Pure act,impure act: A critical comparison between Giovanni Gentile and Antonio Gramsci

Abstract

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, European Marxists participated in the difficult process of self-interrogation known as revisionism. In Italy, through multiple authors, publications and debates, these reflections culminated in Antonio Gramsci's philosophy of praxis, which will have an outsized importance not only for Italian communism. Although the direct ascendency of Italian Neo-Idealism over Gramsci's thought, and especially Benedetto Croce's philosophy, has always been evident and universally recognized, the influence of Giovanni Gentile's actualism on the philosophy of praxis is still debated, and often underestimated. Starting from an analysis of Gramsci's 64th note of the 11th Quaderno del carcere, where he distinguishes his ‘impure act’ from Gentile's ‘pure act’, this article intends to compare the two authors’ thoughts and their role in the philosophical revision of Marxism. By discussing various interpretations about the alleged connections between Gramsci's and Gentile's conceptions—from the most orthodox Marxist readings to the ones that, first of all, see a form of ‘post-actualism’ in the philosophy of praxis —it will attempt to highlight from a philosophical perspective their contact points, and to demonstrate how and where they are different.

Introduction: Antonio Gramsci, a post-actualist?

Over time, many studies have been dedicated to the question of a speculative convergence between Giovanni Gentile's actualism and Antonio Gramsci's philosophy of praxis. In the decades immediately after the Second World War, for understandable reasons, any kind of juxtaposition between the two was out of the question: Gentile, on the one hand, had joined the fascist regime and stayed faithful to the Italian Social Republic until he was killed by communist partisans in 1944; Gramsci, on the other hand, had died of illness in 1937 after many years in prison and had become both a martyr-hero of antifascism and a theoretical point of reference for the post-war Italian Communist Party. However, starting between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s, a new wave of Gentilean studies arose, seeing in Gentile an author for whom Western thought generated a most coherent and radical self-awareness of the impossibility of any absolute transcendent truth (Meregalli, 2022). Within this new trend, a widespread tendency took hold to underline the homologous relationship, with points of contact and overlap, between the Gramscian and the Gentilean speculative systems. At the same time, some Marxist interpreters—and particularly those most rigorously faithful to the interpretation that Gramsci himself offers of Gentile's philosophy in the Quaderni del carcere (‘Prisons Notebook’)—answered back to the new wave, trying to strengthen the critical position that debunks any hypothesis of convergence between the two authors.

In the belief that above all an ideological approach continues to prevent some critics from fully admitting and appreciating the significance of Antonio Gramsci's theoretical relationship with Giovanni Gentile, what I would like to demonstrate here is that not only is Gramsci's thought in debt to—or at least parallel and specular to—Gentile's one, in that it is philosophically original compared to other Marxist theories. In fact, it is also my intention to show that it is definitely less coherent than actualism in formulating a philosophy of (immanent) praxis, even if evidently more multidisciplinary than it. In other words, not only will I try to endorse the new wave of Gentilean studies mentioned above, but also to lay the foundations for a reflection on how Gramsci can be interpreted as a post-actualist, an ‘irregular pupil’ of Gentile, or even, if I may be provocative, a sort of leftist actualist like Ugo Spirito or Guido Calogero (Negri, 1975: 65–86). This stand implies that Gramsci's theory can be made more consistent if it is explicitly ‘filtered’ through Gentile's categories. At the same time, his works can be considered glosses to actualism itself, focused on problems that are not strictly philosophical, but related to other cultural fields: the analysis of forces of production, political strategy studies, popular culture critiques, etc. This does not mean, of course, that I aim to completely reduce Gramsci to Gentile as though they were indistinguishable, but to invite the academic debate in the fields of Italian Studies and Theory to think of them together.

The steps through which I will carry out my argument are the following. In the second section of the article, I will touch upon a specific, but crucial philosophical issue, regarding the ‘purity’ or ‘impurity’ of the so-called ‘act’. In fact, both in Gentile and Gramsci, this category indicates the ‘immanent praxis’ of human beings, freed in modern history from any form of metaphysical, transcendent truth. To be exact, Gramsci deals with this problem in the Quaderni del carcere precisely in his attempt to distinguish his thought from Gentile's one. In the third section, I will compare the way in which, despite the apparently different solutions provided to the ‘purity/impurity’ question, Gramsci and Gentile converge in their shared attempts to reform Marxism, while in the fourth one I will summarize the main stands of the critical debate about this supposed convergence. Specifically, I will try to show how the critics’ interpretations that oppose the juxtaposition of Gramsci and Gentile are mostly based on the partial readings that Gramsci himself elaborates on actualism, taking them for granted and not seeming to consider adequately Gentile's texts. On the contrary, the authors who do consider them are also the same ones who back the parentage of Gramsci from Gentile. Finally, in the fifth and sixth sections, I will argue my support to this last interpretive trend, deducing from the way in which Gentile's and Gramsci's philosophies carry their authors out to treat the problem of history the greater coherence of the former with respect to the latter. I will also show the necessity to think Gramsci through Gentile for anyone who wants to follow him on the way of an actually anti-metaphysical and authentically free philosophy of praxis.

Monism and monism

Critics have often mentioned a well-known excerpt from Gramsci's note 64 of the 11th Quaderno del carcere, when debating whether to support or to challenge the philosophical proximity between Gramsci and Gentile. This passage is so significant that the whole question about the relationship between the two philosophers seems to be put at stake on it. In this note, entitled ‘Obbiettività’ della conoscenza (‘Objectivity of Knowledge’), Gramsci extensively comments on an article that was published in ‘Civiltà cattolica’, on 1 June 1929, by the Jesuit Mario Barbera. This article aimed to discuss the Neo-Idealistic philosophical tendency, which was preeminent in Italy during the first decades of the century, in its essential lines.

According to Barbera, idealism is characterized by the rejection of any objective reality external to the mind of the human subject, and by a spiritualist monism, which is the opposite of the materialist one, but equally unilateral. For this reason, from Barbera's point of view, philosophical idealism is incompatible with Christianity, which is founded instead on a realistic ontology. In truth, Barbera's article seems to fit into the wake of the controversies following the signing of the Lateran Treaty, which took place on 11 February 1929—a few months before the publication of his article. It is not hard to believe that its critique of Neo-Idealism aspired above all to erode its political influence.

At that time, Giovanni Gentile and his philosophical school were competing for cultural hegemony in Italy with other cultural groups, including the Catholics (Gentile, 1996; Tarquini, 2011). In 1929, Gentile publicly took a position against the agreement between the fascist regime and the Catholic Church. As a matter of fact, he believes that the Church should be subordinated to the Italian State. Because of this, he saw the extensive concessions that the regime had conceded to the Church in the name of political pragmatism, especially in the field of education.

The year 1929, after all, marks the beginning of a phase of change in the history of cultural hegemony in Italy. If throughout the 1920s Gentile benefits from important government roles, as well as from an unquestionable cultural protagonism, starting with the Lateran Treaty he begins to lose all his political battles one after the other. His ‘neo-idealistic party’ gives ground also in terms of cultural primacy, and he is more and more readily accused of crypto-liberalism by intransigent fascists, criticized by the new ‘realist’ philosophical climate (to which the greater presence of Catholic intellectuals in the public life of the country undoubtedly contributes), and marginalized in the academic environment and in field of cultural organization (Tarquini, 2009). The philosopher Augusto Del Noce even suggested that the dictatorship confined ‘Gentile nell’Enciclopedia [Italiana Treccani], come in una sorta di confino dorato, se non proprio simile a quello di D’Annunzio a Gardone, almeno analogo’ (1990: 313). ¹

Nonetheless, Barbera's critique of Neo-Idealism appeared to interest Gramsci on a strictly philosophical level above all. Indeed, Gramsci wondered what meaning the problem of the objectivity of reality could have for its own philosophy. He answered with the words of Marx's preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which are many times quoted in the Quaderni del carcere.

