Freedom of thought depends materially on prior mastery of natural necessity

Evidence

Gramsci’s treatment of the notion of the passage from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom differs slightly from that of Marx. “Whereas Gramsci develops the notion in terms of the free movement of thought untrammelled either by tendentious ideology or by the need for thought to take as its basis contradictions engendered in the world of material production, with the result that the philosophy of a future communist society could well be a form of what would now be regarded as idealism; Marx is more cautious, emphasising (Capital , Vol. Ill, Chapter 48) that “the true realm of freedom … can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity [the appropriation from nature of man’s material wants] as its basis”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2557

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fixes the actual content of the necessity/freedom distinction: for Marx, freedom can only blossom on top of the realm of necessity, i.e. the appropriation from nature of material wants.
• XREF: This is the base/superstructure and ideology problem that recurs later in the toolkit — connects forward to readings on whether ideas can float free of material relations. — connects to: Freedom is compatible with determinism when thought is part of the causal mix; Thinking brain plasticity correctly is required to think freedom — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 230; Freedom depends on theorizing the plasticity of transition — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 229 (+6 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Freedom is compatible with determinism when thought is part of the causal mix; Thinking brain plasticity correctly is required to think freedom — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 230; Freedom depends on theorizing the plasticity of transition — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 229 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Human mastery over nature dialectically increases human dependency on matter. #complicates (0.76) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 495
• Rational self-preservation conquers nature only by imitating nature’s own rigidity #complicates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 63