Costanzo Preve

Costanzo Preve
Born (1943-04-14)14 April 1943
Valenza, Piedmont, Italy
Died 23 November 2013(2013-11-23) (aged 70)
Turin, Piedmont, Italy
Alma mater University of Turin
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Revival of German Idealism
Western Marxism
Main interests
 Marxist philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy
Politics
Notable ideas
 Communitarism
Universalism
Anti-capitalism

Costanzo Preve (14 April 1943 – 23 November 2013) was an Italian philosopher and a political theoretician. He is widely considered as one of the most important anti-capitalist European thinkers and a renowned expert in the history of Marxism. His thought is based on the Ancient Greek and Idealistic tradition philosophy, under the influence of Fichte, Hegel and Marx. He is author of many essays and volumes about philosophical interpretation, Communitarism and Universalism.

Biography

Born in Valenza, Preve studied philosophy, political science and ancient and modern Greek in Turin, Paris and Athens. He worked as a high school teacher from 1967 to 2002, and was engaged first in the Italian Communist Party (PCI) then got close to Democrazia Proletaria, a party created in 1975 and opposed to the "historic compromise" between the PCI and the Christian Democracy. After the dissolving of the PCI following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, Costanzo Preve undertook a critical review of his own positions held in the precedent decades. He gave lectures for, and took part in some of the cultural activities, of the Anti-Imperialist Camp, a union of international leftist anti-imperialist activists, who have received much attention from the media because of their critical stand against US imperialism and Zionism. Since 2005 he writes for a geopolitical journal, Eurasia.

Costanzo Preve was initially influenced by Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, before turning himself towards Georg Lukács. He rejected the important Operaismo current (or autonomist Marxism) during the 1960-1970s. In the 1990s, Preve returned to Althusser and criticizes "economism" and orthodox Marxism based on a teleological philosophy of history inspired by Hegel. As did Althusser in his latter work on "random materialism" (matérialisme aléatoire), Preve insists on the place of contingency in history and considers the class contrast between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to be a historical passing form specific to a certain period of the capitalist mode of production. Preve conceives of the 1960s as a rupture in history, in much the same way that the appearance of the proletariat in the 19th century had been. Capitalism entered a new phase. However, Preve insists against Althusser on the young Marx's theory of alienation and on his theory on human nature, and provocatively considers Marxism as the last phase of German Idealism. Preve has also insisted on the unprecedented power of the sole hyperpower, that is the United States, and warned against cultural imperialism. He criticizes Toni Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire (2000).

Preve assigned four "masters" to Marx: Epicurus (to whom he dedicated his thesis, Difference of natural philosophy between Democritus and Epicurus, 1841) for his materialism and theory of clinamen; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from which come his idea of egalitarian democracy; Adam Smith, from whom came the idea that the grounds of property is labour; and finally Hegel.

He was an atheist.[1] Costanzo Preve died in Turin where he lived on 23 November 2013.[2]

Works

Notes

  1. ↑ Article on Arianna Editrice, 12 September 2011.
  2. ↑ http://www.lospiffero.com/cronache-marxiane/in-memoria-di-costanzo-preve-13657.html

References

External links

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