This article argues that Gramsci’s notion of the state is historically and conceptually rooted within a political and theoretical discourse that first emerged with the ideas and practice of the classical politics of the Greeks and Romans, a political and philosophical tradition that was later transformed and reformulated with the advent of a Christianized politics as embodied in the thought of Augustine. The article further argues that Gramsci’s conception rests on the idea that man is pre-eminently political in a double sense: as the ground for community and society, defined by the search for the ‘good life’; and as struggle and conflict, where such a search is defined by competition over a multiplicity of goods.
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