As a matter of fact, Marx states that human beings become aware of the struggle between productive forces (the economical, objective structure of reality) in terms of ideology (the cultural, subjective superstructures). Gramsci also asks himself if this awareness could be limited only to relations of production, or if it extends instead to every form of knowing. His reflection, in other words, escapes from the narrow socio-economic scope of Marx's quotation and brings the matter on a gnoseological level (Gramsci, 1975: 455–465).

He asks then:

Cosa significherà, in tal caso, il termine ‘monismo’? Non certo quello materialista né quello idealista, ma l’identità dei contrari nell’atto storico concreto, cioè attività umana (storia-spirito) in concreto, connessa indissolubilmente a una certa ‘materia’ organizzata (storicizzata), alla natura trasformata dall’uomo. Filosofia dell’atto (prassi, svolgimento) ma non dell’atto ‘puro’, bensì proprio dell’atto ‘impuro’, reale nel senso più profano e mondano della parola. (Gramsci, 1975: 1492) ²

This note is in truth a re-elaboration of note 37 of the 4th Quaderno (Gramsci, 1975: 454). The words of the last passage are here slightly, but significantly, different. What catches the eye the most in the transition from the first to the second version of the note is the removal of any explicit allusion to ‘historical materialism’, which is a concept that Gramsci gradually abandons as he writes the Quaderni. In fact, as we will see, the term ‘materialism’ engendered certain interpretive ambiguities, which could trigger a strengthening of the positivistic-deterministic features of Marxism. This tendency, in turn, ended up justifying that acquiescent and wait-and-see attitude that Gramsci criticized in the coeval socialist movement, both from a philosophical and political point of view.

It is no coincidence that he does not entitle the first draft of his note ‘Obbiettività’ della conoscenza, but Idealismo-positivismo (‘Idealism-Positivism’), which underlines the two contrary but complementary poles within which his idea of ‘historical materialism’ moves, escaping the reductionism of one and the other, and dialectically sourcing from both. But the denomination of ‘historical materialism’ could still seem to weigh on the side of positivism. This is why Gramsci replaces it with the more synthetic and effective denomination of filosofia della prassi (philosophy of praxis). Besides, what stands out the most in note 64 is its final reference to the ‘impure act’. What does this specification depend on? Gramsci seems here to refer, without explicitly mentioning it, to Gentile's philosophical system.

As is known, Gentile founded his whole speculative structure on a simple, essential intuition, which pushes the logic of philosophical idealism to its most rigorous and radical consequences. In Gentile, in fact, ‘“idealismo” non significa soltanto che la realtà può esistere esclusivamente nella coscienza, ma che la realtà esiste nel momento e nella misura in cui essa è […] contemporanea all’atto del pensiero’ (Severino, 1986: 201; emphasis is in original). ³ ‘Il punto di vista trascendentale’, Gentile indeed claims, ‘è quello che si coglie nella realtà del nostro pensiero quando il pensiero si consideri non come atto compiuto, ma, per così dire, quasi atto in atto’ (Gentile 1986: 8; emphasis is in original), ⁴ that is in its concrete, immanent unfolding.

The subject of Gentilean idealism, in other words, is not the one that you think about, but it is the same one that is thinking here, now, like this: I, who write and correct this text while I write and correct it actively; you, who read and interpret it while you read and interpret it actively. It is precisely from the formula of the atto—which Gentile derives from Bertrando Spaventa's work, and which refers both to the concepts of ‘immanence’ and ‘praxis’—that descends the same denomination of Gentilean philosophy as attualismo (actualism).

In conclusion, Gramsci seems keen to distinguish his own conception of the ‘act’ from the Gentilean one. But what does he mean by ‘purity’ and ‘impurity’ of the act? And how much is this distinction effective in justifying the speculative distance between actualism and philosophy of praxis?

The revision of Marxism

Many interpreters noticed ‘il fascino esercitato da Gentile su tutta una generazione di rivoluzionari o ribelli’ who lived in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century, and the fact that he had ‘un’influenza ben superiore a quella di Croce’ (Losurdo, 1990: 102, 103) ⁵ on them, especially after the evolution of Croce's thought in the so-called system of distinti.

Gentile truly had all the qualities to leave an impression on the intellectuals of his time: his reference to the concreteness of life, that is to the plane of immanence of a praxis freed from the constraints of transcendent authority; his aversion to any clear separation between thought and action, culture and politics, philosophy and history; his fervent and passionate eloquence, with an intense moral charge; his invocation of a mission for intellectuals and of the project of a great national pedagogy. Especially ‘durante la Prima guerra mondiale e nell’immediato dopoguerra […] molti giovani liberali e popolari, liberalsocialisti e azionisti, e persino tanti socialisti e comunisti destinati ad assumere ruoli di primo piano nella lotta antifascista’ turn then to Gentile's teaching, and ‘[lo] leggono, conoscono e per molti versi ammirano, giungendo a considerarlo, per una pur breve fase della loro formazione, un maestro di vita’ (Burgio, 2016: 349). ⁶ In this sense, indeed

tutto il composito arcipelago del sovversivismo italiano di ogni colore e tendenza, di destra e di sinistra, fascista e antifascista (dai vociani ai futuristi, dai sindacalisti al Mussolini socialista e fascista, da Piero Gobetti ed Antonio Gramsci), nel periodo compreso fra i primi anni del Novecento e il secondo dopoguerra, si è lungamente abbeverato alla fonte dell’attualismo, o, almeno, ha con esso in larga misura interferito. (Buchignani, 2017: 94) ⁷

There are no doubts about the contribution that Gentile's Neo-Idealism specifically made to the early 20th-century Italian Marxist revisionist debate. It was noticed that the ‘tratto originale’ of Italian Marxism found its ‘indice riassuntivo in una formula, filosofia della praxis’, which was differently employed, apart from Gentile himself, by Antonio Labriola, Rodolfo Mondolfo, and Antonio Gramsci, who ‘rappresenta, per molti versi, l’epilogo e il culmine di questo percorso’ (Mustè, 2018: 9, 11). ⁸ Gentile, specifically, is the

autore del contributo ancora oggi tra i più importanti per la comprensione dell’importanza teoretico-filosofica di Marx, […] dove al Marx economicista-materialistico, così come al Marx profeta secolarizzato, si contrappone il Marx delle Tesi su Feuerbach, il Marx della volontà di sapere in quanto volontà di potere. (Cacciari, 2009: 8; emphasis is in original) ⁹

As a matter of fact, with his two studies Una critica del materialismo storico (‘A Critique of Historical Materialism’) and La filosofia della prassi (‘The Philosophy of Praxis’)—collected in the volume La filosofia di Marx (‘Marx's Philosophy’) in 1899 (Gentile, 2003)—Gentile contributes to conceiving the ‘materialismo storico come filosofia organica’, identifying its ‘caratteristica fondamentale […] nell’abolizione di qualsiasi presupposto aprioristico e nel concepire il principio dell’attività non già distinto dalle cose, ma immanente al loro sviluppo’ (Marramao, 1971: VIII, 187). ¹⁰ The young Gentile therefore acknowledges that philosophical dignity in Marx's philosophy which was denied by Croce. In this way, he lays the foundation ‘di una vera e propria corrente [del marxismo italiano], imperniata sul concetto della storia come processo dialettico della Prassi’ (Marramao, 1971: 176), ¹¹ and characterized by a strong voluntarist vocation.

