There was a time when talking about cultural universality meant to run the risk of being accused for conservatism, even for reactionary tendencies. Since the twentieth century has been the century of diversity and interculturalism, relativity and self-determinations: vital and long awaited revolutions, but somehow still more "imagined" than realized.

Undisputed postmodernity totem, diversity has been the subject of many discussions and thoughts for decades, communication is often the place of honor, on the one hand as a defendant, on the other and as a judge or a victim, but anyway as a decisive key of the differentiation process and cultural legitimacy in progress.

And yet it is only now, in this troubled beginning of the third millennium, that interculturalism has become a reality, a fact with whom to deal every day, for better or for worse; not an ideal or a theory. Therefore, speaking of cultural fundamentals assumes a new importance, at different levels: for Europe, which is now committed more than ever to sew up contexts "so near, so far", and for the world, struggling with the degenerated demonstrations of a dramatically forced diversity.

So worth the effort maybe to return to wonder what are, if any, the fundamentals of the language, the constants of communication beyond linguistic understanding in the strict sense, but that concern habits, behaviors and rules of live together. To look for, as we did in the last Oscar Pomilio Forum, the essence of the essence of the human being. In a word, immutable values. Looking for them in a variety of places – both in art and in law, both in taste and in memory –  to rediscover together.