is to be memorised and the Bible read and studied alongside the great classics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. “We will take the best of our tradition to create schools capable of building the future,” concluded the Minister.
The ensuing debate, which continues passionately in the written and digital pages of the media, pits roots against cultural openness, the local against the global, nostalgic rhetoric against innovative perspectives. “Contested knowledge” is how Agnese Pini, director of the Quotidiano Nazionale (Resto del Carlino, La Nazione and Il Giorno, 19 January) brilliantly sums it up. Beyond the dispute, however, “education and schooling are the sowing of perspectives, the field on which the creativity and fertility of a people are measured, and the perimeter within which the people recognise themselves. They are therefore the mirror of the foresight of politics, institutions, parties and governments”. A foresight, it must be added, that is often lacking.
With regard to the “clash of identities” that affects schools and other areas, Antonio Polito, writing in the Corriere della Sera (19 January), notes the negativity of the tendencies, not only in Italy, towards “social fragmentation”, worries about “a society that is falling apart because of conflicts between ethnicity, gender, body, social class and sexual orientation”, and comments: “The time of identity cannot conceive of the person except as a part. We should resist that. Because the person, as Ratzinger said, is a whole that refers to a whole.”
This timely reference to the Pope as a refined theologian allows us to come to terms with another essential, open and discursive dimension of our European culture: that “integral humanism” which inspired the philosophical reflection of Jacques Maritain and provided for some of the finest pages from the Christian personalism of Emmanuel Mounier.
It is therefore time to lift our gaze from the polemical passions that characterise Italian political debate and look instead to the horizon of necessary transformations. Drawing on the wisdom of Zygmunt Baumann: “If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant a tree; if in terms of 100 years, educate people.” It is therefore both a political and a cultural challenge. An intellectual mission that, to be truly such, does not require nostalgia, but a taste for the generous writing of “stories for the future”, of new maps inspired by the “future of memory”.
How? An important suggestion is to be found in the speech given by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, last Saturday at the ceremony to launch Agrigento‘s programme as the Italian Capital of Culture 2025.
“Those who are open to the world know that life is the fruit of dialogue,” said Mattarella, recalling that “the country’s wealth lies in its plurality”. And “culture is the fruit of encounters”.
These words are clear and explicit, full of the positive and strong values of a project: the construction, or rather the strengthening and revival, of an open and plural culture as the substance of democracy, a better awareness of one’s own national values (this is precisely the meaning of history, the positive value of tradition, which, to quote Gustav Mahler, is not in “the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”), but also of one’s own responsibility in the redefinition of new and better balance in Europe and the world. Of a new and better yardstick for knowledge, education and the depiction of the world.
Mattarella also said, “We live in a time where everything seems to be compressed and exhausted in the moment of the present, where technology sometimes claims to monopolise thought instead of placing itself at the service of knowledge”. Culture, on the other hand, “turns to a broad horizon, rebelling against any compression of our humanism, which has made our civilisation great”.
Once again, a speech of great scope. And it is all the more appropriate that it was given in Agrigento, a city with strong historical roots in the civilisation of Magna Graecia, with ancient and sophisticated cultural ancestors (Empedocles, political philosopher and scientist, considered a master by Aristotle) and literary wealth between the twentieth century and the present day (Luigi Pirandello, Leonardo Sciascia, Andrea Camilleri). A heritage to be defended.
The city was run down by administrative mismanagement in the 1960s and 1970s (including the mass construction of illegal buildings known as the “Sacco di Agrigento”), weakened by mafia violence in the provinces, and deprived of basic public services (especially water), which has long placed it at the bottom of the quality of life rankings of Italian cities. However, it remains magnificent, with the architectural and cultural remains of the Valley of the Temples. And in search of redemption, of rebirth.
This is where it makes sense to talk about knowledge and the future, about culture and economic and social development. It is here that we should think about how to slow down growth on a European and Mediterranean scale.
These are our key words: culture, knowledge, humanism.
Who is interpreting them in the present? And who will create them in the future? Let’s go back to the discussion about training, about schooling, about the relationship between tradition and innovation. About the fundamental values of our civilisation.
The future belongs to engineers who have studied philosophy, and to philosophers who understand the deep meaning of science and the freedom of research. To lawyers who know the value of the diversity to be protected, even if the rule is, according to Kelsen, impersonal and abstract. To literary engineers or chemists like Primo Levi and Sinisgalli. To entrepreneurs who know how to combine market culture and social responsibility. To mathematicians, physicists, statisticians, economists, cyberscientists and ethicists who are responsible for designing and writing the algorithms of artificial intelligence. To young people who think about the environment and sustainability on the issues of work and the fight against inequality.
In a word, to culture. More precisely, a “polytechnic culture“, full of humanistic and scientific knowledge, poetic beauty and passion for innovation. After all, it was the great artist Michelangelo Pistoletto who turned the infinity symbol into a work of art, similar to a horizontal 8, a mathematical dimension with the power of a dreamlike poem.
“Only those who have a village in their memory can have a true cosmopolitan experience.” The quote belongs to Ernesto de Martino, one of Europe’s foremost anthropologists. And it applies to all those who try, albeit with difficulty, to hold together the value of roots with that of discovery and adventure, the identity of origins with the new identities of work, family, friends and companions that are gradually found. Multiple identities, in motion. Without forgetting. And without falling into the trap of nostalgia. We should also remember another essential lesson, that of the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, who taught us how and how much identity lies in relationships, “in the eyes of the other”. In short, the local dimension that faces the world. The pride in one’s roots, which opens up to a deeper understanding of the relationships between oneself and others, and thus of the community, the civitas, the other and the various social and cultural collectives. After all, no man is an island. Neither an isolated, fearful and hostile valley.
