Creating a new culture does not only mean one’s own individual “original” discoveries. It also, and most particularly, means the diffusion in a critical form of truths already discovered, their “socialization” as it were, and even making them the basis of vital actions, an element of co-ordination and intellectual and moral order. For a mass of people to be led to think coherently and in the same coherent fashion about the real present world, is a “philosophical” event far more important and “original” than the discovery by some philosophical “genius” of a truth which remans the property of small groups of intellectuals (325).
I take Gramsci to mean that to dismantle a fascist or capitalist society (or hegemonic culture), the philosopher of praxis, must create a radically new culture. However, the task of cultural creation is not individual but social, that is, a collective creation (resulting in a new cultural hegemony).
Gramsci assumes that a culture’s form is an ensemble of truths.
In order, for a culture P’ to replace culture P, the philosopher of praxis, will diffuse a “critical form of truths.” In addition to the creative task, what is important is the critical task. Here diffusion is “socialization,” such that, these truths become the “basis of vital actions.”
This is the bringing together of the intellectual and the moral (of philosophy and politics).
Perhaps, the most important of Gramsci’s prescriptions, which presupposes the traditional/organic intellectual distinction, is regarding the event of philosophy.
For Gramsci the organic intellectual, as opposed to the traditional intellectual, does not arise from the bourgeois class, but from the proletariat (without formal education). The organic intellectual is the proletariat in the act of critical practice. The organic intellectuals, or philosophizing proletariat, produce the event of philosophy.
What Gramsci terms “the philosophical event” is more important than the originality or discovery of “some philosophical genius.” Note the goal: event rather than genius.
The event of philosophy is to have led “a mass of people” to (1) “think coherently” and (2) in a “coherent fashion about the real present world.” The critical and creative tasks of leading (hegemony) the people is left to the organic intellectuals. The result of the philosophical event is a new culture (hegemony).
Thus, the philosopher of praxis (or the organic intellectual), therefore, does not merely participate in “small groups of intellectuals” but among the mass of people.
The praxis of philosophy is just this: to lead ordinary people to think coherently about the everyday.
That is the result of a new cultural hegemony.
fragments of philosophy 