Nuccio Ordine

Nuccio Ordine (1958-2023) was a professor of Italian literature at the University of Calabria and had been a visiting professor at Yale University, Paris IV-Sorbonne, the CESR in Tours, the IEA in Paris, the Warburg Institute, and the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, among others. He was a member of the Légion d'Honneur of the French Republic, an Honorary Member of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an internationally renowned specialist in Renaissance studies, and a scholar and disseminator of the work of Giordano Bruno, who featured in many of his books. As an author, he gained widespread media attention with the publication of The Usefulness of the Useless, a text in which he defended the importance of the humanities, and which became a best seller in Italy, France, and Spain. In Clàssics per a la vida ('Classics for Life', Quaderns Crema, 2017), he offered commentary on some 50 books that, in his opinion, were essential readings to foster a critical spirit. He recently published Three Crowns for a King in Spanish (Tres coronas para un rey, Acantilado, 2022). Ordine also created and directed collections of classics for prestigious publishers, such as the Italian Bompiani and the French Les Belles Lettres, and he was a regular contributor to the cultural sections of the newspapers Corriere della Sera and El País.