Benedetto Croce recounts that during a lecture a student asked Labriola how he would educate a Papuan. Labriola replied that he would provisionally enslave him and then see if with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren he could teach him something.

Antonio Labriola (1843-1904) was an important Italian philosopher and educationalist. His studies marked the second Italian 19th century: he was the first recognised interpreter of Marx and Engels' thought and his works influenced thinkers such as Gentile, Gramsci and Croce.

Starting from this famous provocation on the education of the Papuan, we intend to analyse the theme of diversity by defining it within Labriola's thought. 

We will not rely only on his most famous and significant writings, but we will provide examples of how this thought threaded through many of his communications and correspondences.

We will analyze the sources trying to understand in what terms the theme of 'different' is grasped in Labriola's theoretical framework and how it is linked to his ethical, political and pedagogical framework.

The problematic nature of this theme and these links was grasped by Gramsci himself when he commented on Labriola's statement on the Papuan in his quaderni dal carcere. In this case, it will be interesting to see how the theme of the 'different' is dissect in a sharper and more defined manner from the perspective of the 'spirit of the split' and the emancipative value of educational action.

The method with which we will approach the problem is historical-critical. We will analyze the issue of the possibility of educating the 'different' by trying to frame the theme within Labriola's thought and analyzing Gramsci's critique. To achieve this, we will try to illustrate the historical context in which the texts were written. The hermeneutic historical-critical approach will allow us to analyze the theme of diversity in the broader context of the two authors' thoughts. We will make use of unpublished material and archival sources.

First of all, we expect to frame the concept of 'diversity' within Labriola's work in order to underline all its aspects, both the more innovative and the more problematic ones. We will try to understand whether Labriola meant those words addressed to the Papuan for diversity in general or whether diversity should be understood from the point of view of a social group. In this sense we will link the theme of diversity with that of emancipation by showing the role that education can play in these terms. Secondly, we expect to show how this problem posed by Labriola is taken up by Gramsci, in particular we will try to read the theme of diversity in the key of what Gramsci himself calls the 'spirit of splitting'. We therefore expect to show how in this strand of thought that links Labriola to Gramsci, the theme of diversity is linked to the theme of emancipation and education, and how this has led to interesting and unexpected connections, think of Spivak's postcolonial studies, which still question and challenge the world of education nowadays.

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