Writers, people and Machiavellism. The disappearance of the ideological critic Alberto Asor Rosa

His main vocation was to reduce other people’s thought patterns to the bone, transforming them into a rough but sharp passepartout weapon. Too bad that the desire to remain at the center of the scene has led him to embark on undertakings that are not suited to his profile

A great critic said that it was only in the 1960s that the 20th century fully revealed itself, stripping off the last 19th-century civilian clothing. Then the century declared in full voice that intelligence is one with evil, that is, with a Machiavellism without veils or limits; and that everything that is suspected of innocence, of naive humanistic pathos or of simple moral loyalty excludes both from true life and from true culture. In a country like ours, which at that time was passing abruptly from peasant civilization to the boom and ’68, this revelation brought to the fore a type of intellectual-political whose only coherence lay in the performance of a cold ruthlessness, capable of guaranteeing him victory on all tables. His attitude was that of someone who despises tradition, but is ready to use it in any way for tactical reasons. It is in such a context that it has established itself Alberto Asor Rosawho died today at the age of 89.