The fact remains that, according to Gentile, Marx's thought is burdened by certain basic inconsistencies, which are due to ‘un eclettismo di elementi contraddittori’ (Gentile, 2003: 165). ¹²

On one hand, Marx would in fact be moved by the will to overturn Hegel, and to replace the metaphysical concepts of German absolute idealism with the scientific laws of materialism. On the other hand, he would not want to abandon Hegel's teachings that preach the inexhaustible dynamism of history, and therefore the eternal possibility of human civilizations to transform themselves. ‘Dunque materia sì’, observes Gentile,

ma materia e prassi (cioè oggetto soggettivo); materia sì; ma materia in continuo divenire. Per tal modo ei [cioè Marx] veniva a cogliere “il più bel fiore” dell’idealismo e del materialismo […]. Materialismo sì, ma storico. Se non che alle ottime intenzioni realistiche l’ironia della logica rispose con un risultato che fu di grossolana contraddizione. (Gentile, 2003: 164–165) ¹³

A contradiction with significant practical implications.

How is it in fact possible, Gentile asks, to harmonize the cogent logic of economic science with the willful afflatus of revolutionary subjectivity? If historical praxis is anchored to the analysis of a specific economic reality, how can we prevent the revolutionary dynamism from being harnessed and neutralized by necessary laws? If Marxism beats history in the phases of an inescapable progression, which is independent from active human subjects’ will, how can we distinguish it from Hegelism, if not for a superficial materialistic ‘repainting’? Marxism, as it is interpreted by the young Gentile, appears then as a sort of unaware positivism: a system of thought ‘contemplating’ the already existing datum rather than producing it; a philosophy which undergoes history rather than participating in it, and which remains perched in its own eschatological wait, incapable of concretely intervening in the making of the future. These features seem in fact not unrelated to the Italian socialist movement at the turn of 1800s and 1900s.

Gramsci himself tried to free Marxism from this rigid conception of historical progress. He did so also in light of the Russian revolution, which in his and other Italian intellectuals’ opinion had undermined every ‘scientific’ prevision of what the future could have in store. The famous articles La rivoluzione contro il ‘Capitale’ (‘The Revolution against “Capital”’) and Il nostro Marx (‘Our Marx’), which were respectively published on 24 December 1917, on Avanti! And on 4 May 1918, on Il Grido del Popolo, are valid examples.

In these two texts, Gramsci exalts the Bolsheviks as the heirs not of the letter, but of the spirit of the ‘pensiero marxista, quello che non muore mai, che è la continuazione del pensiero idealistico italiano e tedesco’ (Gramsci, 2007: 23). ¹⁴ Marx's authentic thought, in fact, would put

sempre come massimo fattore di storia non i fatti economici, bruti, ma l’uomo, ma le società degli uomini, degli uomini che si accostano fra di loro, si intendono fra di loro, sviluppano attraverso questi contatti (civiltà) una volontà sociale, collettiva, e comprendono i fatti economici, e li giudicano, e li adeguano alla loro volontà, finché questa diventa la motrice dell’economia, la plasmatrice della realtà oggettiva, che vive, e si muove, e acquista carattere di materia tellurica in ebollizione, che può essere incanalata dove alla volontà piace, come alla volontà piace. (Gramsci, 2007: 23) ¹⁵

In this way Marx therefore recovered the revolutionary heroic voluntarism, without renouncing the rigor of scientific criticism. Thanks to Marxism, human beings, which is understood by Gramsci in its collective dimension,

acquista coscienza della realtà obbiettiva, si impadronisce del segreto che fa giocare il succedersi reale degli avvenimenti. L’uomo conosce se stesso, sa quanto può valere la sua individuale volontà, e come essa possa essere resa più potente in quanto, ubbidendo, disciplinandosi alla necessità, finisce col dominare la necessità stessa, identificandola col proprio fine. Chi conosce se stesso? Non l’uomo in genere, ma quello che subisce il giogo della necessità. (Gramsci, 2007: 33) ¹⁶

In short, the young Gramsci pictures an afterthought of Marxism that traces back socio-economic analyses to their practical efficacy. The scientific datum, in this sense, does not exist as an undoubted truth that is presupposed by the subjectivity that experiences it, but as a tool of its action, which on the other hand could not exercise itself if, so to speak, it had not a solid ground to pivot on.

This attempt to keep the dialectical nexus between idealism and materialism remains after all one of Gramsci's main goals also in the Quaderni del carcere, for instance when he writes that the ‘natura dell’uomo è l’insieme dei rapporti sociali che determina una coscienza storicamente definita, e questa coscienza indica ciò che è “naturale” o no’; when he asserts that he does not consider the ‘materia […] come tale, ma come socialmente e storicamente organizzata per la produzione, come rapporto umano’ (emphasis is in original); when, inspired by Georges Sorel, formulates

la concezione di “blocco storico”, in cui […] le forze materiali [struttura] sono il contenuto e le ideologie [sovrastruttura] la forma, distinzione di forma e contenuto meramente didascalica, perché le forze materiali non sarebbero concepibili storicamente senza forma e le ideologie sarebbero ghiribizzi individuali senza le forze materiali

or even when he attacks the ‘materialismo storico’ itself, if it ‘tende a diventare una ideologia nel senso deteriore, cioè una verità assoluta ed eterna’, mingling ‘col materialismo volgare, con la metafisica della “materia” che non può non essere eterna e assoluta’ (Gramsci, 1975: 1032, 443, 869, 466). ¹⁷

In short, Gramsci makes the attempt to free Marxism from every positivist temptation one of his main philosophical tasks, lamenting the fact that, after Marx, many ‘materialisti storici […] dall’unità dialettica sono ritornati al materialismo crudo’ (Gramsci, 1975: 424). ¹⁸

Through these few examples it is clear how Gramsci identifies the same contradictions underlined by Gentile in the conceptual core of Marx's philosophy. Even the reasoning that they make in attempt to overcome these contradictions appear homologous. As a matter of fact, one of the main speculative goals of actualism is to show the impossibility of the object—which in Gentile indicates any kind of datum (aesthetical, moral, religious, metaphysical, scientific, economic…)—to exist except in the spiritual life of the subject that experiences it. Gentile dedicates to this purpose not only his interpretation of Marx, but a whole section of one of his main works, Sistema di logica come teoria del conoscere (‘The System of Logic as Theory of Knowing’) (Gentile, 1955: 173–280).

Since, according to actualism, the object realizes itself only in the subjective experiencing act, its scientific analysis and definition is not at all contrary but integrated into philosophy. Actualism, in short,

non ha nulla da dire contro la scienza e contro le scienze, ma le esalta tutte e le celebra come gagliarde organizzazioni del pensiero che realizza il suo mondo, il mondo della libertà. E non lo potrebbe realizzare arrestandosi innanzi alla natura e all’oggetto in generale quale esso gli si oppone immediatamente, misterioso, inesorabile, e non lo investisse e risolvesse in tutti i modi nella propria attualità. (Gentile, 1987: 381) ¹⁹

So, for Gentile science is the subject's act in the moment in which it acknowledges (prende atto di) and implements (pone in atto) the object, that is the resistance on which the subject bases itself to exercise its own praxis. For this reason, the object scientifically takes the form of the law, of the limit that humanity incessantly imposes and overcomes.

