Culture has and must have an intrinsic value, one that is non-instrumental and cannot be directly orientated. Only if we are able to recognise this non-negotiable value will we also achieve the wide-ranging effects of economic growth and improvement in the quality of life which culture will inevitably bring about. This claim, shared in full, is by the Italian president Giorgio Napolitano and is discussed in Il Sole 24Ore regarding the “States General of Culture” launched by the daily. The theme is also taken up by the philosopher John Armstrong when he says that the solidity and diffusion of humanistic disciplines are essential to democracy. Disciplines that teach critical thought, use of the imagination and compassion, and transform individuals into global citizens, in other words people capable of an overall vision of the world. We therefore need an education which teaches beauty and critical thought and thinking should be reformed in order to promote humanism, logic and other studies. A real “polytechnic culture”, to use an expression dear to Pirelli corporate culture. There is also an economic value of course. Armstrong explains in the magazine Philosophical Inquiries that if what we seek is a flourishing economy then we have to see that the business world absorbs the best of what humanistic disciplines are able to offer. Not only technical but science too, philosophy, a sense of things, an in-depth and in-perspective look, the synthesis of a new humanism. Naturally, on the subject of economics, without demonising profit, which will arrive as a result.