La filosofia della "praxis" di Antonio Labriola

The article takes a position inthe current debate on Antonio Labriola's philosophy of praxis by identifying for thefirst time the historical document that prompted him to adopt the term. It is a reviewfrom 1897 in which Charles Andler laments the lack of attention to the gnoseologicalproblem internal to Marx's conception in the early essays on historical materialism.The use of the term in the discussion thus does not stem from an elaboration of theTheses on Feuerbach, which were deliberately neglected until 1897 and not even com-­mented on later. Confronted with the reproach of not understanding the value of theTheses, Labriola reacted by showing that the philosophical concept of praxis shouldnot be subject to the scholastic-­gnoseological approach but reinserted in a different argumentative context.

In the light of these considerations, the central section explainsthe peculiar features attributed by Labriola to the philosophy of praxis (1 -­ social gene-­sis of needs; 2 -­ relational structure of subjectivity; 3 - 'nexus of historicity', i.e. inte-­raction of psychic energy and historical objectifications) and elucidates the structurallink that binds these features to the morphological and subordinate-­dialectical concep-­tion of history. Faced with Giovanni Gentile's revival of the gnoseological-­metaphysi-­cal motif of Marxism, Labriola expressed an absolute and ironic dissent. In the ideali-­stic transfiguration of the concept of praxis he grasped the danger of an overall arrestof culture, a disarticulation of the existing relationship between philosophy and thesciences and, ultimately, a retreat of philosophical engagement from the political hi-­story of the new century. [Publisher's text]