The paper explores the hypothesis that the philosophical-political reflection around the protagonism of collective subjectivities developed, between

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in connection with the elaboration of
an idea of unconscious (collective) rationality, giving rise to the construction of a
new paradigm of philosophy of history, in tune, on the one hand, with the thesis
of the progressive nature of history, but oriented, on the other hand, in a critical
sense towards the status quo and therefore open to the most radical dynamics of
political and social transformation. After having shown, by antithesis, the idea
of systemic (impersonal) rationality underlying the classical economic-political
paradigm (section 2), the paper examines paradigmatic texts of the eighteenth
and nineteenth century continental debate (sections 3-6) to conclude (section 7)
on the study of an unexplored reflection by Antonio Labriola on the influence of
the unconscious on the elaboration of thoughts and practical conduct.