Gramsci and Foucault

Antonio Gramsci is quick to call everyone a philosopher in his excerpt from The Prison Notebooks.  He boils down the word “philosopher”, which connotes erudition and a general loftiness that many might feel they can’t obtain, until we reach the bones of the concept: philosophy is simply comprised of language, common sense, and beliefs.

 While Gramsci establishes that anyone can participate in philosophy, hence leveling the playing ground, I find it interesting that it is the product of certain philosophical ideas that start to dichotomize people.  For example, in trying to preach their doctrines, churches are faced with the task of trying to keep the intellectuals and the “simple souls” unified.  Though I understand that philosophy is based on unity—especially between one’s chaotic and fragmented conceptions of the world, it doesn’t make sense to me that everyone should have to follow the same kind of philosophy to achieve that unity.  Previously, Gramsci mentioned that the reason why some people’s “intellectual choice” isn’t directly translated into their conduct is because they have adopted or submitted to another group’s conception of the world (which isn’t necessarily their own), and thus conflict is born.  It could, therefore, be possible that the efforts of some philosophies—a religion, for example—to bring everyone under the same umbrella contradicts the goal of people finding inner harmony with their own conception of the world.  Personally, I think that the concept of individuals finding their own philosophies is more ideal because in spite of the fact that it might fragment society even further, philosophy in itself is not a stagnant thing, and for revolution to occur—for society to keep growing, each viewpoint, however prevalent it is, must continue to be questioned and built upon.

In comparison, Foucault, in his article “Truth and Power”, places a bigger emphasis on “a few great political and economic apparatuses” as the heralders of truth.  This is reminiscent of the churches mentioned in Gramsci’s article, and seems to imply that we as a society tends to lean towards conformism, despite our best efforts not to.  As natural inquisitors of the world, we seek information, and thus, we seek truth.  Because truth holds so much power, it is difficult to resist the temptation to filter it to appeal to the masses.  Consequently, we are brought back to the question of whether big, but few institutions control the masses or if the masses control the institutions by deciding the kinds of truths they want to accept.