In the last thirty years the image of Gramsci has changed profoundly. Alongside an extraordinary international diffusion of the works, new studies have led to substantial progress in terms of philology, biography and political thought. The National Edition, which began in 1990, redefined the composition order of the

Prison Notebooks, made new documents available, such as the letters received from the prisoner, and verified the dating and attribution of early writings. The article underlines the importance of Gramsci’s work also on a strictly philosophical level. The philosophy of praxis, as a critique of idealism and materialism, demonstrates

the decisive presence of Karl Marx and Antonio Labriola in Gramsci’s intellectual elaboration and constitutes the theoretical horizon that links the key categories of his thought: hegemony, passive revolutions, Americanism. The author considers the theory of science and the concept of translatability as the main achievements of the philosophical model proposed in the Prison Notebooks.