The usefulness of the useless / Nuccio Ordine ; translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ordine, Nuccio, 1958- author.

Standardized Title:

Utilita dell'inutile. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Utilitarianism.

Physical Description:

176 pages ; 18 cm

Edition:

First Paul Dry Books edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : Paul Dry Books, Inc., 2017.

Summary:

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. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 The Useful Uselessness of Literature

1 "He who acquires nor, exists not" 22

2 Knowledge without profit is useless! 23

3 What's water? An anecdote from David Foster Wallace 24

4 Colonel Buendía's little gold fish 25

5 Dante and Petrarch: literature should not be subservient to profit 26

6 The literature of Utopia and golden chamber pots 27

7 Jim Hawkins: treasure hunter or numismatist? 30

8 The Merchant of Venice: the pound of flesh, the Kingdom of Belmont, and the hermeneutics of Socrates 33

9 Aristotle: learning has no practical usefulness 42

10 Pure theorist or philosopher-king? Plato's contradictions 43

11 Kant: the pleasure of beauty is disinterested 46

12 Ovid: nothing is more useful than the useless arts 47

13 Montaigne: "nothing is useless," "not even uselessness itself" 48

14 Leopardi the flâneur: the choke of the useless against the utilitarianism of a "proud and foolish age" 50

15 Théophile Gautier: "what is useful is ugly" as ''the jakes" 53

16 Baudelaire: a useful man is a squalid one 58

17 John Locke against poetry 60

18 Boccaccio: "bread" and poetry 62

19 García Lorca: it is unwise to live without the madness of poetry 62

20 The madness of Don Quixote, the hero of the useless and the gratuitous 63

21 The Facts of Coketown: Dickens's criticism of utilitarianism 66

22 Heidegger: it is hard to understand the useless 67

23 Uselessness and the essence of life: Zhuang-zi and Kakuzo Okakura 68

24 Eugène Ionesco: the useful is a useless burden 70

25 Italo Calvino: the gratuitous is revealed to be essential 71

26 Emil Cioran and Socrates' flute 72

Part 2 The University as Company, the Student as Client

1 The disengagement of the state 76

2 The student as client 77

3 Universities as companies and teachers as bureaucrats 78

4 Hugo: the crisis can be beaten not by cutting the culture budget but by doubling it 81

5 Tocqueville: "easy beauties" and the perils of commercial democracies 84

6 Herzen: timeless merchants 86

7 Bataille: the limits of utility and the vitality of the superfluous 87

8 Against the professionalizing university: John Henry Newman 90

9 What is the use of dead languages? John Locke and Antonio Gramsci 92

10 The planned disappearance of the classics 96

11 The encounter with a classic can change your life 97

12 Libraries at risk: the sensational case of the Warburg Institute 99

13 The disappearance of historic bookstores 102

14 The unexpected utility of the useless sciences 103

15 What do you get from a theorem? From Euclid to Archimedes 105

16 Poincaré: "science does not study nature" to look for "utility" 106

17 "Knowledge is an asset that can be transmitted without becoming poor" 111

Part 3 Possession Kills: Dignitas Hominis, Love, Truth

1 The voice of the classics 114

2 Dignitas hominis: the illusion of wealth and the prostitution of knowledge 114

3 Loving in order to possess is the death of love 120

4 The possession of truth is the death of truth 127.

Notes:

Translated from the Italian.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9781589881167

1589881168

OCLC:

945949099