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The Ideal in Human Activity The Ideal in Human Activity Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov with a preface by Mike Cole Marxists Internet Archive P.O. Box 1541; Pacifica, CA 94044; USA. CC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0) 2009 by Marxists Internet Archive. Cover design by Joan Levinson. Set by Andy Blunden in Garamond. Printed by Bookmasters Inc., Ohio. Distributed by Erythrós Press and Media. Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov (1924-1979) 1. Philosophy, 2. Activity Theory, 3. Dialectics, 4. Marxism. ISBN 978-0-9805428-7-5 References to Marx and Engels in footnotes have been changed to pro- vide the reference to MECW (Lawrence & Wishart, London, and Inter- national Publishers, New York, 1975-2005, 50 volumes), but the words given by the Progress Publishers translators in the text have been left as per their translation of Ilyenkov’s source. Table of Contents Dialectical Logic.................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 1 From the History of Dialectics 1. Descartes & Leibniz – The Subject Matter of Logic................ 5 2. Spinoza – Thought as an Attribute of Substance ...................14 3. Kant – Logic and Dialectics......................................................42 4. Fichte & Schelling – Dualism or Monism................................66 5. Hegel – Dialectics as Logic .......................................................94 6. Feuerbach – Idealism or Materialism?...................................122 Certain Problems of the Marxist-Leninist Theory of Dialectics 7: A Critique of Objective Idealism ...........................................132 8: Thought as the Subject Matter of Logic ...............................146 9: Dialectics and the Theory of Knowledge .............................167 10: Contradiction as a Category of Dialectical Logic ..............185 11: The Problem of the General in Dialectics..........................198 Conclusion......................................................................................213 Activity and Knowledge.................................................................................215 The Universal ..................................................................................................225 The Concept of the Ideal...............................................................................253 Reflections on Lenin’s book: “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism” .....285 Introduction ....................................................................................285 1. Marxism against Machism .......................................................296 2. The Positive Programme of Russian Positivism...................320 3. Dialectics – Philosophy and natural science..........................349 Conclusion.......................................................................................383 Preface The essays in this volume provide insight into the work of Evald Ilyenkov, a Marxist philosopher who played an important part in the revival of Russian Marxist philosophy following the death of Stalin. He is best know for two lines of work. First he wrote about Marx’s dialectical method known as “the method of ascent form the abstract to concrete” which, as David Bakhurst has pointed out, provided a subtle critique of empiricism at the same time that it served as a political critique of the positivism and scientism that was prevalent in Soviet political and intel- lectual culture during Ilyenkov’s lifetime. It also served as a philosophical foundation for research into theoretically guided education made famous in the work of Vasilii Davydov and his followers. In connection with this work, Ilyenkov was a staunch supporter of the work of a group of psychologists, who, following the inspiration of Vygotsky, sought to conduct basic research on the development of human psychological processes while at the same time providing an existence proof of the humanitarian ideal that with sufficient care and understanding, even children who suffered blind-deafness could become fully functioning members of society. Ilyenkov’s work is also important in helping us to think about the re- lationship of the material and the ideal in human life. He referred to this issue as “the problem of the ideal” by which he meant the place of the non-material in the natural world. Central to his solution of this age-old philosophical problem was his formulation of the concept of the artefact. Ordinarily when one thinks of an artefact, a material object comes to mind. Something manufactured by a human being. In anthropology, the study of artefacts is sometimes considered part of the study of material culture, which is somehow distinct from the study of human behaviour and knowledge. According to this “artefact as object” interpretation, it is easy to assimilate the concept of artefact into the category of tool, in which case, nothing much is to be gained. According to Ilyenkov’s views, trace their genealogy back to Hegel and Marx and can be found in the writings of philosophers such as Jon Dewey, an artefact is an aspect of the material world that has been modi- fied over the history of its incorporation in goal directed human activities. By virtue of the changes wrought in the process of their creation and use, artefacts are simultaneously ideal and material. They are manufactured in the process of goal directed human actions. They are ideal in that their 10 E. V. ILYENKOV material form has been shaped by their participation in the interactions of which they were previously a part and which they mediate in the present. David Bakhurst, in his influential book on Ilyenkov, puts the matter thusly: Rather, in being created as an embodiment of purpose and incorporated into life activity in a certain way – being manufactured for a reason and put into use – the natural object acquires a significance. This significance is the “ideal form” of the object, a form that includes not a single atom of the tangible physical substance that possess it (Bakhurst, 1990, p. 182). Bakhurst, D., Consciousness and revolution in Soviet philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Mike Cole February 2009 Dialectical Logic* Introduction The task, bequeathed to us by Lenin, of creating a Logic (with a capi- tal ‘L’), i.e. of a systematically developed exposition of dialectics under- stood as the logic and theory of knowledge of modern materialism, has become particularly acute today. The clearly marked dialectical character of the problems arising in every sphere of social life and scientific knowl- edge is making it more and more clear that only Marxist-Leninist dialec- tics has the capacity to be the method of scientific understanding and practical activity, and of actively helping scientists in their theoretical comprehension of experimental and factual data and in solving the problems they meet in the course of research. In the past ten or fifteen years, quite a few works have been written devoted to separate branches that are part of the whole of which we still only dream; they can justly be regarded as paragraphs, even chapters, of the future Logic, as more or less finished blocks of the building being erected. One cannot, of course, cement these ‘blocks’ mechanically into a whole; but since the task of a systematic exposition of dialectical logic can only be solved by collective efforts, we must at least determine the most general principles of joint work. In the essays presented here we attempt to concretise some of the points of departure of such collective work. In philosophy, more than in any other science, as Hegel remarked with some regret in his Phenomenology of Mind, ‘the end or final result seems ... to have absolutely expressed the complete fact itself in its very nature; contrasted with that the mere process of bringing it to light would seem, properly speaking, to have no essential significance’.1 That is very aptly put. So long as dialectics (dialectical logic) is looked upon as a simple tool for proving a previously accepted thesis (irrespec- tive of whether it was initially advanced as the rules of mediaeval disputes * Written in 1974; first published in Dialectical Logic, Essays on its History and Theory, by Progress Publishers, 1977; Translated: English translation 1977 by H. Campbell Creighton. 1 Hegel, “The Phenomenology of Mind,” tr. J B Baillie, 1931, Preface §2. 2 E. V. ILYENKOV required, or only disclosed at the end of the argument, in order to create the illusion of not being preconceived, that is, of saying: “Look, here is what we have obtained although we did not assume it”), it will remain something of ‘no essential significance’. When dialectics is converted into a simple tool for proving a previously accepted (or given) thesis, it be- comes a sophistry only outwardly resembling dialectics, but empty of content. And if it is true that real dialectical logic takes on life not in ‘naked results’, and not in the ‘tendency’ of the movement of thought, but only in the form of ‘the result along with the process of arriving at it‘,2 then during the exposition of dialectics as Logic, we must reckon with this truth. For it is impossible to go to the other extreme, taking the view that we had allegedly not set ourselves any aim determining the means and character of our activity from the very outset in the course of our analysis of the problem, but had set out swimming at random. And we are therefore obliged,
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