Per chi tutelare? Riflessi della “perdita del futuro” sull’idea di conservazione dell’eredità culturale/ Protect for whom? "loss of the future" and conservation of cultural heritage

The concepts of "historic monument", "restoration" and "conservation" are the result of an idea of protection of Historical Heritage, which plunges its roots in the late eighteenth century and helped to build the worldview and the cultural identity of the middle class in nineteenth and twentieth century. However, as this, also those concepts have manifested a profound crisis for several decades. This crisis is bound also to another concept, that of value, which was declined in eighteenth century in several ways: economic, certainly, but also cultural, moral, historic, aesthetic. Today the economic value marginalizes all the other, reducing every aspect of our life to a cost/benefit analysis and transforms contemporary man in "homo œconomicus." (Rodotà, 2012). From this point of view, the State’s public funds cannot bear the costs of protection. Besides, another aspect of contemporary Western culture is the loss of tension towards the future that has represented, in the two centuries just passed, a decisive push. This state of things is recalled by many contemporary authors that have written about "end o f the history"(Fukuyama 1992), "lives lived running" (Baumann 2008), "to be without time" (Fusaro 2010) or have asked themselves "what happened at the future?" (Augé 2008). If we renounce the future, for whom do we preserve our cultural heritage? From what do we derive the legitimacy of protecting the past? Nietzsche wrote, "What it means nihilism? - It means that the supreme values lose their value. The destination disappears; is not there anymore the answer to the question because?" Well, today it is necessary to put again the question.