Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Political Science

Advisor

Benedetto Fontana

Subject Categories

Ethics and Political Philosophy | Intellectual History | Political Theory

Keywords

Antonio Gramsci, Social Ontology, Democratic Philosopher, Karl Marx, History of Political Thought, Political Philosophy, Italian Political Thought

Abstract

This thesis deals with the term ‘democratic philosopher’ from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. In order to lay the groundwork for my distinct interpretation of the ‘democratic philosopher,’ I begin by providing an overview of Gramsci’s theory of the role of intellectuals in civil and political society. I then argue that the ‘democratic philosopher’ emerges from Gramsci’s typology of intellectuals but is a category which is both temporally and ontologically distinct from his more well-known concept of ‘organic intellectuals.’ ‘Organic intellectuals,’ intellectuals who co-develop alongside their fundamental social group or class, occupy a variety of cultural and political roles in creating or maintaining ‘hegemony’ and have existed across different stages of history insofar as fundamental social groups have elaborated their own strata (ceti) of intellectuals. The emergence of the ‘democratic philosopher,’ on the other hand, is fully possible only under certain historico-political conditions. Additionally, Gramsci puts forward the term ‘democratic philosopher’—combining the people (dēmos) with the ‘true knowledge’ derived from philosophy (epistēmē)—as a means of rejecting the classical conception of philosophy as a truth-seeking enterprise that exists apart from the concerns of political life. In order to flesh out these distinctions, I build on scholarship that has pursued a systematic reconstruction of Marx as a social-ontological philosopher, situating Gramsci’s ‘democratic philosopher’ within this Marxian social ontology. Ultimately, I argue that in Gramsci’s work the transition from philosophy as an abstractly universal project to an active social relationship of political and cultural modification can be viewed as the distinct development of philosophical practice that corresponds to the political-economic transition from capitalism to a communal society; the practitioner of this distinct philosophical mode occupies the social-ontological category which Gramsci calls ‘democratic philosopher.’

Download

Share

COinS