Philosophy becomes historically true by diffusing into the popular mentality.

Evidence

We have established that philosophy is a conception of the world and that philosophical activity is not to be conceived solely as the “individual” elaboration of systematically coherent concepts, but also and above all as a cultural battle to transform the popular ’ ‘mentality” and to diffuse the philosophical innovations which will demonstrate themselves to be “historically true” to the extent that they become concretely—i.e. historically and socially—universal. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1248

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci’s central redefinition: philosophy is a cultural-political battle for universality, not individual system-building.
• XREF: This is the core of Gramsci’s hegemony concept that later Islamophobia critiques rely on — ideology becomes effective only as it saturates lay ‘common sense’. — connects to: Philosophy gains interest when cast as a lived biography — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 105; Ancient philosophical formation built universality from concrete experience; modernity finds it ready-made and truncated. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1016