| Summary: | Untimely (?) meditations on the crisis of history and humanities.Moving from the debate on the usefulness of history which took place after World War II, this article discusses the present crisis of humanistic culture. At that time Lucien Febvre answered back to the request that history had to be «useful for life» -as Nietzsche said -objecting that «a serving history is a servile history» and that, on the contrary, history is necessary for facing present problems, but only if it is a free construction of a critical method and thinking. Developing Marc Bloch’s thesis on the light of the experiences of the second half of the 20th century, the author confirms the fundamental role of historical consciousness for the formation of democracy and European civilization as well as for their future, being it the only possible antidote against short breath lectures of a present crisis, including the economic one, which is first of all a cultural crisis, and an indispensable tool for thinking and orienting the change.
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