The concept of nature in Gramsci

Philosophical Forum

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 220-243

  Fontana, Benedetto ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

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EID: 0042333721     PISSN: 0031806X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. To name a few, see William Leiss, The Domination of Nature (New York: G. Braziller, 1972)
2. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution: A Feminist Reappraisal of the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980)
3. Andrew Dobson and Paul Lucardie, eds., The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory (London: Routledge, 1993)
4. and Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991)
5. On general aspects of Gramsci's thought, see Walter L. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci's Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980)
6. Giorgio Nardone, Il pensiero di Gramsci (Bari: De Donato, 1971)
7. and Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci et l'Etat: pour une théorie matérialiste de la philosophie (Paris: Fayard, 1975)
8. See, for example, Alfredo Sabetti, "Il rapporto uomo-natura nel pensiero di Gramsci e la fondazione della scienza," Studi Gramsciani, Atti del convegno tenuto a Roma nei giorni 11-13 gennaio 1958, 2nda ed., (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1973), pp. 243-252
9. and Roberto Guiducci, "Filosofia della prassi e ricerca scientifica," La città futura: Saggi sidla figura e il pensiero di Antonio Gramsci, eds. Alberto Caracciolo and Gianni Scalia (Milan: Feltinelli, 1976), pp. 177-203
10. An excellent and revealing discussion of Gramsci's methods and procedures, and of the material and emotional circumstances under which he labored, may be found in Joseph A. Buttigieg's "Introduction," to the first volume of the English translation of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, ed. Joseph A. Buttigieg, trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg and Antonio Callaro (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)
11. Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, critical edition of the Gramsci Institute, ed. and intro. Valentino Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), 4 vols., vol. II: 11, pp. 1485-1486, hereafter cited as QC
12. English translation in Selections from the Prison Notebooks eds. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1973), pp. 345-346, hereafter cited as SPN
13. P. Notebooks, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Ibid., II: 11, pp. 1448-1457
14. P. Notebooks, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Ibid., II: 10 (II), p. 1296
15. For an excellent analysis of nature in Marx's thought, see Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx (London: Verso, 1962)
16. In addition, see David Pepper, Eco-Socialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 59-130
17. Karl Marx, "Marginal Notes on Adolph Wagner's Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie," Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 24 (New York: International Publishers, 1989), p. 538 (I have omitted Marx's italics)
18. See also, Karl Marx, Texts on Method, ed. and trans. Terrell Carver (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975)
19. Marx, "Marginal Notes," pp. 538-539
20. Gramsci asks: ". . . if human history should be conceived also as the history of nature (also by means of the history of science) how can the dialectic be separated from nature?" SPN, p. 448
21. On this, instructive is Thomas Nemeth, Gramsci's Philosophy: A Critical Study (Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1980), pp. 98-126
22. See also, Giorgio Nardone, L'Umano in Gramsci: Evento politico e comprensione dell'evento politico (Bari: Dedalo Libri, 1977)
23. and Leonardo Salamini, The Sociology of Political Praxis: An Introduction to Gramsci's Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 159-164
24. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 20
25. For a discussion of the relation between Hegel and Marx on this issue, see Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx, pp. 43-61. The concept of a "second nature" has a long and durable intellectual history, which may be traced back through Hegel, Hobbes, and Vico to Augustine, Cicero and to Plato and Aristotle and eventually to the Sophists
26. An excellent introduction to Greek thought on this question is T. A. Sinclair, A History of Greek Political Thought (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, 1968), pp. 143-238
27. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind, ed. and intro. Lester G. Crocker (New York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1967)
28. Lucia M. Palmer, "Introduction," in Giambattista Vico, On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language. Including the Disputation with the Giornale de' letterati d'Italia, trans. and intro. Lucia M. Palmer (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 1-34
29. see also Sir Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), pp. 11-73
30. Vico, On the Most Ancient Wisdom, pp. 45-46
31. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 415-422
32. See also Berlin, Vico and Herder, pp. 80-98
33. Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 132-149
34. In addition, see Giorgio Nardone, Il pensiero di Gramsci, pp. 291-334
35. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), p. 150
36. For an excellent analysis of the relation between labor and consciousness both in Hegel and Marx, see Doris Suarez, "Labor and Human Consciousness," unpublished manuscript, 1987
37. Emilio Agazzi, "Filosofia della prassi e filosofia dello spirito," La città futura: Saggi sulla figura e il pensiero di Antonio Gramsci, pp. 97-112
38. see also, Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 419-472
39. Quoted in Richard Lichtman, "The Production of Human Nature by Means of Human Nature," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist Ecology, 4, (June, 1990), p. 23
