What is the use of reading the Odyssey or a poem by Sappho? What is the use of studying Latin and Ancient Greek? What is the use of listening to Mozart, visiting the Parthenon, watching the sunset from the magnificent Temple of Poseidon at Sounion? What is the use of admiring Cézanne's painting The Card Players? Aristotle had already excellently answered these absurd questions in his work Metaphysics. To anyone who asked him what the use of philosophy was, he replied that philosophy "is of no use," because it does not "render service," because it is not in the service of anyone, because it is an autonomous science that teaches the path to freedom: just as a free person "exists for themselves and not for someone else."
To compare cultural goods with oil or to evaluate an exhibition based on the number of tickets sold means that we overlook the intrinsic value of beauty, the cultural function that art can have in shaping the identity and cultural development of a people.
Indeed, we do not realize that literature and the humanities, culture and education constitute the ideal amniotic fluid in which the ideas of democracy, freedom, justice, equality, the secular character of society, the right to criticism, tolerance, solidarity, and the common good can dynamically develop.

This bilingual edition is the printed record of the speech by the distinguished Italian academic at the Athens Concert Hall, and subsequently at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in early October 2015, organized by KIKPE with Megaron Plus.