Re: Ideal - Ilyenkov

From: Helena Worthen (hworthen@igc.org)
Date: Mon Sep 04 2000 - 07:28:45 PDT


Thanks, Jan, for the quote. I intend to go get Bakhurst as Paul recommended, as
soon as I can get into the library tomorrow, but in the meantime this quote
answered my question -- which was essentially, why did Ilyenkov have to go to
all this length to establish the material nature of ideal phenomena when I
thought that was all pretty well laid out by Vygotsky and his friends and
colleagues as a basis for their work in the 1920s?

I knew that Vygotsky's work was suppressed under Stalin, but I didn't realize
that the suppression of those ideas went so far as to require a
re-establishment of the roots of their study of philsophy in scientific
materialism.

By his own hand! Two years after he wrote this? Ye gods.

Helena

jan derry wrote:

> I've been reading and thinking of answers to queries. This is a very
> difficult area because many of the terms used have different meanings to
> those in common usage. It's difficult to respond quickly.
>
> However a quick reply can be made to Helena's request for info on Ilyenkov.
> I've copied a paragraph from an article by David Bakhurst below. I have
> heard Felix Mikhailov (a close friend and colleague speak on Ilyenkov) talk
> about the very difficult conditions that they were working under. When
> meeting to discuss philosophy they would know that within their group there
> would be a member of the KGB. As a result writings cannot be taken at face
> value given the difficult climate in which they were produced. Jan
>
> Jan Derry
> www.edu.bham.ac.uk/SAT/Derry.html
>
> Helena writes,
>
> Where can I find out who Ilyenkov was, why he was writing this in 1977,
> whose work was he arguing with, who was his audience, etc?
>
> 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
> empricism 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. …there are important continuities bewteen
> Ilyenkov’s ideas and controversies in Soviet philosophy and psychology in
> the 1920s and ‘30s, particularly…with Vygotsky’s socio-historical
> psychology. ….After the insightful writings of the early 1960s, his
> inspiration diminished as the political climate became more oppressive. … He
> died in 1979, by his own hand.’
>
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