Philosophy and Life of Evald Ilyenkov

The article reveals the ideas of the Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov in the context of the characteristics of Soviet philosophy. The reason for the rejection of Ilyenkov’s ideas by official Soviet Marxism was his non-orthodox understanding of Marxist philosophy as materialist dialectics, the main task of which he considered to be the discovery of the laws of knowledge. Ilyenkov was accused of “epistemology,” “idealism,” and “positivism,” although it was him who consistently criticized the idealistic and positivist tendencies in Soviet philosophy. Evald Ilyenkov, being a convinced communist, nevertheless clearly saw the tragic dead end of Soviet history. This caused both his close attention to the problem of communism as a genuine and historically objective ideal of human development, and his personal tragedy of bitter, mortal disappointment.

The dialectical-materialistic concept of thinking is analyzed on the basis of the Ilyenkov’s work Dialectics of abstract and Concrete in Scientific and Theoretical Thinking. This work is a complex, theoretical reworking of Marxist dialectics, a personal and at the same time truly scientific understanding of it. This philosophy allowed Ilyenkov to formulate the most important provisions about the nature of personality. Ilyenkov was convinced that the key to understanding personality development was not in physiology, but in the content and characteristics of sensory-concrete activity. The article also outlines Ilyenkov’s understanding of the category of “ideal” as the essence of an object or phenomenon.