The theory-practice unity question runs through every philosophy of history.

Evidence

It is worth searching for, analysing and criticising the various forms in which the concept of the unity of theory and practice has been presented in the history of ideas, since it appears without doubt that every conception of the world and every philosophy has been concerned with this problem. Affirmation of Aquinas and Scholasticism: “Intellectus speculative extensione fit practicus ” (Theory by simple extension becomes practice—in other words, the affirmation of the necessary connection between the order of ideas and that of action). Aphorism of Leibniz, so often repeated by the Italian idealists, “Quo magis speculativa, magis practica ” [The more speculative, the more practical], in connection with science. The proposition of G. B. Vico, “verum ipsum factum ” [true is what is done], 441 so much discussed and variously interpreted (see Croce’s book on Vico and other polemical writings by Croce himself) and which Croce develops in the idealistic sense that knowledge is a form of doing and that one knows that which one does. (“To do” here has a particular meaning, so particular in fact that it finally means nothing more than “to know” and the phrase resolves itself into a tautology. This conception should, however, be considered in relation to the conception held by the philosophy of praxis.) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1297

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out three historic formulations of the unity of theory and practice (Aquinas, Leibniz, Vico) as grounding for Gramsci’s own philosophy of praxis.
• XREF: Connects forward to how later Islamophobia critique needs to understand ideology as practice — a position presumably built on this Gramscian scaffolding.