Thinking about progress, Gentile wonders:

Dove l’uomo si ferma ed arresta? Dove riconosce i confini invalicabili? Dove si persuade, comunque, osservando, sperimentando, e in generale pensando, che gli è giuocoforza riconoscere che lì, oltre quel certo segno, egli non guadagnerebbe, ma perderebbe, e il suo potere non si allargherebbe anzi verrebbe a limitarsi, e che egli insomma non andrebbe incontro alla vita, ma alla morte. I confini non gli sono imposti e non possono esser imposti: sono da lui scoperti, conosciuti e perciò riconosciuti; e da lui stesso posti e imposti a se medesimo. La legge a cui egli si assoggetta, non è la soppressione, anzi l’elevazione della sua personalità, della sua volontà a un grado superiore, a paragone del quale quello precedente apparisce come proprio di un volere particolare, arbitrario, e perciò falso e fallace, e perciò caduco ed essenzialmente impotente. Il limite riconosciuto è novella e più splendida prova dell’infinità dello spirito. (Gentile, 2000: 64–65) ²⁰

The contents of Gramsci's La rivoluzione contro il ‘Capitale’ and Il nostro Marx, and almost the same rhetorical afflatus, resound here. But the same conception does not differ from certain notes of the Quaderni: for instance when Gramsci writes that ‘[la] scienza è una sovrastruttura’ that ‘crea un metodo adeguato, una propria logica, la cui generalità e universalità consiste solo nell’essere “conforme al fine”’, or when he claims that the ‘attività sperimentale dello scienziato […] è il primo modello di mediazione dialettica tra l’uomo e la natura, la cellula storica elementare per cui l’uomo, ponendosi in rapporto con la natura attraverso la tecnologia, la conosce e la domina’ (Gramsci, 1975: 430, 826, 1449). ²¹ Gramsci lets truly slip statements of purely Gentilean tone when he writes that ‘senza pensare all’esistenza dell’uomo, non si può pensare di “pensare”, non si può pensare in genere a nessun fatto o rapporto che esiste solo in quanto esiste l’uomo’. Elsewhere he even says:

Quando si dice che una certa cosa esisterebbe anche se non esistesse l’uomo, o si fa una metafora o si cade appunto nel misticismo. Noi conosciamo i fenomeni in rapporto all’uomo e siccome l’uomo è un divenire, anche la conoscenza è un divenire, pertanto anche l’oggettività è un divenire. (Gramsci, 1975: 874, 1049) ²²

Sentences that Gentile himself could have endorsed.

If the philosophical revision of Marxism is therefore carried out by Gentile and Gramsci in almost superimposable ways and with almost superimposable tones, why in the Quaderni does Gramsci undertake to outline an ‘Anti-Gentile’, as well as an ‘Anti-Croce’ (Gramsci, 1975: 1234)? And in the light of this, what does the difference between ‘pure act’ and ‘impure act’, from which our investigation started, ultimately consist of?

The debate on Gentile and Gramsci

Those who approach the question from a Marxist stand generally tend to underline that Gramsci's critiques of Marx, apparently convergent with Gentile's ones, are in fact posed from a different point of view. As a matter of fact, Gentile seems to assert that the incoherence of Marxism is primarily due to the attempt to dialectically connect idealism and materialism as if they were two equivalent kinds of philosophy, with the outcome of paralyzing the subjective instances of the former with the objective ones of the latter. On the other hand, the main issue for Gramsci seems rather to be the imbalance between the two philosophical trends, that is the prevalence of materialism on idealism (as it happens in the positivistic interpretation of Marx), but also, vice versa, the prevalence of idealism on materialism.

Gramsci argues in fact that ‘l’alta cultura moderna, idealista volgare’, which is opposite but specular to the ‘[cultura] materialista volgare’ of the positivist Marx, ‘ha cercato di incorporare ciò che del marxismo le era indispensabile, anche perché questa filosofia moderna, a suo modo, ha cercato di dialettizzare anch’essa materialismo e spiritualismo, come aveva tentato Hegel e realmente fatto Marx’ (Gramsci, 1975: 424). ²³ Whereas the ‘materialismo volgare’ thinks to solve the dialectic of spirit and matter totally reducing the former to the latter, Neo-Idealism tries to pursue the contrary operation: contrary, but equally unilateral, and in the end anti-dialectical, since it ‘ipostatizza’ the human subject, ‘ne fa un ente a sé, lo spirito, come la religione ne aveva fatto la divinità’ (Gramsci, 1975: 451). ²⁴

An authentic thought of praxis, therefore, ‘non può essere concepito né come un materialismo, né come un idealismo, ma come l’inglobamento unitario di entrambe le istanze’ (Alessandroni, 2019: 18). ²⁵ This would explain why Gramsci keeps away from the ‘due unilateralità’ (Alessandroni, 2019: 18) ²⁶ of ‘idealismo volgare’ and ‘materialism volgare’, and criticizes them assiduously, even in what he identifies as their political reflections. As a matter of fact, as well as ‘nel caso del materialismo [‘volgare’], abbiamo un abbassamento della cultura al livello popolare (e non, viceversa, un innalzamento del popolo al livello della cultura […]), che produce una sorta di filosofia scolastica, incapace di attingere la complessità del reale e priva di forza egemonica’, in the case of ‘idealismo, assistiamo ad un allontanamento della cultura dalla realtà concreta, dai bisogni e dalle passioni viventi degli uomini in carne e ossa’ (Alessandroni, 2019: 13). ²⁷

All the criticism that Gramsci makes of Gentile and his pupils, for ‘le astruserie, le macchinosità, le oscurità’ and ‘i banali sofismi’ (Gramsci, 1975: 1399, 1370) ²⁸ of their language, follows these considerations. Here Gramsci's attacks on Gentile also become explicitly political. Since he inherits the idea from Marxism that the dichotomy between matter and spirit matches the one between the socio-economic sphere of civil society (structure) and the field of the State, which holds the coercive authority and the cultural hegemony (superstructure), it is understandable that the idea of the preeminence of spirit over matter, and of State over civil society, adopted by actualism, causes strong revulsion in Gramsci. In fact, he primarily sees in it the split between the bourgeois State interest from the needs of the proletarian mass, and so the perpetuation of its condition of subordination and exploitation.

In short, the philosophy of praxis appears to Gramsci to be very different from actualism: a kind of ‘idealismo volgare’ that while claiming the primacy of spirit as atto puro—closed in itself and denying every material concreteness—ends up losing its grip on reality, and while preaching its constant change, leaves it unmodified, as it was running on empty in the form of a purely theoretical voluntarism. Thus in actualism, even ‘con un linguaggio profondamente diverso’, it would be ‘ripreso un topos classico del pensiero conservatore, costantemente impegnato a ritradurre il mutamento politico-sociale in mutamento spirituale’ (Losurdo, 1990: 101) ²⁹ to better neutralize it.

Gramsci opposes to this model of a speculative, abstract, and blocked praxis, the praxis that ‘non riconosce elementi trascendentali o immanentistici (in senso metafisico) ma si basa tutta sull’azione concreta dell’uomo che per le sue necessità storiche opera e trasforma la realtà’ (Gramsci, 1975: 657). ³⁰ For this, the act vindicated by Gramsci, ‘lungi dall’esser “puro” […], è invece sede di una sintesi concreta tra soggetto e oggetto, di una loro osmosi obiettiva e materiale’ (Burgio, 2016: 352). ³¹ In other words, Gramsci's act is impure because it does not celebrate a disembodied ‘soggettività creatrice’, but ‘rinvia a contraddizioni oggettive’ (Losurdo, 1990: 95), ³² while contaminating itself with the mundane, economic, material dimension of the world, which is intended as intelligible and analyzable. And analyzing and understanding the world, the act participates in its effective historical transformation. In this sense, any possible ‘eco gentiliana’ in the philosophy of praxis, ‘prima facie evidente’, would then in the end turn out to be ‘puramente esteriore’ (Burgio, 2016: 352). ³³

Although therefore, according to Gramsci, Italian Neo-Idealism, that is actualism together with Croce's philosophy of spirit, represents the philosophical apex of post-Hegelian thought, imposing itself as an unavoidable term of comparison which must be reckoned with for an anti-positivist revision of Marxism, it still remains a ‘filosofia ultra speculativa’ (Gramsci, 1975: 1223). ³⁴ It in fact would continue to think the dialectic of spirit and matter in a metaphysical form, that is far from the mundane reality of economic interests and class struggle.

