Gramsci, Philosophy of Language, and Aesthetic Judgment in Light of an Expanded Notion of Ideology

Abstract

This essay connects Antonio Gramsci’s expanded concept of Marxian ideology to his training in linguistics and, broadly understood, philosophy of language in order to advance a hypothesis regarding Gramsci’s views on literary criticism and aesthetic judgment. This hypothesis can be summed up in the following way: aesthetic judgment, including literary criticism, maintains a unity of form and content while rejecting facile attempts to reduce the global meaning of a “political” work of art to its ideological content, where ideology is understood in the sense of a series of theoretical propositions about the world, which reside in the realm of traditional Marxist superstructure. As a result, there is no recourse to either a scientific objectivity or a relativistic emphasis on subjectivity in the evaluation of works of art; instead, priority is given to an immanent, contextual interpretation of works of literature and culture. Such a methodology is intimately related to Gramsci’s reworked concept of ideology and therefore deserves further consideration.

Keywords: Gramsci; Ideology; Philosophy of Language, Aesthetic Judgment.