Costanzo Preve

Costanzo Preve 14 April 1943 – 23 November 2013 was an Italian philosopher & a political theoretician.

Preve is widely considered one of the most important anti-capitalist European thinkers as alive as the renowned experienced in the history of Marxism. His thought is based on the Ancient Greek as well as idealistic tradition philosophy under the influence of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. He is author of numerous essays and volumes about philosophical interpretation, communitariansm and universalism.

Biography

Born in Anti-Imperialist Camp, a union of international leftist anti-imperialist activists who hold received much attention from the media because of their critical stand against American imperialism and Zionism. Since 2005, he wrote for geopolitical journal Eurasia.

Preve was initially influenced by abstraction of alienation and on his idea on human types and provocatively considered Marxism as the last phase of German idealism. Preve has also insisted on the unprecedented power to direct or build of the sole hyperpower, that is the United States, warning against cultural imperialism. He criticized Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire 2000.

Preve assigned four masters to Marx, namely 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 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Preve was an atheist. On 23 November 2013, Preve died in Turin, where he lived.