Spirit is a historical result of superstructure unification, not a starting point
Evidence
What the idealists call “spirit” is not a point of departure but a point of arrival, it is the ensemble of the superstructures moving towards concrete and objectively universal unification and it is not a unitary presupposition. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1583
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- XREF: Reverses idealist epistemology — the basis for Gramsci’s historicist materialism carried forward into how ‘the West’ or ‘Islam’ are constructed as unified spirits over time.
- DEFINE: Defines Gramsci’s historicist reworking of ‘spirit’ as a terminus of historical unification.
Related
- History’s unity is a developing process, not a presupposition. (similarity 0.83)
- The historical bloc unifies structure and superstructure as a circle of distincts (similarity 0.80)
- Marxism historicizes the Hegelian idea across both structure and superstructure. (similarity 0.80)
- Hegel saw each people’s spirit as shaping its religion, constitution, and philosophy. (similarity 0.79)