Gramsci’s Concept of the “Simple”: Religion, Common Sense, and the Philosophy of Praxis

Abstract

One of the minor yet recurring themes of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is his treatment of the “simple,” a category he developed to examine the Catholic Church’s paternalistic view of common people and peasants as “simple and sincere souls,” in contrast to its superior view of cultured intellectuals. Throughout the Notebooks, he examines how the Church’s condescending and fatalistic portrayal of the “simple” provides a basis for common sense, reinforcing the conditions of subalternity. Because of the uncritical nature of common sense and the simple’s desire for change, he argues for the articulation of a “renewed common sense” containing critical and reflective philosophical foundations that transcend the passivity and paternalism of religion. Such a movement requires defining and disseminating new conceptions of philosophy and culture that are critically grounded and provide a basis of struggle in which the “simple” play the predominant role in the direction of their political lives and in the creation of a new hegemony.