Andy, I’ve put the full quote from David Bakhurst article, including the
bits I’d omitted, below.
David has his own web page in case you want to communicate with him at
Queen’s University, Ontario.
I’ve almost managed to keep up with reading the interesting discussion but
haven’t had the time to make the sort of considered responses and
contributions that the discussion warrants, (as Paul mentioned).
It’s thought provoking to read the contribution of others, though. Sorry to
hear that while you manage to run such a brilliant web site saving others
the difficulty of accessing different texts, that you have to suffer the
struggles over making a living. Jan
David Bakhurst writes in his article; ‘Meaning, Normativity and the Life of
Mind’ in Language and communication, 17 (1), 33-51
‘Ilyenkov was important in the revival of Russian Marxist philosophy after
the dark days of Stalinism. In the early 1960s, he produced significant work
in two main areas. First he wrote at length on Marx’s dialectical method
(‘the method of ascent form the abstract to concrete’). This work, though it
now seems obscure, has an important political sub-text: its critique of
empiricism is aimed at the positivism and scientism that Ilyenkov thought
prevalent in Soviet political and intellectual culture. Second, Ilyenkov
developed a distinct solution to what he called ‘the problem of the ideal’;
that is, the problem of the place of the non-material in the natural world.’
The latter involves a resolute defence of the objectivity of ideal
phenomena, which are said to exist as aspects of our spiritual culture,
embodied in our environment. These works, which were extremely influential,
cannot properly be appreciated without considering the Stalinist climate to
which Ilyenkov was reacting and the Khrushchev ‘thaw’ which made them
possible. Moreover, there are important continuities between Ilyenkov’s
ideas and controversies in Soviet philosophy and psychology in the 1920s and
‘30s, particularly, as noted above, with Vygotsky’s socio-historical
psychology. The subsequent fate of Ilyenkov’s career is also interesting.
After the insightful writings of the early1960s, his inspiration diminished
as the political climate became more oppressive. Though he wrote
extensively, and engaged in polemical assaults on scientism and reductionist
theories of mind, he did not break new ground. He died in 1979, by his own
hand.’
>From: Andy Blunden <a.blunden@pb.unimelb.edu.au>
>Reply-To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>Subject: Re: Ideal - Ilyenkov
>Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 08:10:24 +1100
>
>Jan,
>Could I use your quote from Bakhurst in the biography of Ilyenkov on the
>Marxist Internet Archive?
>Andy Blunden
>
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