A rational, historicist will grounded in objective necessity grounds philosophy
Evidence
To escape simultaneously from solipsism and from mechanicist conceptions implicit in the concept of thought as a receptive and ordering activity, it is necessary to put the question in an “historicist” fashion, and at the same time to put the “will” (which in the last analysis equals practical or political activity) at the base of philosophy. But it must be a rational, not an arbitrary, will, which is realised in so far as it corresponds to objective historical necessities, or in so far as it is universal history itself in the moment of its progressive actualisation. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1241
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Defines the ‘absolute historicism’ move: the will, understood as political/practical activity conditioned by real historical necessity, becomes the base of philosophy.
- XREF: This historicist-will concept is the engine behind Gramscian accounts of how subordinate groups can contest hegemony — relevant to Islamophobia scholarship on resistance.
Related
- Philosophical truths are historically conditioned yet avoid relativism. (similarity 0.81)
- Political will means operative awareness of historical necessity in action. (similarity 0.81)
- Every prior philosophy expressed social contradictions without consciously knowing them (similarity 0.79)
- Historical laws are constituted regularities, not metaphysical or causal determinants (similarity 0.79)
- Theory of history is possible despite the uniqueness of historical facts (similarity 0.79)
- Historical acts require a common cultural-social worldview unifying dispersed individual wills (similarity 0.78)