Antonio Gramsci, the philosopher man: one intellectual biography

Abstract

Fresu's book deals with the political biography of A. Gramsci (1891-1937) in three phases arranged chronologically: The young revolutionary; The political leader and the theorist. The young revolutionary's starting point is Gramsci's Sardinia and the economic crisis experienced on the southern island at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Gramsci's intellectual and political personality, Fresu highlights, was formed in the midst of this crisis and the rebellious spirit of rural subaltern groups in response to their living conditions. The trajectory of the Italian Marxist thus unfolded from the orientation assumed since his original experience in Sardinia: the militant position and the political link with the dominated classes and groups, accompanied by an early effort at intellectual formation. He was a man who was a philosopher in the particular sense, in which philosophy (of praxis) was, inseparably, theoretical and practical.