Nouriyah Saleh
April 12, 2017
Blog Response: "From the Prison Notebooks" & "Truth and Power"
Gramsci discusses
the connection between philosophy, common sense, and religion. He talks about
multiple things, but the one concept that stuck out to me most was how he
explained that religion is a form of politics. By definition, politics are
activities associated by a governance. In terms of Catholicism, for example,
the Roman Catholic Church would be the governing body and the beliefs and
practices would be the activities. A government consists of people who have the
power to lead and make rules, just like the Church in how they can choose what
beliefs to emphasize on. I have always separated these two concepts in my mind,
so I found it surprising how similar the systems were. But it's scary to think
about religion in this way because it shows that the "word of God"
can be easily manipulated by the intellectuals. That would take away the purity
of religion for the sake of personal interests. Gramsci basically uses this to
explain why there are so many different religions - people want to believe
different things.
Foucault talks about
the relationship between truth and power. Gramsci points out the manipulation
of religion, which is similar to Foucault in which she says that the level of
power influences the truth. For example, you might trust the opinion of someone
who is the CEO of a company over someone who is a service worker. This is
another scary concept to think about because the manipulation of truth is what
causes conflicts. In both articles, the authors introduce concepts that show
why people think and act differently, but also how problems start between
different people.
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