From the Prison Notebooks

In the prison notebooks, Antonion Gramsci, an Italian communist philosopher of sorts, examines individual philosophy, group philosophy, and manifestations of organized religion, politics, and dogmas. Gramsci is critical of the desire to refer to religion and politics as separate. In his treatise he introduces this notion that only occasionally does an organized religious group act in "organic totality" and that the majority of the time these groups operate in "conduct [not] independent and autonomous, but submissive and subordinate." Gramsci goes on to state that this is "the reason why philosophy cannot be divorced from politics." In this excerpt he is equating religion and philosophy, as they are both basically a collection of beliefs about morality, ethics, and social conduct. In Gramsci's eyes, if each individual in the organized religion could hold their own individual philosophical beliefs based of off only their own organic experiences, uninfluenced by predecessors or peers, they may form an organic collective philosophical group, not a political one. It is because such a group never exists that Gramsci claims philosophy cannot be separate from politics. To Gramsci, philosophy is an individual experience. When that experience is cheapened by a ruling power that steam rolls your individuality and tells you what to believe, that individual philosophical experience becomes a submissive political one, where various ideologies are at odds with one another, fighting for control of the populace. I find it interesting that most people I speak to about ruling philosophy seem to recognize this. I think we are all very cognoscente that the majority of the big questions and hard dilemmas in morality and existence are taken care of for us. Society at large has preconceptions and traditions, handed down from an unknown origin, that make our lives easier. By not having to think about every little thing ourselves, we can focus on enjoying life, making a living, taking care of children, etc. It is precisely this that causes politics to be so prevalent in society. If there was no desire by others to control us, we would have to control ourselves, and that would be incredibly time consuming.