The cult of the existing is totalitarianism: this is how Gramsci laid Gentile bare

Even the Gentile anniversary confirmed the substantial sterility of the right in terms of ideas. What its representatives produced for the occasion did not go beyond the tired request for a roundabout dedicated to the philosopher born 150 years ago or a few biographical notes on his execution by partisans. A more coherent picture was instead provided by Carlo Galli, who in Repubblica mentioned among other things the interest with which the young Gramsci looked at the pages of actualism.

The detachment emerges above all in the Notebooks, where an autonomous reflection is deposited with respect to the cult of action that dominated the entire culture of the early twentieth century. With the ambition of simultaneously tracing “ an Anti-Croce ” and “ an Anti-Gentile”, Gramsci’s concern is first of all to evaluate the influence of the two great philosophers on the terrain of cultural hegemony. The Sardinian’s opinion is that Croce’s influence is “ much superior” to the impact of the Sicilian theoretician of a “ philosophy that is not thought but done”. Therefore the vulgate of actualism as a sort of thought stamped with the stamp of State does not hold up. In reality, Gramsci notes, “Gentile’s authority is anything but admitted by his own political party”. The apparent mark of officialdom ends up, we read in the Notebooks, erased in the face of the truly harsh attacks received by the philosopher senator even in the Chamber or the repeated invectives against his person.

It is therefore not on the simple yardstick of proximity to fascism that the contribution of Croce and Gentile is calculated in the prison papers. While Croce has understood that modernity contains " the death of traditional philosophy " (even in this point we must register an " implicit absorption" of Marx 's categories), Gentile still moves within the ranks of ancient metaphysics. Because of the anti-metaphysical aspect, which renounces reworking the problems of Being in order to stick to specific questions, Croce is recognized by Gramsci as having "the exceptional intelligence of dangers" . Although the dialectic of the distinct is to a certain extent "an unfortunate and incongruous expression" to underline the differences within a unitary framework, the explicit immanentist tone is nevertheless a point of advantage in favor of the philosopher from Pescasseroli for whom any desire to propose a speculative system is vain. In Gentile, as well as in the “minor actualist friars” teased by Croce during his “heroic” resistance to “parrot-like phraseology”, Gramsci identifies the persistence of a contemplative streak, which gives his pseudo-historicism a “ very poor ” profile. Hence the irony towards those “in recent writings who offered to prove the existence of God with actualist arguments”. A true comedy of errors occurs when Gentile assures that an essential affinity exists between philosophy and Catholicism, and the Catholics reply that his system is precisely “pure paganism”.

Gramsci's main point is that "current idealism has become the "handmaiden of theology"" because it leads to a new type of transcendence. He points out that neo-scholasticism, firmly anchored to formal logic, can be suitable for "criticizing the banal sophisms of current idealism that claims to be the perfection of dialectics". In fact, in the fury against formalism, Gentile's battle is lost because in the end it recovers "tools" that are much more primitive than those of formal logic" . Through a " literary "seventeenth-century" style" , the actualist school absolutizes thought-spirit but, with "the witticisms and set phrases that replace thought", it does not understand the dynamics of reality, the importance of techniques. Gramsci sees in the "reactionary" reform of Hegel" attempted in Italy a regression that leads back from philosophy to theology. “Idealism ,” says Gramsci , “hypostatizes this “something,” makes it an entity in itself, the spirit, as religion had made it the divinity. Religion and idealism are “hypostases,” that is, arbitrary abstraction, not a process of analytical distinction .” Thus, even without knowing Marx ’s youthful criticism of Hegel’s dialectic, Gramsci contests on similar grounds the vicious intertwining of reason and empiricism inherent in the prevailing tendencies.

The uncritical restoration of praxis seems to be the hallmark of all idealism since “ the immediate passionate element is introduced into the logical system and then the instrumental value of the system is expected to remain valid ”. The defects of abstraction enhanced to hypostasis push us to churn out metatemporal constructs which precipitate into the exaltation of the existent. Thus, not only the “ unseasoned crudeness of Gentile’s thought” emerges, Gramsci explains, but also the profound connection between pure act and “ ideological opportunism”. Due to the conversion of speculation into experience and the elevation of the fact to value, Gramsci sees Gentile’s organic fall into the dense quagmire “ of opportunism and empiricism” . The praise of action leads to a complete axiological indifference (even “the philosophy of… Nitti and Giolitti ” is “ a philosophy that is not thought, but done ”), and the champion of the Absolute or Truth even flirts with common sense, which however “is an ambiguous, contradictory, multifaceted concept”.

When he brings together thought and ideology, Gentile does not go beyond a "new form of sociologism, neither history nor philosophy" , which between the lines reveals the "degradation of traditional philosophy" . In light of this, the national character of actualism, as a system validated in its public relevance, for Gramsci rests only on the circumstance that it " is strictly linked to a primitive phase of the State". For the elementary, economic-corporate vision of public law, the philosopher of the ethical State remains behind in comparison with some acquisitions contained in the Croce-Einaudi debate on free market and liberalism. The ethical-political dimension, grasped by Croce as a theoretician of pluralism or distinction, is precluded to Gentile's doctrine of dictatorship or Unity, which despises the procedural method of consensus. The totalizing identity of statehood and coercion, this is Gramsci's judgment, distances Gentile from any notion of hegemony and therefore from any compatibility with a liberal-democratic practice.

FROM

Michael Prospero