Crisis of Humanities Studies? Digressions on the topic

Abstract

The article takes its cue from the vast output of texts and analysis on the decline of humanistic disciplines and social prestige of its scholars. On the one hand, there is a broad consensus among those working on the figures of the decline, on the other hand, opinions on the causes of the crisis diverge, often in a radical way. If it is true that in the global economy, thanks to the digital revolution, knowledge and intangible goods have become a decisive factor in the extraction of wealth, it is equally true that the knowledge that rejects the computational thought is excluded from this process, although it produces the intangible good par excellence: the culture. In a society like ours, where the traditional cultural-university binomial combination has been shattered, the hope is that of a renewed commitment of humanists in opening paths and exploring new territories to give meaning to the word humanism.