Prassi e liberazione. Le ricerche di Dal Pra su Marx nel dibattito del dopoguerra

The article documents the studies carried out by Mario Dal Pra on Marx’s philosophy between 1948 and 1953. For this purpose, the Author made use of all the unpublished manuscripts and typescripts on the subject unearthed in the Dal Pra Collection kept in the archives of the Philosophy Library at the University of Milan. These materials testify to a greater interest in these problems than hitherto expressed, based on the few texts on historical materialism published in the newspaper Avanti! in 1949. In short, they allow us to focus on the intertwining between the conception of «transcendentalism», elaborated with Andrea Vasa after World War II, and the «philosophy of praxis» studied in the works of the young Marx, which were just then being made available in an Italian translation. With regard to the coeval debate, particularly the writings of Henri Lefebvre, Antonio Banfi and Giulio Preti, Dal Pra rejected doctrinaire and metaphysical interpretations of Marx’s thought and emphasized the value of his critique of practical and theoretical alienation in favor of a transformative philosophy.