Studies in East European Thought, Collection 100 years of Evald Ilyenkov

Studies in East European Thought, Collection 100 years of Evald Ilyenkov. URL: https://link.springer.com/collections/ghfbhhceha

This special issue commemorates the centenary of the philosopher Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979). Ilyenkov provided a creative counter-current to the stagnation of Soviet thought, focusing on topics including activity, dialectics, psychology, education, and cybernetics. We present his historic contribution and present-day legacy. David Bakhurst opens the issue with a consideration of the relevance of Ilyenkov’s thought and concepts to contemporary philosophy. Several essays illustrate his relationship with his Soviet and East European contemporaries. Sergei Alushkin documents how Ilyenkov influenced the richness ofphilosophical thought in Ukraine inside and outside academe. His interpretation of individuality, personality, subjectivity and dialectics is explored and compared with that of contemporary thinkers, including Slavoj Žižek. Ilyenkov’s interes tin dynamic systems is set in the context of other dialecticians. The innovative ways in which he built on Marx’s dialectical approach in Das Kapital are examined, focusing on the ascent from the abstract to the concrete and the dialectics of the logical and the historical. Ilyenkov’s last book is decoded as a deployment of Lenin’s materialist dialectics to critique the Soviet economy and formulaic nature of official philosophical culture and a powerful defence materialist dialectics. Ilyenkov’s little-known fragments about composer Richard Wagner are examined.