L'utile idiota. La cultura nel tempo dell'oclocrazia

Two convictions underlie the essays collected in this volume: the first is that culture is a pre-requisite of democracy; the second is that even the form of democratic government (believed to be the best possible) is inevitably exposed to multiple forms of decay. The difficulty surfacing – already at the terminological level – from the analysis of the disturbing trans-democracy (superficially summarized in the fortunate term 'post-democracy'), may find, on the other hand, in the studies of 'classics' an undoubted condition of awareness volatility of the present and orientation for the future. One need only think of the possible dual definition offered by the Greek historian Polybius to describe the corrupt form of democracy: cheirocracy ("rule by brute force“) and oclocracy (”demagogic rule of the masses"). By adopting an epigonal perspective and using the device of fictio philosophica to place itself in the full bailamme of an oclocratic dimension, the author aims to offer an analysis - not without sarcastic tones - of the catastrophe, choosing a particular point of view: that of cultural decay.