Gramsci’s Concept of the “Simple”: Religion, Common Sense, and the Philosophy of Praxis

Abstract

One of the minor yet recurring themes of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is his treatment of the “simple,” a category he developed to examine the Catholic Church’s paternalistic view of common people and peasants as “simple and sincere souls,” in contrast to its superior view of cultured intellectuals. Throughout the Notebooks, he examines how the Church’s condescending and fatalistic portrayal of the “simple” provides a basis for common sense, reinforcing the conditions of subalternity. Because of the uncritical nature of common sense and the simple’s desire for change, he argues for the articulation of a “renewed common sense” containing critical and reflective philosophical foundations that transcend the passivity and paternalism of religion. Such a movement requires defining and disseminating new conceptions of philosophy and culture that are critically grounded and provide a basis of struggle in which the “simple” play the predominant role in the direction of their political lives and in the creation of a new hegemony.

Key Words:

• Common Sense
• Antonio Gramsci
• Philosophy of Praxis
• Religion
• Subalternity

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Joseph A. Buttigieg and Cosimo Zene for reflections on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1 For references to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, I follow the international standard of citing the notebook number (Q), note number (§), year of publication, and page number. This standard follows the Italian critical edition of the Quaderni del carcere, edited by Valentino Gerratana (Einaudi, 1975). To date, Columbia University Press has published the first three of five volumes of Joseph A. Buttigieg’s critical English translation of the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1992, 1996, 2007). For English translations that have not yet appeared in Buttigieg’s critical edition, I refer to Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (International Publishers, 1971) and Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited by Derek Boothman (University of Minnesota Press, 1995).

2 Gramsci eventually included this note in Q20, the “special notebook” titled “Catholic Action—Catholic Integralists—Jesuits—Modernists.”

3 While in prison, Gramsci possessed a book that contained Pius IX’s encyclicals, including the Il Sillabo, as well as a copy of the International Union of Social Studies’ Codice Sociale. Both aimed to propagate Catholic social teachings, and Il Sillabo contained in particular a “syllabus of errors” pertaining to modern thought and liberalism. See Buttigieg’s note in Gramsci (1992, 375–6).

4 Gramsci inserted a bracketed exclamation mark (!) between “his” and “art.”

5 On Brescianism, see Buttigieg (1992, 43–5) and Musitelli (2009).

6 Gramsci initially conceived his investigation of philosophy as a study on the “theory of history and of historiography,” which appears as the first entry in the list of “main topics” on the first page of Q1 (Gramsci 1992, 99; 1975, 5). In his letter to Tatiana Schucht of 25 March 1929, he specifies that he intends to focus on Bukharin, Marx, and Croce. Gramsci (1994, 1:257–8) writes:

On the theory of history I would like to have a French book published recently: Bukharin—Théorie du matérialisme historique … and Oeuvres philosophiques de Marx published by Alfred Costes—Paris: volume 1: Contribution à la critique de la Philosophie du droit de Hegel—volume 2: Critique de la critique against Bruno Bauer and company. I already have Benedetto Croce’s most important books on this subject.

Over time he developed the project into the “notes on philosophy.” On this point, see Frosini (2003, 48–54).

7 Nikolai Bukharin’s book was first published in Russian in 1921. Gramsci frequently refers to it as the Popular Manual, and Buttigieg (1992, 520) suggests that “in all probability, Gramsci first read the book in the original Russian or in translation—it was widely available in German, French and English—during his stay in the Soviet Union in 1922–23.” An authorized English translation of the third Russian edition was published in 1925 under the alternative title Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology (International Publishers, 1925).

8 Cf. Q4§3 (Gramsci 1996, 141–2; 1975, 423); Q7§1 (Gramsci 2007, 153–5; 1975, 851–2); Q7§44 (Gramsci 2007, 193–4; 1975, 892–3).

9 In the second thesis, Marx (1976, 4) writes:

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

On the importance of Marx’s second thesis on Feuerbach in Gramsci’s thought, see Thomas (2009, 307–83).

10 Quoted in Gramsci (2007, 360; 1975, 1071): “Individualismo pagano e individualismo cristiano.” The passage is also quoted in Q11§12 (Gramsci 1975, 1389), from where it is translated in Gramsci (1971, 337).

11 For discussions on these points, see Dainotto (2009), Green (2011), and Haug (2001).

12 See Q3§31 (Gramsci 1996, 30–1; 1975, 309–10), Q4§3 (Gramsci 1996, 140–1; 1975, 421–2), and Q8§198 (Gramsci 2007, 348; 1975, 1060). Cf., Dainotto (2009).

13 In a “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right,” Marx (1975 [1844], 182) writes: “The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.”

14 Gramsci entered the title of Q11 (“Notes for an Introduction and Starting Point for the Study of Philosophy and the History of Culture”) on page 11 of his notebook, which was untypical of his usual practice of entering a title on the first page of his “special” notebooks. However, in Q10II§60 he refers to Q11 as “the notebook on the ‘Introduction to the Study of Philosophy’” (Gramsci 1995, 319; 1975, 1357). On these points, see Francioni and Frosini (2009a, 3).

15 Although “Some Preliminary Points of Reference” appears as the twelfth entry in Q11, evidence suggests that it is likely the first note Gramsci entered in the notebook. As Gianni Francioni has documented, Gramsci reserved the first ten pages of some of his “special” notebooks for later-planned introductions, meaning that the first notes he entered appear on page 11. Along with Q11, Q19–22 and Q25 follow this pattern. See Francioni (2009, 31) and Francioni and Frosini (2009a, 3).

16 See Q7§47 (Gramsci 2007, 194–5; 1975, 894), Q8§215 (Gramsci 2007, 364–5; 1975, 1075–6); Q11§17 (Gramsci 1971, 440–6; 1975, 1411–16).

17 See Q11§13–35, Gramsci (1975, 1396–1450). Also see Gramsci (1971, 419–72), although appearing in a different order.

18 On this point, see Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht, 19 March 1927 (Gramsci 1994, 1:84); and Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht, 3 August 1931 (Gramsci 1994, 2:52).

19 On this point, see Green and Ives (2009) and Wainwright (2010).