Ilyenkov's cry from the heart: dialectics and the critique of positivism.

Evald Ilyenkov's last book, Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism, was published in 1980 shortly after the author's tragic demise. In it he celebrated the 70th anniversary of Lenin's still controversial Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909). Like Lenin's own book, this final contr...

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Published in:Studies in East European Thought Vol. 76; no. 3; pp. 425 - 439
Main Author: Lotz, Corinna
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Sep2024
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Ilyenkov's cry from the heart: dialectics and the critique of positivism.
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        au: Lotz, Corinna
        affil: International Friends of Ilyenkov, London, UK
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        Theory of knowledge
        Ideological conflict
        Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831
        Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 1870-1924
        Dialectic
        Metaphysics
        Logic
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        subj:
          Theory of knowledge
          Ideological conflict
          Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831
          Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 1870-1924
          Dialectic
          Metaphysics
          Logic
      keyword:
        Bogdanov
        Cognition
        Dialectics
        Empirio-criticism
        Hegel
        Ilyenkov
        Lenin
        Materialism
        Positivism
      ab: Evald Ilyenkov's last book, Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism, was published in 1980 shortly after the author's tragic demise. In it he celebrated the 70th anniversary of Lenin's still controversial Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909). Like Lenin's own book, this final contribution by Ilyenkov is often dismissed as mere polemic. But as Lev Naumenko noted in the original preface: "the fires of the ideological struggle have not weakened". Under the protective shield of "Leniniana", as Lev Naumov called it, Ilyenkov set out his approach to materialist dialectics as both the science of logic and the logic of revolution. I discuss the nature of Ilyenkov's motives, the place of Leninist Dialectics within his philosophical oeuvre and why the original manuscript was censored by the Politizdat publishers. I draw on memoirs by Ilyenkov's close colleague and friend Felix Mikhailov and intended co-author, Grigori Vodolazov. Their testimonies make evident that Ilyenkov's challenge to the myth of "two Lenins" was a thinly disguised attack on the technocratic anti-humanistic ideology that prevailed in the late 1970s Soviet Union. I propose that Lenin was inspired by Hegel's dialectic throughout his life through Russian writers as well as Marx and Engels. Ilyenkov explains how Lenin's EmpirioCriticism embodied dialectical concepts that cannot be described as crude materialism. Finally I suggest that Ilyenkov's cri de coeur still stands as a call to the future as a foundation demanding further exploration towards a contemporary theory of knowledge.
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