this passion, without this sentimental connection
between intellectuals and people-nation.
The knowledge of intellectuals becomes life and politics only
when linked to the feeling/passion of the people. The synthesis
intellectual/people and knowledge/passion is what provides the
motive force for political and historical activity. In both
cases it is the generation and dissemination of systems of
thought and systems of belief that connect the intellectual and
the people, and that renders knowledge socially and historically
concrete.
The above passage is crucial to understanding Gramsci and
his notion of hegemony. For it summarizes in nuce Gramsci’s
perspective regarding the relation between knowledge and
politics, thought and action. At the same time, it is a critique
of the dominant philosophical and cultural thought in the Italy
thought posits a necessary and unresolvable antinomy between
thought and action, philosophy and politics. In 1949, in his
review of Gramsci’s Gli intellettuali e l’organizzazione della
cultura, Croce criticizes Gramsci’s basically de Sanctian notion
regarding the necessity of “going to the people.” Croce asks why
a man of such intellect and gravity such as Gramsci has let
himself be seduced by “sophisms,” that is, by Marxist
Convention