The Italian philosopher Nuccio Ordine has been awarded the Princess of Asturias Prize for Communication and the Humanities 2023. The jury announced this Thursday at 12:00 at the Eurostars de la Reconquista Hotel in Oviedo.

This award, which was contested by 45 candidates from 16 nationalities, is the second of the awards in this forty-third edition of the Princess of Asturias Prize. This nomination was proposed by Sandra Ollo Razkin, director of the Acantilado Editorial.

Nuccio Ordine was born on July 18, 1958 in the Calabrian town of Diamante (Italy). In 1982, he graduated in Modern Literature from the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Calabria and in 1987 received a Doctorate in Literature: Rhetoric and Methods of Interpretation.

He is Professor of Italian Literature in the Humanities Studies Department at a university in his home region and has been a visiting professor at American universities such as Harvard, Yale and New York, as well as European universities such as the Graduate School of Social Sciences. and the Normal School of the University of Paris, as well as the Warburg Institute in London, the Max Planck Society (Prince of Asturias Prize for International Cooperation 2013) in Berlin and the German University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.

A philosopher, writer and expert in literary theory, he is recognized throughout the world as one of the greatest connoisseurs of the thought and literature of the Renaissance and, in particular, the figure of the Neapolitan humanist Giordano Bruno. One of his outstanding books on the subject is La cabala dell’asino. Asinità e conoscenza in Giordano Bruno (1987).

He is the author of numerous essays on the Cinquecento, as well as in the field of literary theory and aesthetics, published in individual and collective works and in numerous articles. In his books “L’utilità dell’inutile: Manifesto” (The Usefulness of the Useless. Manifesto, 2013) and “Classici per la vita: Una piccola biblioteca Ideale” (Classics for Life. Ideal Little Library, 2016) works in which he reflects on the marginal position of the humanities in the modern world and argues for them as essential disciplines in the civic formation of man and in the creation of fundamental critical thinking for development and social well-being.

A staunch defender of education, far from being pragmatic, he advocates instilling in students the pleasure of learning and curiosity for learning. In his opinion, a broad base of common culture will be the best tool for young people to successfully cope with changes in the labor market in the future.

He goes deeper into this line in his work Gli uomini non sono isole. I classici ci aiutano a vivere ‘(2018) (Men are not islands. Classics help us live, 2022) in which he offers the main books of world literature.

He is an honorary member of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and a founding member of the Italian Association for Theory and Comparative History of Literature. In addition, he chairs the Centro Internazionale di Studi Telesiani, Bruniani e Campanelliani (Cosenza, Italy) and is a member of the executive board of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Research.

He was an adviser to the Albertiana and Journal de la Renaissance publications, and co-director of the Giordano Bruno and Biblioteca Italiana collections for the Les Belles Lettres publishing house in Paris, as well as the Sileni, Theatrum Sapientiae and Umbrae idearum collections for various publishers in his country. , besides other collections in different countries such as Russia, Romania or Brazil.

He is a regular contributor to the newspaper Corriere della Sera. In addition to those mentioned, his book Tres coronas para un rey was published in Spanish in 2022. Company Enrique III and its secrets. Honorary Doctorates from the Brazilian Universities of Rio Grande do Sul, Caixas del Sur and Porto Alegre, the University of Valparaiso (Chile), the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), the Pontifical University of Comillas (Spain) and the Seal of the Ateneo de Urbino University (Italy) , Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2018), Knight and Knight of the Order of Academic Palms (2009 and 2014) and Knight of the Legion of Honor. France (2012).

He has received the Syracuse Philosophy Prize (Italy, 2007), the Il Sogno di Piero Prize of the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts (2015), the Liberpress Prize in Literature (Gerona, Spain, 2019), the Special Prize from the Carical Foundation. (Italy, 2020) and the International Prize for Humanism and the Revival of the Egyptian Lyceum (Leon, Spain, 2021) and many others.