Cultural Sustainability: Lines of Reflection for a Human Life in the Harmony of the Cosmos

Abstract

The main aim of the paper is to propose a more robust criterion for the concept of sustainability, one reflecting the importance of taking into account the cultural dimension as a fundamental pillar of authentic human and virtuous development. The theoretical assumption behind this new concept is that cultural processes are also to be considered structural elements within the socioeconomic system. Cultural sustainability concerns actions that affect the way in which a community expresses its identity, safeguards its traditions, and builds shared values; indeed, meanings, narratives, and constellations of symbols enable a society to recognize and identify itself in the image of world that it has developed. Therefore, starting from a brief reconstruction of the theoretical debate in literature about the definition of sustainability, and showing how, in the headquarters of national and European institutions, the concept of cultural sustainability is still absent, the paper is intended to clarify that it is not only for our physical dwelling – and to cushion the ecological crisis we are experiencing today – that we have to take into account chemical, physical, economic, or social parameters. What is needed, as the eco-phenomenological tradition already recognizes, is a re-conceptualization of human values and of our relationship with nature and place in the harmony of the cosmos.