Antonio Gramsci’s Democratic Philosophy of History

Abstract

Gramsci developed theoretical resources that respond, as if in anticipation, to the repression of history that largely characterises contemporary thought. He rightly criticises dogmatic conceptions of history and rejects the expression “philosophy of history”. But he did not abandon the project itself and confronted the classic questions of the philosophy of history. He thus asked himself what the driving forces of history are, who its subjects are, and what its meaning is, while conceiving that the answers to these questions are always provisional, as they are conditioned by human activities and struggles. The dialectic between the consistency of the historical process and its openness to praxis is therefore at the heart of his approach. That is why Gramsci develops a philosophy of history of a new kind. Aiming to produce historical effects, it is itself practical. Situated within the historical process, it is conceived as such and thus proves to be immanent and reflexive. Constitutively open to human activity, it is primarily open to that of the subalterns, which it strives to express and intensify: the best way to describe such a philosophy is then to say that it is democratic.