What distinguishes Gramsci's point of view from Gentile's one would derive then from two distinct ways to conceive the value of their own philosophies, their relationship with history, and therefore with politics. In this sense, as Del Noce states, the intrinsic anti-metaphysical element which is expressed by the line that goes from Neo-Idealism to philosophy of praxis ‘può essere pensato e vissuto nella forma “romantica” di continuità con la tradizione, che fu di Gentile, o in quella “illuministica” di scissione rivoluzionaria, che fu di Gramsci’ (1978: 146). ³⁵

In fact, if actualism realizes the truth that no transcendent truth can any longer be presupposed to the subject, which is solved in purely immanent praxis, how to interpret this truth, the truth of immanent praxis? If metaphysics is dissolved, on what can it be founded? According to Del Noce, Gentile's stand would be to root the truth of actualism in the continuity of the history of Western thought, in the Hegelian way. From this choice would derive all of his attitudes of attachment to the traditions of Christianity, Renaissance, and Risorgimento, and in general to all Western metaphysics, whose fundamental philosophical instances would become true only in actualism. In this way, however, he ends up conceding to actualism a status of truth superior to all others, in contradiction with its most intimate anti-metaphysical vocation.

Gramsci's choice, instead, would be to stay faithful to that vocation, underlining the moment of breaking with the past, and therefore taking on a whole series of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘Jacobin’ stands, which bring him to see in the revolution the unavoidable outcome of philosophy of praxis. As we read above, what Gramsci appears to believe more problematic about Neo-Idealism, therefore, is that from the translation of its own anti-metaphysical intuition in a speculative i.e., metaphysical form, it follows an ‘anti-progressive’ political attitude, which is ‘liberal-conservative’ in Croce and ‘national-fascist’ in Gentile. For this reason the philosophy of praxis needs to take on the task of the ‘Anti-Croce’ and of the ‘Anti-Gentile’ discourses, overturning, just like Marx did with Hegel, the ‘atto puro’ (detached from every material reality) into the ‘atto “impuro”, reale nel senso più profano e mondano della parola’: concrete political praxis, engaged in the revolutionary overthrow of every transcendent authority.

This interpretation is without a doubt able to frame some of the reasons that separated Gramsci from Gentile, but it does not lack weak points.

On the one hand, in fact, it is evident that Gramsci’s relationship with tradition is by no means one of total scission. Let us consider his interest for the Catholic church, which is judged both an adversary and a model for the party as a ‘Modern Prince’; or his belief that communism is the most authentic fulfillment of the Zeitgeist of his epoch, and not only its negation. Gramsci in fact writes that the ‘processo di sviluppo storico è una unità nel tempo, per cui il presente contiene tutto il passato e del passato si realizza nel presente ciò che è “essenziale”’, and that every historical

forza innovatrice […] non può non essere già immanente nel passato, non può non essere in un certo senso essa stessa il passato, un elemento del passato, ciò che del passato è vivo e in isviluppo, è essa stessa conservazione-innovazione, contiene in sé l’intero passato, degno di svolgersi e perpetuarsi. (Gramsci, 1975: 873, 1326) ³⁶

In the same way, in Gentile the becoming true of tradition in actualism is not a subordination of the present to the past, but a reinterpretation, that is a refoundation of the past by the work of the present, mainly through the resemantization of traditional metaphysical concepts according to a philosophy of absolute immanence and praxis. On the other hand, it is true that the prevalence of a ‘risorgimentale’ attitude in Gentile—as a ‘ripresa e affinamento di una tradizione’, in the form of a ‘rinnovata religiosità’ of immanence, and therefore ‘come spiritualismo purificato da ogni traccia di naturalismo e di soprannaturalismo’ (Del Noce, 1990: 130, 131) ³⁷ —and the prevalence a ‘revolutionary’ attitude in Gramsci, due also in part to two different temperaments, imposed the formal differences of their thoughts, as well as the outcomes of their political militancy.

Beyond the abovementioned Marxist readings, the conviction of many critics—especially those who are most involved in the new wave of Gentilean studies—is that on the ‘formazione culturale e politica di Antonio Gramsci’, Gentile exercised ‘un influsso notevolissimo’ (Bedeschi, 2002: 280). ³⁸ This is evident from the appreciations that the young Gramsci makes about Gentile in an article which was published in Il Grido del Popolo on 19 January 1918, entitled Il socialismo e la filosofia attuale. Here Gentile is introduced as ‘il filosofo che più in questi ultimi anni abbia prodotto nel campo del pensiero’, whose philosophical system ‘è la negazione di ogni trascendentalismo, la identificazione della filosofia con la storia, con l’atto del pensiero, in cui si uniscono il vero e il fatto, in una progressione dialettica mai definitiva e perfetta’ (Gramsci, 1982: 650). ³⁹

On this long wave, ‘un’analisi del retroterra culturale che Gramsci condivide con Gentile in una forma che li separa entrambi da Croce’ (Esposito, 2010: 178) ⁴⁰ has been started throughout the decades. In the light of this perspective, Gramsci appears not only as ‘il più idealista dei marxisti’ (Settembrini, 1991: 383), ⁴¹ but even an ‘idealista inevaso’, a ‘gentiliano inconscio’, a ‘gentiliano malgré lui’ (Negri, 1975: 25, 28), ⁴² while his philosophy of praxis would be ‘ciò che rimane del marxismo, dopo che è stato liquidato dall’interpretazione idealistica’ (Tronti, 1959: 156). ⁴³

These kinds of readings tend to underline how both Gentile and Gramsci, ‘pur divergendo drasticamente sugli obiettivi strategici’, converge ‘nella percezione acuta dell’esaurimento delle categorie filosofiche e politiche della Modernità e nella ricerca del loro superamento mediante una ‘attivazione' politica della filosofia’ (Esposito, 2010: 178). ⁴⁴ In fact, as we have seen, Gramsci makes his own the awareness that there cannot be any kind of objective reality if not for human subjectivity. ‘La filosofia della prassi’, therefore, ‘è appunto quella filosofia in cui il soggetto prende la forma dell’oggettività e l’oggetto quella della soggettività, facendo così cadere l’opposizione presupposta tra soggetto e oggetto nell’unità del farsi. Questo era il modo con cui Gentile aveva letto Marx’ (Natoli, 1989: 94). ⁴⁵ And it is precisely starting from here that Gentile establishes his entire philosophical system, according to which reality cannot be presupposed to thought, and thus it is one with it. If it is true that this same concept is present in Gramsci (and to a certain extent also in Marx), one could see not so much a form of idealism in Marxism, but in idealism, ‘quello vero che non lascia la realtà presupposta al pensiero, cioè l’attualismo, un marxismo filosoficamente reso coerentissimo’ (Negri, 1975: 27). ⁴⁶

