The Journey towards Praxis in Contemporary Italian Political Philosophy (Çağdaş İtalyan Felsefesinde Praksise Doğru Yolculuk)

In this article, some concepts in the contemporary Italian political philosophy such as praxis, historical materialism are going to discuss. Therefore, I will try to reveal the genesis of praxis philosophy tracing to Antonio Gramsci and of historical materialism. Through this work, I will demonstrate that the idealist and both materialist and praxis genesis of contemporary Italian philosophy are affected by German philosophy and particularly G. W. Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy. In this context, the article progresses to the German idealism and philosophy of Bertrando Spaventa in order to understand the Italian Marxism. When one calls praxis, generally Gramsci comes to mind. But when we look through the development of praxis in contemporary Italian philosophy before Gramsci, we discover the progress of praxis going back to Spaventa. In this work, which focuses on some texts of Spaventa, during the period of unification and re-foundation of Italy, it will observe how the intellectual climate is influenced by German idealism. Thus, Spaventa envisages a philosophy with a materialistic perspective and through a historical approach. Finally, after an investigation on Spaventa we arrive at the philosophy of Antonio Labriola. Labriola develops the idea of praxis and in particular the historical and materialistic approach by taking it over from Spaventa. As Spaventa did, firstly I will begin with the history of contemporary Italian philosophy in order to comprehend Italian philosophy itself.