Confidence With Old Fashion Style
How DO I Look ! “Being old-fashioned”: there is probably nothing worse for today’s common feeling. Of course, the times in which Leopardi could write in the Operette morali are very far away: “A man made in the old way” is a man “worthy and to be trusted”.
To attribute that quality to someone today may mean accusing them of being a conservative, if not a reactionary. In the best of cases, one is accused of not being “in step with the times”, of not knowing how to reap the benefits of modernity.
The pedagogist and philosopher Duccio Demetrio in his latest book entitled All’antica (Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2021, Euro 19.00, pp. 316. Ebook too) shows us, however, that being old-fashioned implies some of our better qualities. This is confirmed by Duccio Demetrio: “First of all, being old-fashioned implies having a sensitivity for the past that is no longer so common today.
It means having a sensitivity for memories, a spontaneous, instinctive sensitivity but also one that is educated in the course of life, first of all by the family of origin as it happened to me.
My family was very attentive to memories, narrations, stories that create suggestions and therefore gave me a familiarity and not a repulsion towards memory and remembering. In this sense, I consider old-fashioned feeling as a privilege, a gift, not as a misfortune as we often hear about remembering and having memory “.
“For Leopardi, the old-fashioned man is a decent person, bearer of positive virtues and I agree as I explain in the second part of my book. Indeed, the purpose of my book is to increase this Leopardian awareness, to rediscover this virtuous dimension of being old-fashioned that must be strengthened, while being careful not to fall into ambiguity “.
What do you mean?
“There may be an ancient who takes us back, backward, unable to confront the present and the needs of the world in which we live. And there is an ancient who defends those values that are found in our aesthetic and moral education … values that should not be canceled in the name of modernity “.
But what can the ancient give to the present?
“He gives him a warning: you cannot build the present and plan for the future by totally severing the links with the past. Those with a sensitivity for the ancient love history, but not just the general one. Love his personal story. Knowing his own autobiography he can therefore elaborate a point of view that is not limited only to subjectivity, however important this is “.
Yet, the antique is not in fashion
“He is certainly the victim of prejudices and malevolent judgments. But there is no shortage of people who appreciate behaviors, ways of being and doing old-fashioned, as if these ways of being and doing instill security because they concern manifestations that seem to disappear: kindness, generosity, willingness to deal with others. , hostility towards all forms of vulgarity. In short, being old-fashioned enriches us and does not diminish our way of existing “.