In Gramsci's work it was possible, then, ‘rinvenire un cripto-attualismo che meglio si rivela se si guarda al movimento interno, e potremmo dire all’andatura teorica del suo pensiero, più che alle sue prese di posizione esplicite contro Gentile’ (Natoli, 1989: 100). ⁴⁷ In other words, in Gramsci ‘l’attualismo di Gentile non si dissolve, ma si replica, […] è reso eterogeneo a se stesso, ma viene ricostituito nel suo movimento di fondo’ (Natoli, 1989: 95). ⁴⁸ It is for this reason that, in the Quaderni, ‘l’anti-Croce riesce’, but ‘l’anti-Gentile’, in the end, ‘non ha luogo’ explicitly: ‘Gramsci’, in fact, ‘non può confutare Gentile poiché il suo prassismo si alimenta dell’attualismo che rifiuta e perciò stesso il rifiuto non può assumere la forma di una teoria’ (Natoli, 1989: 105–106). ⁴⁹

The preference that Gramsci shows for Croce over Gentile as a target of his controversy, but also as a model to be taken up and reversed, would derive then, in addition to political reasons, from a sort of unconfessed embarrassment. This could be due to the greater difficulty of dealing with actualism, that is to the fact that the Gentilean anti-metaphysical stand converges with the Gramscian one, to an extent that it perhaps could have been ‘di forte ausilio […] proprio a costruire l’Anti-Croce’ (Negri, 1975: 29). ⁵⁰ It is no coincidence, then, that the ‘critica gramsciana dello storicismo crociano coincida puntualmente con quella svolta da Gentile’ (Del Noce, 1978: 157–158). ⁵¹ As a matter of fact, with his logic of distinction, Croce seems incapable of elaborating an actual thought of immanent praxis, accomplishing ‘quella identificazione di filosofia e politica che Gramsci aveva ricavato non solo dal materialismo storico, ma’, precisely, ‘dalla lettura attualistica e gentiliana del marxismo’ (Jannazzo, 1985: 89). ⁵² Unlike Croce's, the ‘interpretazione gentiliana di Marx si prestava ad un uso rivoluzionario’; because of this, it was therefore ‘ampiamente utilizzata da Gramsci’ (Settembrini, 1991: 478). ⁵³ This is why the overlapping points of Gentile and Gramsci end up being countless, from the already mentioned ‘identificazione di teoria e prassi’ to the ‘riduzione di tutte le forme spirituali (arte, filosofia, religione, ecc.) a espressione di un’unica realtà: l’atto puro per Gentile, l’atto impuro (o prassi politica) per Gramsci’ (Pellicani, 1990: 86). ⁵⁴

So, if both thinkers elaborate a philosophy of the act, what justifies in reality the distinction between its ‘purity’ or ‘impurity’? In the end, to what are the terminological choices of Gramsci and Gentile due? And which of the two appears more congruent to an actual thought of immanent praxis?

Philosophies of the act

It is my firm opinion that, in order to formulate a plausible answer that considers the critical stands summarized above, it is necessary to have greater knowledge of Gentile's philosophy than the one Gramsci de facto had, or to interpret it in a way that is not vitiated by the reasons of contingent political struggle, or even by ideology. It is in fact evident that many Marxist critics of Gramsci know Gentile mainly through Gramsci himself, and therefore know no more than what Gramsci knew or claimed to know about him. Also, it seems to me that they do not often distance themselves enough from Gramsci's political view, as it would be appropriate in a rigorous theoretical analysis. Instead, they often a priori adopt the very same ideological lenses they are going to examine, ending up in a sort of circular thinking where the premises of the argument are mistaken with its conclusions, and compromising the whole analytical process. Here, instead, I intend to proceed directly from Gentile's texts, also entrusting his most respected interpreters.

As a matter of fact, rereading note 64 of the 11th Quaderno del carcere in the light of the considerations made above, it seems to me that Gramsci implies an interpretation of the pure act that has little to do with the one that Gentile himself offers. As any accurate reader of Gentile well knows, Gentilean act is ‘pure’ not because it is separated from material, ‘profane’ and ‘mundane’ reality. Gentile himself remembers, after all, that

conoscer l’assoluto è conoscerlo nella sua creatività del relativo, con una conoscenza relativa, che ha però nella sua stessa relatività la sua assolutezza. Respingere il relativo per amor dell’assoluto è respinger lo stesso assoluto, che nel relativo manifesta la sua assoluta potenza. (Gentile, 1996: 73) ⁵⁵

In fact the pure act, ‘dicasi pure spirito, o soggetto, o Io, o come altrimenti piaccia denominarlo, non è qualcosa che stia già in sé e per sé, indipendentemente dalla molteplicità del mondo degli oggetti, in cui si manifesta la potenza creatrice dell’attività pensante’ (Gentile, 1981: 236). ⁵⁶

‘L’aggettivo ‘puro’ riferito all’atto gentiliano’, in short, ‘non significa affatto trascendenza, sopramondanità, eccetera, ma, all’opposto, liberazione da ogni sostanzialità’ (Del Noce, 1978: 136). ⁵⁷ The purity of Gentilean act does not derive from the fact that it distances as much as possible from the world of matter to immerse itself in the uncontaminated one of spirit. Therefore, it does not exist on a metaphysical plane, which is detached from the perceptible one. (Additionally, from Gentile's perspective, this kind of detachment would still presuppose a relationship, even if negative, between the two planes of immanence and transcendence, and so would contradict itself in the same moment in which it presumes to assert itself). On the contrary, the pure act displays in everything that is actively in action (in atto). In other words, according to actualism, everything that we claim is presupposed to our experience, is experienced in the very same act—this act, here, now, like this—with which we make this claim. It always manifests itself in our own subjectivity in atto.

The act is therefore all the more ‘pure’ as it does not leave anything outside of itself, absorbing in its plane of immanence every alleged transcendent presupposition, be it material or spiritual. Its purity, in other words, is so perfect that it does not reject its contrary—matter, nature, world—but it assimilates it, as its accomplishment. It is no coincidence that the most recent Gentilean critics pushed themselves to see in actualism a form of ‘assoluto’ (Visentin, 2005: 440) ⁵⁸ or ‘integrale’ (Ronchi, 2014) ⁵⁹ empiricism. In this sense, every ‘contrapposizione dell’impuro, cioè della terrestrità, mondanità, concretezza, eccetera, poteva aver significato nella polemica marxiana […] contro Hegel, ma perde ogni senso dopo la riforma gentiliana della dialettica’ (Del Noce, 1978: 136). ⁶⁰

Keeping this in mind, the Gentilean pure act does not seem so radically different from the Gramscian impure act. On the contrary, choosing the adjective ‘pure’, Gentile can formulate with more coherence than Gramsci the truth of a philosophy of an absolutely immanent praxis. As a matter of fact, the concept of ‘impurity’ presupposes an act of contamination between two or more elements—spirit and matter, philosophy and politics, superstructure and structure—that dialectically combined with each other would produce the act, that is the immanent praxis. But if these elements become impure while they combine with each other, this means that they originally exist separated, in the sphere of their purported purity: thesis and antithesis, to be merged into a synthesis. Thus, the act would be the resultant of the dialectic, not its origin: but then it will not be by all means immanent: that is, it will be immanent only in its name, not in the act in which it realizes itself. In other words, it will be the concept of act, but not the actually immanent act. But this speculative system is nothing else that the Hegelian-Marxian dialectic, which logically presupposes the analytical distinction between thesis and antithesis to the synthesis that dialectically connect them: a system that Gentile overcame with that reform of Hegelian dialectic (Gentile, 1996) that founds actualism, and that thinks the synthesis of spirit and matter as an original act that happens in the concreteness of our immanent praxis, and that only for this can be said to be ‘pure’.

