Within the reflections that Gramsci developed in his Quaderni del carcere, the theme of the autonomy of the political occupies a key position. It was on the basis of these reflections that Gramsci carried out his research regarding politics and the possibility of a Political Science. According to Benedetto Croce, Nicolas Machiavel can be credited as the first theorist to have asserted the autonomy of politics. For Croce, it is this autonomy that makes it possible to establish a radical distinction between ethics and politics and between "political philosophy" and the "empirical science of politics". Gramsci makes critical use of Croce's reflections as his point of departure in his reading of Machiavel. Recognition of the autonomy of the political implies that the the latter cannot be reduced to religion nor ethics. As fields of knowledge and as activities, Political Science and politics had their own rules, distinguishing themselves from other forms of knowledge and human activity. Yet for the Sardinian Marxist, "autonomy" was not meant to imply a radical separation between politics and morality.
Gramsci; Croce; the autonomy of politics