Reading Evald Ilyenkov
Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979) is the most important Soviet Marxist philosopher of the postwar. He has written on a large gamut of subjects, from problems of theoretical philosophy, theory of knowledge, the concepts of the “abstract” and the “concrete”, the “ideal”, and the universal, to Marx’s materialist dialectical method in Capital, problems of cybernetics, automation, machine-thinking, to problems of pedagogy, theory of education, psychology, human mind, and ethics and aesthetics. Ilyenkov can be considered the philosophical originator of what is known as “activity theory” in the Soviet Union, which in its turn precedes what is known as Cultural-Historical Activity Theory internationally nowadays. The concepts, ideas and theories of Ilyenkov have influenced generations of younger philosophers from the 1950s to present in Eastern Europe, while recently enjoying an increased attention in the anglophone world.
The aim of these monthly reading seminars is to closely familiarize the participants with the key concepts and theories developed by Ilyenkov with the hope of utilizing them in the face of contemporary polycrisis.
Reading Program
Meeting 1 (22 November, Introduction): “Theses on the Question of the Interconnection of Philosophy and Knowledge of Nature and Society in the Process of their Historical Development” (Evald Ilyenkov & Valentin Korovikov)
Meeting 2 (13 December): The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete – Chapter 1: “The Dialectical and Metaphysical Conception of the Concrete”
Meeting 3 (January): The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete – Chapters 2 & 3: “The Unity of the abstract and the Concrete as a Law of Thought” & “Ascent from the Abstract to the Concrete”
Meeting 4 (21 February): The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete – Chapters 4 & 5: “Logical Development and Concrete Historicism” & “The Method of the Ascent from the Abstract to the Concrete in Marx’s Capital”
Meeting 5 (21 March): Dialectical Logic – Chapter 7: “A Contribution to the Problem of a Dialectical Materialistic Critique of Objective Idealism”; Chapter 8: “The Materialist Conception of Thought as the Subject Matter of Logic”; Chapter 9: “On the Coincidence of Logic with Dialectics and the Theory of Knowledge of Materialism”; Chapter 10: “Contradiction as a Category of Dialectical Logic”; Chapter 11: “The Problem of the General in Dialectics”; “Conclusion”
Meeting 6 (11 April): “Dialectics of the Ideal”. In Dialectics of the Ideal (Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen, eds.), 2014, 25-78.
Meeting 7 (May): “Cosmology of the Spirit”, Stasis 5.2 (2017) 164-190; “The Machine and the Human, Cybernetics and Philosophy” (Anatoly Arsen’ev, Evald Ilyenkov & Vasily Davydov), Marxism & Sciences 3.2 (2024) 1-20; “Our Schools Must Teach How to Think”, Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 45.4 (2007) 9-49; “Psychology”, Russian Studies in Philosophy 48.4 (2010) 13-35; “Mind and Brain: An Answer to D. I. Dubrovskii” Soviet Studies in Philosophy 8.1 (1969) 87-106
Meeting 8 (June): “Reflections on Lenin’s Book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism” in The Ideal in Human Activity, 285-390
Conveners: Siyaves Azeri, Alex Cistelecan
Organized by tranzit.ro/Cluj and Facultatea de Teatru si Film, UBB. The main partner of tranzit.ro/Cluj is Erste Stiftung.
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