If we complete these observations with the critiques that Gentile makes to Marx, we understand how, on the actualist side, the problem of Marxist materialism does not really consist in searching for the synthesis between the two poles of dialectic, but in pursuing it a posteriori: that is proceeding from analysis to synthesis, and therefore in an intrinsically analytic, non-synthetic way. For Gentile the authentic synthesis between spirit and matter, which is coherent with the point of view of the pure act, can only be a priori. If in fact the ‘actual subject’ is a perfectly immanent act, it already synthetizes the whole world in itself. The act, in other words, is an original synthesis, which in order to be pure, that is absolute, does not exclude, but includes in itself the same analytical tendency of materialism, while this is not true vice versa. A synthetic thought in fact synthetically implies analysis, while a merely analytic thought can only analytically oppose synthesis: which, to be precise, is like saying that to unravel the knot of the synthesis of subject and object, spirit and matter, one cannot go through an analytical perspective, whose only capacity would be that of distinguishing object from object, but one must access the synthetic one of immanent subjectivity. This unravelling, therefore, can only take place on the part of idealism, while it would be impossible on the part of materialism. Gentile does not talk, of course, of an idealism that opposes materialism in an absolute sense (thus repeating the analytical, ‘vulgar’ tendency of materialism itself), but one that includes it: a new idealism, or ‘Neo-Idealism’, that underlines ‘l’intrinseco e inscindibile rapporto delle idee con la natura’, with the aim to show ‘il punto in cui natura e spirito fanno uno, a dimostrare questa unità organica del reale, da cui l’uno e l’altro rampollano’ (Gentile, 1903: 15). ⁶¹ That is, precisely, the pure act.

In short, the overturning of Hegelian dialectic operated by actualism ends up locating in the act not a specific Sollen that must be accomplished, but an a priori condition, which never accomplishes once and for all because it continues to accomplish always in history. Indeed, in line with its own premises, actualism can never claim to close the historical process in only one sense, that is, to anticipate one privileged form of civilization rather than another. The act is a perfectly immanent praxis that, as it were, goes nowhere, and is not fulfilled in any definitive shape, but for that very reason it leaves room for the development of history in all the possible directions depending on the circumstances and the opportunities that it concretely offers.

It is in fact because immanence is already perfect, and does not need to go anywhere, that for actualism it coincides with a truly free praxis: not a praxis which is tied to a specific political ideology or to a precise practical result, but one that is ready to translate in any kind of historical event. According to actualism, that is, history cannot be harnessed by any kind of teleology or soteriology, but precisely because of this it does not even exclude any kind of historical form (even communism). If anything, it invites the evaluation of them all to the extent they actually accomplish themselves, in the same act with which collective subjectivity interprets the tendencies of history and makes use of them to change the world. In this sense, Gentile's philosophy is undoubtedly tinged with political realism, understood not as a metaphysical objectivism, but as an attitude of adherence to an actual, current, concrete, and at the same time acting, operative, proceeding reality, in which it is always possible to actively participate with a flexible and industrious attitude. In this, actualism is definitely, together with Gramsci's philosophy of praxis, one of the last great epiphenomena of the long tradition of Italian historical-political thought, which includes Machiavelli and Vico among its major representatives.

If we read Gramsci's conception of the act in the light of these last considerations, we realize how it appears suspended between Gentile's a priori and Marx's a posteriori kinds of synthesis. On one hand, in line with actualism, he indeed seems to stay faithful to an idea of the act as a transcendental, original dimension. So, he is without a doubt led to see in history a plane of immanence on which the praxis embodies in multiple actors, who are driven by different competing interests. But direct political commitment pushes him to add some questions to this ‘realistic’ precondition (Gramsci, 1975: 1401–1403; 1874–1879). Indeed, how do we understand which historical interests are the most legitimate? Which perspective could assert the superiority of one actor over the others? Gramsci tries to solve this problem by locating an historical form which is ‘più conforme […] [al] determinato stadio di sviluppo delle forze produttive’ (Gramsci, 1975: 1878) ⁶² of his time, that is the more rational and necessary one. He therefore wagers that this privileged historical stage is communism.

Here the previous terms of Gramsci's philosophy of the act seem to reverse. In the light of his political convictions, the goal of his thought becomes in fact to accomplish, through a revolutionary historical passage, a new kind of civilization, the communist one, in which the collective consciousness conveyed by the cultural hegemony is perfectly immanent, integrated, organic to the economic necessities of the rising proletariat. He aims to realize—in practice—the perfect immanence of structure and superstructure, that is—in theory—the one of spirit and matter. This conception implies that the synthesis is, like in Marx, to be obtained a posteriori, as the resolution of the social conflicts intrinsic in capitalist civilization, and therefore as the conclusion of its historical vicissitude (Cangiano, 2018).

In this sense, if in Gentile the ‘contraddizione [della storia] è superata […], ma non [concretamente] risolta’ (Tronti, 1959: 145) ⁶³ once and for all, Gramsci aspires in fact not simply to overcome it, but to solve it. This is the utopistic element of his thought. After all, if the plane of what is ‘oggettivo’ (matter, structure) corresponds to that of the ‘umanamente soggettivo’ (spirit, superstructure), the true immanence will be perfectly realized only when ‘la conoscienza’ of what it is objective will be ‘reale per tutto il genere umano storicamente unificato in un sistema culturale unitario’ (Gramsci, 1975: 1416; emphasis is in original) ⁶⁴ . Such would then be the birth of an authentic communist civilization, in which ‘la sparizione delle contraddizioni interne che dilaniano la società umana’ would occur:

contraddizioni che sono la condizione della formazione dei gruppi e della nascita delle ideologie non universali concrete ma rese caduche immediatamente dall’origine pratica della loro sostanza. C’è quindi una lotta per l’oggettività (per liberarsi dalle ideologie parziali e fallaci) e questa lotta è la stessa lotta per l’unificazione culturale del genere umano. Ciò che gli idealisti chiamano ‘spirito’ non è un punto di partenza, ma di arrivo, l’insieme delle soprastrutture in divenire verso l’unificazione concreta e oggettivamente universale e non già un presupposto unitario ecc. (Gramsci, 1975: 1416) ⁶⁵

As a matter of fact, always according to Gramsci,

l’“uguaglianza reale”, cioè il grado di “spiritualità” raggiunto dal processo storico della “natura umana” si identifica nel sistema di associazioni “private e pubbliche”, esplicite ed implicite, che si annodano nello “Stato” e nel sistema mondiale politico: si tratta di “uguaglianze” […] che valgono in quanto se ne abbia coscienza individualmente e come gruppo. Si giunge così anche all’eguaglianza o equazione tra “filosofia e politica”, tra pensiero e azione, cioè ad una filosofia della praxis. Tutto è politica, anche la filosofia o le filosofie […] e la sola “filosofia” è la storia in atto, cioè la vita stessa. (Gramsci, 1975: 886) ⁶⁶

As we saw while summarizing some of its Marxist interpreters’ stands, the reason why Gramsci contests the purity of Gentile's act seems then to be due first of all to the ideological provenance of his thought. In the attempt, which is both theoretical and practical—theoretical because practical—to accomplish a posteriori, i.e., in the future, the full synthesis of matter and spirit, structure and superstructure, Gramsci needs in fact to imply the difference between praxis and immanence. He makes, so to speak, the perfect immanence—the ‘uguaglianza reale’, that maximum ‘grado di “spiritualità”’ that would be the completion of communism—the goal of a revolutionary praxis: something that currently is not, but that one day can and must be. A transcendent objective, the utopia. And while he overturns his immanentism in transcendentism to offer a rational justification to the revolutionary movement's historical praxis—at the same time discrediting in theory every opposing historical tendency (actualism included) in order to better fight it in practice—he nevertheless falls back into the same ambiguities of Marx's historical materialism, which he claimed to solve initially.

