A Route of the Critical Thought: Between Italian and Czech Intellectuals

e-mail: bruno.manelli@fastwebnet.it

It’s no accident that the first translation and edition of Kosík’s Dialektika konkrétního was published in Italy and  in Milan nor was an accident that Kosík’s works made their appearance in Italian reviews as long ago as the early sixties following his attendance at conferences in Italy. The aim of my proposal is going over the course of Kosik’s relationships with Italian intellectuals. On one hand philosphers such as Enzo Paci and Guido Neri, on the other theoriticians with stronger connections to Marxism and the cultural policy of the Italian Communist Party such as Rossana Rossanda and the “Gramsci Institute”. At the root of these relationships there was the search for a  philosophy that would be essential for the realization of a “socialist” society from a critical point of view involving both East and West countries. This mutual influence led the young Czech marxist philosophers to the rehabilitation of the European philosophical culture as represented not only by Existentialism and Phenomenology but also by Hegel ( and Husserl became a point of reference for Patočka, Paci, Kosík and Neri). Italian intellectuals offered Gramsci’s rich doctrine and the debate on Kafka, one of the central subject of Remo Cantoni’s reflections.