Philosophical immediacy to practice produces vulgar conservatism rather than cultural elevation.

Evidence

The “individual” philosopher of the Italian or German type is tied to “practice” in a mediated way, and there are often many rings on the chain of mediations. The pragmatist on the other hand wishes to tie himself immediately to practice. It would appear, however, that the Italian or German type of philosopher is more “practical” than the pragmatist who judges from immediate reality, often at the most vulgar level, in that the German or Italian has a higher aim, sets his sights higher and tends (if he tends in any direction) to raise the existing cultural level. Hegel can be considered as the theoretical precursor of the liberal revolutions of the nineteenth century. The pragmatists, at the most, have contributed to the creation of the Rotary Club movement and to the justification of conservative and reactionary movements—and to their justification in a real sense, and not just, as happened with Hegel and the Prussian State, as a result of polemical distortion. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1328

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes mediated versus immediate intellectual relation to practice—a distinction that illuminates how theory either raises or ratifies given cultural levels.
• XREF: The mediated-practice idea prefigures the organic-traditional intellectual distinction and connects to how ideology reproducing common sense differs from critique.