Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to initiate a debate on the "state of health" of the humanities within Italy's largest research institution. Looking back over its history, in fact, it seems that the humanities are almost somehow a foreign body in the life of this institution. In the last 15 years, though, the need to harmonize them in the life of the CNR has emerged in different ways, which seem, however, to reflect the deep-rooted crisis and the profound transformations that mark the humanities today. The present contribution has an exploratory value, in the hope of resuming and enriching an increasingly urgent debate, which calls into question the civil role and the very survival of humanistic studies.