Philosopher
Antonio Gramsci
Overview
Antonio Francesco Gramsci (UK: GRAM-shee, US: GRAHM-shee; Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo franˈtʃesko ˈɡramʃi] ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist and politician. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926, and remained in prison until shortly before his death in 1937.
During his imprisonment, Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis. His Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources—not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Hegel, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Georges Sorel, and Benedetto Croce. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including the history of Italy and Italian nationalism, the French Revolution, fascism, Taylorism and Fordism, civil society, the state, historical materialism, folklore, religion, and high and popular culture.
Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class—the bourgeoisie—use cultural institutions to maintain wealth and power in capitalist societies. In Gramsci's view, the bourgeoisie develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. He also attempted to break from the economic determinism of orthodox Marxist thought, and so is sometimes described as a neo-Marxist. He held a humanistic understanding of Marxism, seeing it as a philosophy of praxis and an absolute historicism that transcends traditional materialism and traditional idealism.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Antonio Gramsci
- Roger Scruton
- Karl Marx
- Max Horkheimer
- Intellectual
- György Lukács
- Paulo Freire
- Zygmunt Bauman
- Benedetto Croce
- Louis Althusser
- Frantz Fanon
- Nicos Poulantzas
- Camillo Berneri
Ideas Antonio Gramsci discusses
- The Prince
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Vladimir Lenin
- Fascism
- Feminism
- French Revolution
- Folklore
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- High culture
- Historicism
- Idealism
- Joseph Stalin
- Leon Trotsky
- Marxism
- Liberalism
- Benito Mussolini
- Materialism
- Intersubjectivity
- Social relation
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- Common sense
- Nationalism
- October Revolution
- Linguistics
Place in the tradition
Part of Italian philosophy.