"Il tempo della malafede": the actuality of Nicola Chiaromonte’s thought

Abstract

Nicola Chiaromonte was a journalist and an essayist, heir to the ideas of Andrea Caffi, he was also a friend of personalities like Albert Camus and Hanna Arendt and part of the New York group of the Politics, the Dwight Macdonald’s review. Chiar- omonte wrote countless essays on twentieth century society that can help us understand the current crisis of values and art. This text proposes to discuss some of the ideas of the essayist, especially in the text “Il tempo della malafede” (published in the British review Encounter as “The Will to question”), in which the author discuss the “useful lies” that overlap the “useless” truths in our “artifact world - entirely wanted and built by man”. Chiaromonte, with this essay, anticipates the current concept of “post-truth” (according to the definwition of the Oxford Dictionary).