In these tense days, when there is much debate about Italian identity and the historical roots of our culture, the words of de Martino and Lévinas come to mind and should be heeded with increasing commitment. And that means changing the training processes and the content of what we teach in our schools.
The Minister for Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara, has announced that from 2026-2027, Latin will be reintroduced in middle school (albeit as an optional subject, for one hour a week), history will focus on the “Italic peoples”, the Greeks and Romans, and the origins of Christianity (in high school, the focus will be extended to the rest of world history). And once again, the work of our poets is to be memorised and the Bible read and studied alongside the great classics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. “We will take the best of our tradition to create schools capable of building the future,” concluded the Minister.
The ensuing debate, which continues passionately in the written and digital pages of the media, pits roots against cultural openness, the local against the global, nostalgic rhetoric against innovative perspectives. “Contested knowledge” is how Agnese Pini, director of the Quotidiano Nazionale (Resto del Carlino, La Nazione and Il Giorno, 19 January) brilliantly sums it up. Beyond the dispute, however, “education and schooling are the sowing of perspectives, the field on which the creativity and fertility of a people are measured, and the perimeter within which the people recognise themselves. They are therefore the mirror of the foresight of politics, institutions, parties and governments”. A foresight, it must be added, that is often lacking.
With regard to the “clash of identities” that affects schools and other areas, Antonio Polito, writing in the Corriere della Sera (19 January), notes the negativity of the tendencies, not only in Italy, towards “social fragmentation”, worries about “a society that is falling apart because of conflicts between ethnicity, gender, body, social class and sexual orientation”, and comments: “The time of identity cannot conceive of the person except as a part. We should resist that. Because the person, as Ratzinger said, is a whole that refers to a whole.”
This timely reference to the Pope as a refined theologian allows us to come to terms with another essential, open and discursive dimension of our European culture: that “integral humanism” which inspired the philosophical reflection of Jacques Maritain and provided for some of the finest pages from the Christian personalism of Emmanuel Mounier.
It is therefore time to lift our gaze from the polemical passions that characterise Italian political debate and look instead to the horizon of necessary transformations. Drawing on the wisdom of Zygmunt Baumann: “If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant a tree; if in terms of 100 years, educate people.” It is therefore both a political and a cultural challenge. An intellectual mission that, to be truly such, does not require nostalgia, but a taste for the generous writing of “stories for the future”, of new maps inspired by the “future of memory”.
How? An important suggestion is to be found in the speech given by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, last Saturday at the ceremony to launch Agrigento‘s programme as the Italian Capital of Culture 2025.
“Those who are open to the world know that life is the fruit of dialogue,” said Mattarella, recalling that “the country’s wealth lies in its plurality”. And “culture is the fruit of encounters”.
These words are clear and explicit, full of the positive and strong values of a project: the construction, or rather the strengthening and revival, of an open and plural culture as the substance of democracy, a better awareness of one’s own national values (this is precisely the meaning of history, the positive value of tradition, which, to quote Gustav Mahler, is not in “the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”), but also of one’s own responsibility in the redefinition of new and better balance in Europe and the world. Of a new and better yardstick for knowledge, education and the depiction of the world.
Mattarella also said, “We live in a time where everything seems to be compressed and exhausted in the moment of the present, where technology sometimes claims to monopolise thought instead of placing itself at the service of knowledge”. Culture, on the other hand, “turns to a broad horizon, rebelling against any compression of our humanism, which has made our civilisation great”.
Once again, a speech of great scope. And it is all the more appropriate that it was given in Agrigento, a city with strong historical roots in the civilisation of Magna Graecia, with ancient and sophisticated cultural ancestors (Empedocles, political philosopher and scientist, considered a master by Aristotle) and literary wealth between the twentieth century and the present day (Luigi Pirandello, Leonardo Sciascia, Andrea Camilleri). A heritage to be defended.
The city was run down by administrative mismanagement in the 1960s and 1970s (including the mass construction of illegal buildings known as the “Sacco di Agrigento”), weakened by mafia violence in the provinces, and deprived of basic public services (especially water), which has long placed it at the bottom of the quality of life rankings of Italian cities. However, it remains magnificent, with the architectural and cultural remains of the Valley of the Temples. And in search of redemption, of rebirth.
This is where it makes sense to talk about knowledge and the future, about culture and economic and social development. It is here that we should think about how to slow down growth on a European and Mediterranean scale.
These are our key words: culture, knowledge, humanism.
Who is interpreting them in the present? And who will create them in the future? Let’s go back to the discussion about training, about schooling, about the relationship between tradition and innovation. About the fundamental values of our civilisation.
The future belongs to engineers who have studied philosophy, and to philosophers who understand the deep meaning of science and the freedom of research. To lawyers who know the value of the diversity to be protected, even if the rule is, according to Kelsen, impersonal and abstract. To literary engineers or chemists like Primo Levi and Sinisgalli. To entrepreneurs who know how to combine market culture and social responsibility. To mathematicians, physicists, statisticians, economists, cyberscientists and ethicists who are responsible for designing and writing the algorithms of artificial intelligence. To young people who think about the environment and sustainability on the issues of work and the fight against inequality.
In a word, to culture. More precisely, a “polytechnic culture“, full of humanistic and scientific knowledge, poetic beauty and passion for innovation. After all, it was the great artist Michelangelo Pistoletto who turned the infinity symbol into a work of art, similar to a horizontal 8, a mathematical dimension with the power of a dreamlike poem.