Philosophy of Praxis — The name Antonio Gramsci gave, in the Prison Notebooks, to Marx’s historical materialism conceived as an autonomous, self-sufficient philosophy rather than a mere appendix to economics or metaphysics. The phrase philosophy of praxis (Italian filosofia della prassi) is not Gramsci’s invention: he borrows it from Antonio Labriola, who had used it to describe the core of Marxism, and grounds it in Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, above all in the idea that the truth of a theory is proven in practical activity. In prison, the label also served to evade the censor by standing in for the word “Marxism.” Its central claim is the refusal to separate theory from action: thinking is itself a way of acting upon the world, and every social transformation presupposes intellectual and moral elaboration. Against economistic readings, Gramsci insists that superstructures — culture, ideology, law, education — enjoy relative autonomy from the economic base and form the decisive terrain of politics. Hence its close tie to his concept of hegemony: a class aspiring to lead society must first win consent at the level of ideas and values, not merely seize power by force. The organic intellectual, bound to a particular social group, is the agent who articulates this worldview. The philosophy of praxis is therefore at once a critical interpretation of history and a conscious project for its transformation.
← Glossary