One could say, from a Gramscian point of view, that the contradictions of Marxism are insignificant with respect to the efficacy of a grand récit that imposes itself in theory to the extent in which it prevails in practice. If a certain way of thinking becomes hegemonic, and therefore works, who cares if it is theoretically contradictory? But it is precisely because such récit must be first and foremost evaluated in its practical effectiveness that, starting from its actual historical contradictions, inefficiencies, and failures, it is legitimate and fruitful to highlight its theoretical flaws. In other words, the philosophical mistake made by Gramsci is not in his attempt to bet on the communist solution of modern history, or to fight to achieve it in a revolutionary way. His error is instead in thinking that, regardless of its concrete, effective, current achievement, communism is logically the most coherent outcome of the contradictions of capitalist society, as if any other possible historical outcome were already disqualified by some kind of superior rationality. A superior rationality which means the return of a metaphysical, transcendent truth, albeit disguised by scientific law, in contradiction with Gramsci's programmatic declaration of intent to formulate a philosophy of perfectly immanent praxis.

Giovanni Gentile, a philosopher of praxis

In conclusion, if the concepts of ‘pure act’ and ‘impure act’ mean the same, it therefore seems that the employment of the first category appears philosophically more coherent than the other in the formulation of a thought of the act. On the other hand, their differences can be explained for the most part starting from the biographies of the two thinkers we have dealt with here, and in particular by their relationship with politics.

Ultimately, Gentile conceives the entire theoretical system of actualism before explicitly devoting himself to political activity. This is why he can, after adhering to Italian fascism, try, so to speak, to ‘insufflate’ actualism into it, forming within the regime his own ‘party’, which competes for hegemony with the many others that enliven Italy during the entire Ventennio. It does not seem to be a coincidence, then, that Gentile could educate and inspire intellectuals (like Gramsci himself, and many others) who, starting from the very same premises of actualism, endorsed different and ferociously adverse forms of political engagement. In this sense, what Gramsci wrote about the political D’Annunzio may apply to actualism: ‘[da lui] ci si poteva aspettare tutti i fini immaginabili, dal più sinistro al più destro’ (Gramsci, 1975: 1202). ⁶⁷

Gramsci instead matures from the beginning his own philosophical thought within a framework of political militancy. The intuitions that he grasps from actualism, and from the whole Neo-Idealism, are so immediately put in service of a particular political goal, and in this way turned upside down. In short, if it is true that Gentile's philosophy is immediately political, and even so to speak hyper-political, but does not have any mandatory political translation, but all the possible political translations, Gramsci's thought is directly imbued with a specific ideology. In this sense, it does not seem a coincidence that Gramsci's evaluation of actualism shifted from positive to negative after Gentile's affiliation with the fascist regime. In fact, until actualism did not try to inspire a concrete political movement, it seemed to Gramsci that it could feed any kind of politics, even communism; when Gentile chose his side and concretely tried to inspire fascism, Gramsci changed his ideas and extended his opinion about fascism to actualism itself.

This existential difference can also explain Gramsci's and Gentile's distinguished attitudes in relation to history, that is the ‘revolutionary’ one of the former, and the ‘risorgimentale’ one of the latter. This matter is explicated with particular clarity in the distinct strategies through which the two thinkers plan to manage the Catholic affaire in Italy: a theme from which, in some way, all of our reflections started. Moreover, it is no coincidence that one of the criticisms that Gramsci most insistently makes to Gentile in the Quaderni is about his approach to religion. As a matter of fact, Gramsci, although inspired by the historical example and the organizational model of the Catholic Church, aims to substitute its cultural hegemony with that of the partito-principe. What he wants is in fact to replace once and for all in the mass consciousness the religious thought, which is trascendentistico, with the truly philosophical one, which is immanentistico.

Gentile, on the other hand, does not frontally oppose the Church, but aims to subordinate it to the State, while he identifies in religion an aspect that is unilateral, but dialectically (and historically) essential to philosophy itself. Because of this, philosophy must therefore consciously appropriate religion, not reject it. In short, from a speculative point of view, Gramsci highlights the clear and firm antagonism between transcendentism and immanentism, and the respective institutions that incarnate them, the Church and the party. Gentile argues instead that an authentic thought of immanence cannot reject transcendence in an absolute sense without running the risk of making immanence a state to be accomplished—and not a condition that is continuously accomplished in history, even in the forms that delude themselves into contradicting it. But a state that needs to be historically accomplished is not immanent; it is therefore transcendent. And this would mean falling back into a form of unaware transcendentism, even if it calls itself ‘immanentism’—which, as we saw in the previous section, is precisely what happens to Gramsci.

Hence, what makes Gentile a more coherent philosopher of immanent praxis and a more consistent anti-metaphysical thinker than Gramsci is precisely his preference for a ‘pure act’ over an ‘impure act’. If in fact the act is pure, as we saw above, it does not leave anything out of itself, to the extent it currently happens. In other words, if something currently happens, it cannot be disqualified as it could or should not exist, just like, at the same time, it cannot demand to last forever, automatically disqualifying everything it is not. History, in this sense, is always an open process, and every demand to close it (be it to fix it in its existing condition or to arrest it in a condition that does not exist yet) ends only to continue it, often even more dramatically than before.

In other words again—to bring the discourse on a political level—from the perspective of a congruent, truly anti-metaphysical, philosophy of praxis, every historical outcome is licit as long as it accomplishes itself—at least as much as, vice versa, any political trend that would like to historically affirm philosophy of praxis itself needs to not disqualify a priori all its historical alternatives to be coherent. To be clear, if instead any political trend (like Gramsci's) does it, it does not mean it should be disqualified (which would imply that, to overcome Gramsci's contradictions, we will fall back in the same inconsistencies), but simply that it does not so much embody the philosophy of praxis, as a new form of metaphysics. In plain terms, it is the case in which the anti-dogmatic refusal of religion becomes inadvertently some sort of a religious dogma itself, as in a way happened to historical communism.

In short, the accusation of being a ‘filosofia ultra speculativa’ made by Gramsci to Neo-Idealism can be easily overturned on Gramsci's philosophy of praxis itself. Vice versa, Gentile's actualism appears to be the actual coherence of a philosophy of praxis. This is why anyone who wants to follow Gramsci on the way of a philosophy of praxis cannot avoid a theoretical confrontation with Gentile, beyond any ideological bias.

On the other hand, it is also true that Gentile is mainly a philosopher in the traditional, ‘professorial’ sense of the term, with all the limitations of the case. So, the intrinsic bond between actualism and philosophy of praxis facilitates an integration of actualism itself—traditionally confined to the field of ‘high culture’—into all those ‘profane’ studies that are instead dear to Gramsci. In other words, thinking together Gentile's radical philosophical coherence with Gramsci's extraordinary multidisciplinary attitude, can help to promote the very same philosophy of the act that both tried to formulate, untying it from its ‘metaphysical, too metaphysical’ knots. This step can truly lead the immanentistic and praxist tradition that is one of the signatures of Italian thought through the centuries (Claverini, 2021; Esposito, 2010; Ronchi 2019; Rubini, 2014) along new and further theoretical and practical paths.