40. Karl Marx, Capital, A Critique of Political Economy, vol. I, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 133
41. Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. and intro. Martin Nicolaus (New York; Vintage, 1973), p. 92
42. Antonio Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere, eds. Sergio Caprioglio and Elsa Fubini (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), pp. 313-314
43. On hegemony, see Walter Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution
44. Serafino Cambareri, "Il concetto dell'egemonia nel pensiero di A. Gramsci," Studi Gramsciani, pp. 87-89
45. A. R. Buzzi, La teoria politica di Gramsci, trans. from the French Sandra Genovali (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1973)
46. and Benedetto Fontana, Hegemony and Power: On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)
47. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920, ed. Quintin Hoare, trans. John Mathews (New York: International Publishers, 1977), p. 13
48. in Italian, "Socialismo e culture," Il Grido del Popolo 29 January 1916, in Scritti Giovanili 1914-1918 (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), p. 25
49. T. A. Sinclair, A History of Greek Political Thought, p. 134
50. The relation between knowledge and power, logos and kratos, that was at the center of Greek political philosophy, is also fundamental in Gramscian thought. Indeed, hegemony may be seen as the concrete embodiment of this relation. Gramsci addresses and wrestles with this problem certainly as early as 1916. See his "Socialismo e culture," Il Grido del Popolo, 29 January 1916, pp. 22-26
51. (translated in Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920, pp. 10-13)
52. and "Per una associazione di culture," Avanti!, Piedmontese edition, 18 December 1917, pp. 143-145, both in Scritti giovanili 1914-1918
53. Gramsci, SPN, p. 360
54. QC II: 10 (11), p. 1338
55. Also, see Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 48: "Between the cultural pattern, the body, and the brain, a positive feedback system was created in which each shaped the progress of the other, a system in which the interaction among the increasing tool use, the changing anatomy of the hand and the expanding representation of the thumb on the cortex is only one of the most graphic examples. By submitting himself to governance by symbolically mediated programs . . . man determined . . . the culminating stages of his own biological destiny. Quite literally, though quite inadvertently, he created himself."
56. Also, see Pepper, Eco-Socialism, pp. 164-165, 221-225, 245-246, for a discussion of "anthropocentrism."
57. Gramsci, QC I: 1, p. 114
58. QC II: 10 (II), pp. 1331-1332
59. QC, pp. 1335-1336
60. For a critique of modernist rationality, see Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectics of Enlightenment (New York: 1971)
61. QC II: 11 (II), p. 1337
62. QC III: 22, pp. 2139-2180
63. On this question, see Massimo Salvadori, Gramsci e il problema storico della democrazia (Turin: Einaudi, 1973), pp. 154-180
64. and Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 150-173
65. Antonio Gramsci, "Marinetti rivoluzionario?" L'Ordine Nuovo, 5 January 1921, in Socialismo e fascismo: L'Ordine Nuovo 1921-1922 (Turin: Einaudi, 1974), p. 22
66. Gramsci, "Piazza della pace," Avanti!, 8 May 1916, in Scritti giovanili 1914-1918, pp. 34-35
67. This quote should be compared to Marx's statements regarding the bourgeoisie in The Communist Manifesto, in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (N.Y.: W. W. Norton, 1978), pp. 474-477
68. See Gramsci, "Operai e contadini," L'Ordine Nuovo 3 January 1920, in L'Ordine Nuovo 1919-1920 (Turin: Einaudi, 1955), pp. 22-27
69. and "Clericali ed agrari," Avanti!, 7 July 1916, pp. 40-42
70. and "La politica del 'se'," Il Grido del Popolo, 29 June 1918, pp. 269-275
71. as well as 'Il criterio della libertà," pp. 275-278
72. Il Grido del Popolo, 6 July 1918, all in Scritti giovanili 1914-1918
73. On this, see Pepper, Eco-Socialism, pp. 119-123, 221-222
74. For Gramsci's attitude regarding the utopian as opposed to the real possibility for revolutionary change in pre-fascist Italy, see the collection of articles in Scritti giovanili 1914-1918, as well as those in L'Ordine Nuovo 1919-1920. As for Gramsci and the import of his thought in today's world, it should be pointed out that the Prison Notebooks represents his attempt to come to terms with revolutionary failure, and that, as was the case of many before him (Plato, Cicero, Machiavelli), political defeat and apparent historical marginalization sparked an intellectual and moral reevaluation of fundamental principles
75. On the importance of the Reformation to Gramsci, see B. Fontana, Hegemony and Power, chapter 3
76. See also Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings, pp. 337-338, 393-395
77. Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920, pp. 65-66
78. for the Italian, "Democrazia operaia," written in collaboration with Palmira Togliatti, L'Ordine Nuovo, 21 June 1919, in L'Ordine Nuovo 1919-1920, pp. 10-11
79. In addition, see Paul Piccone, "Gramsci's Marxism: Beyond Lenin and Togliatti," Theory and Society III, 4 (Winter 1976), p. 490
80. and, for a contrary perspective, see Martin Clark, Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution that Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 70
81. For an illuminating discussion regarding Gramsci and contemporary culture and society, see Renate Holub, Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1992), especially see pp. 151-179
82. A. R. Buzzi, La teoria politica di Gramsci, pp. 167-168
83. Giorgio Nardone, L'Umano in Gramsci, pp. 13-15
84. QC II: 12, pp. 1547-1548
85. Gramsci, SPN, pp. 366-367
86. The best work in English on the subject regarding Gramsci's understanding and use of dialectic is Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)