Phd in PHILOSOPHY

Research: Labour and Knowledge in Antonio Labriola. Philosophy of Praxis and its Genesis between Idealism and Realism

The research has as its main objective a systematic study of the aspects that characterised Antonio Labriola’s philosophy (1843–1904) during his Marxist phase, with particular attention to the concepts of praxis and knowledge. It aims to show that Labriola was not only a keen interpreter of the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but also the author of an original philosophical conception which, although certainly developed in close dialogue with those writings, responded to theoretical questions that had emerged already in his early years (in works such as "Una risposta alla prolusione di Zeller", 1863, and "La dottrina di Socrate secondo Senofonte, Platone ed Aristotele", 1871), through his engagement with the most advanced traditions of nineteenth-century European thought. In the last decades of the century, Marxism itself, starting above all from "Anti-Dühring" (1878), increasingly confronted contemporary philosophy, which at that time - as attested, among others, by the reflections of Bertrando Spaventa, culminating in the posthumous Esperienza e metafisica (1888) - was engaged in addressing the problem of its relationship with the positive sciences and the fate of metaphysics. The philosophy of praxis led Labriola to develop a complex view of reality as the mediation of objectivity and subjectivity through human praxis, conceived as the creator of an “artificial ground”, and to formulate a theory of knowledge based on its “practical inversion”, indicating its social genesis while at the same time highlighting its creative potential. From this followed a distinctive reflection on the status of the sciences, in their relationship with philosophy and politics, and on the role of intellectuals.

Keywords
Antonio Labriola; Marxism; philosophy of praxis; theory of knowledge; Hegelianism; positivism; question of intellectuals.