Renato Treves’ cultural heritage - The author analyses Renato Treves’s cultural career, examining his message in relation to the historical and social milestones that marked the development of the twentieth century. Treves first studied Kelsen in Marburg in August 1932, at a time when Nazism was preparing to take power. Then came the difficult cultural period under Italy’s fascist regime and the experience of liberal socialist opposition with the Justice and Freedom movement, followed by exile in Argentina and finally his return home after the war. For Treves, cultural philosophy was a pole star in his theoretical analysis, but also a great civic lesson. The maestro was of the opinion that cultural philosophy was a means for combating totalitarian philosophies and also those forms of totalitarianism that purport to be the result of reason.