ABSTRACT
The specific nuances of what Gramsci names ‘the new dialectic’ are explored in this paper. The dialectic was Marx’ s specific ‘mode of thought’ or ‘method of logic’ as it has been variously called, by which he analyzed the world and man’ s relationship to that world. As well as constituting a theory of knowledge (epistemology), what arises out of the dialectic is also an ontology or portrait of humankind that is based on the complete historicization of humanity; its ‘absolute “historicism”’ or ‘the absolute secularisation and earthliness of thought’, as Gramsci worded it (Gramsci, 1971, p. 465). Embracing a fully secular and historical view of humanity, it provides a vantage point that allows the multiple and complex effects of our own conceptual heritage to be interrogated in relation to our developing ‘nature’ or ‘being’.
