Praxis Filosófica (Feb 2018)

Religion under suspicion: Freud and Gramsci

  • Patricia Carina Dip

DOI
https://doi.org/10.25100/pfilosofica.v0i46.6148
Journal volume & issue
no. 46
pp. 43 – 60

Abstract

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The object of this article is to analyze two complementary models of the secularization of culture formulated at the beginning of the twentieth century through confrontation with the religious paradigm. These are Freudian psychoanalysis, on the one hand, and the socialism of the young Gramsci, on the other. The hypothesis driving this analysis is the following: the Gramscian understanding of the problem of culture introduces the political dimension unknown to the anthropological writings of Freud. It is the introduction of this dimension which explains why Gramsci does not describe the function of religion by considering Christianity in general terms, but rather studies the function of the Catholic Church in the Italian process of national unification known as the Risorgimento.