Croce denied politics philosophical value while Gramsci made it central

Evidence

The distinct “categories” of the Crocean system allow for the existence of four sciences, Aesthetics, Economics, Logic and Ethics, relating to the pursuit respectively of the Beautiful, the Useful, the True and the Good. Politics, in this conception, can only be a composite entity, a mere “passion”, of no philosophical value. In Gramsci’s thought, by contrast, politics figures, philosophically, as the central human activity, the means by which the single consciousness is brought into contact with the social and natural world in all its forms. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 52

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why political practice is philosophically central for Gramsci — consciousness meets the world only through politics.
• XREF: The elevation of politics as the site where consciousness contacts the social world is a load-bearing move for later frameworks on how hegemony and ideology get enacted.