The Struggle for Objectivity

Gramsci’s Historical-Political Vistas on Science against the Background of Lenin’s Epistemology

Bibliographic Data

ID12865749
AuthorsPietro Daniel Omodeo (0000-0003-3561-1154, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume14
Issue2
Pages13-49
Publication date2020-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1646-7752 • E-ISSN: 1646-7752
PublisherDe Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.2478/host-2020-0013
OpenAlexW3117002718
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited2

This contribution interprets the intertwined issues of science, epistemology, society, and politics in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks as a culturalist approach to science that does not renounce objectivity. Gramsci particularly criticized the scientist positions taken by the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin in Historical Materialism (1921) and the conference communication he delivered at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology in London in 1931. Gramsci did not avoid, at least implicitly, engaging with the theses of Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1909). Gramsci’s reception of these Russian positions was twofold: on the one hand, he agreed with the centrality of praxis (and politics) for a correct assessment of the meaning of epistemological positions; on the other hand, he disagreed with the reduction of the problem of epistemology to the dichotomy of materialism and idealism at the expense of any consideration of the ideological dimension of science

Epistemology · Idealism · Ideology · Materialism · Objectivity (philosophy · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Social science · Sociology · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political theory and Gramsci

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