Evald Ilyenkov and the Problem of the Ideal
Contextual Quote
"the ideal — ideas, values, culture—is not a subjective illusion "in the head" but an objective reality rooted in human activity. For Ilyenkov, the ideal emerges when people transform the material world through labor, embedding meaning into objects."
- ChatGPT
Discussion
1. Via ChatGPT:
"Ilyenkov’s second major contribution was his theory of the "ideal," which tackled the relationship between the material and the non-material. In works like The Concept of the Ideal (1977), he argued that the ideal—ideas, values, culture—is not a subjective illusion "in the head" but an objective reality rooted in human activity. For Ilyenkov, the ideal emerges when people transform the material world through labor, embedding meaning into objects. A table, for instance, isn’t just wood; it’s an "ideal" object because it carries the social meaning and purpose that human labor has infused into it. The table isn’t just a collection of physical components; it embodies the history of craftsmanship, cultural significance, and functional intent. This illustrates Ilyenkov’s broader argument: the "ideal" is not a mere abstraction or a private mental construct but something embedded in the real, material world through human practice.
Ilyenkov and The Problem of the Ideal:
In The Problem of the Ideal, Ilyenkov expands on this idea, critiquing both subjective idealism (which sees ideas as purely mental) and crude materialism (which treats only physical matter as real). He argues that the ideal exists as a social relation, not inside individual consciousness but in the material world as shaped by human activity.
One of his key influences was Karl Marx, particularly the concept of labor as the mediator between humans and nature. For Ilyenkov, labor is not just physical work but a process in which human intentions, social norms, and cultural values become objectified in material things. This is how the "ideal" enters the world—not as a ghostly, immaterial essence, but as an integral part of social reality.
He also engages with Hegelian dialectics, particularly the idea that concepts develop through contradictions. The "ideal," in Ilyenkov’s view, emerges through the dynamic interaction between subjective thought and objective materiality, constantly reshaped by social practice.
Unlike traditional idealist or dualist approaches, Ilyenkov insists that the ideal is neither a mere mental reflection nor an independent realm but something embedded in material objects through human practice.
Human cognition and culture become materialized in tools, language, traditions, and artifacts. A written book, for instance, is not just ink on paper but a repository of human thought, accessible to others.
Ilyenkov rejects the strict separation of material and ideal. Instead, he sees them as interwoven through social activity.
The ideal is not static; it evolves through historical labor and social processes. A tool, for example, changes in form and function as society develops, carrying new meanings and uses."
2. Siyaves Azeri
(for a special issue of the Marxism & Science journal)
"The year 2024 marks the 100th birthday of the independent Marxist Soviet philosopher, Evald Ilyenkov, who is undoubtedly one of the most original, sophisticated, and ambidextrous thinkers of the 20th century. Ilyenkov’s interest and works cover a vast territory from problems regarding method, dialectical logic, epistemology, the relation between philosophy and sciences to ethics, humanism, philosophy and critique of education, education of people with disabilities, the concepts of human activity and the ideal.
From his very first substantial contribution to Marxist philosophy titled “Theses on the Question of the Interrelation of Philosophy and Knowledge of Nature and Society in the Process of their Historical Development”, coauthored with Valentine Korovikov and presented in 1954 in Moscow State University, to his later works on the “universal”, the “ideal”, the relation between Marxism, humanism, and the sciences, and his criticism of positivism and official diamat, which influenced a whole generation of later philosophers and thinkers, there is a thematic, methodological and conceptual unity in Ilyenkov’s philosophical approach at the top of which comes his conceptualization of philosophy as the method or a (critical) theory of knowledge, the main subject-matter of which is (theoretical) thought.
In Ilyenkov’s view, philosophy is a science that aims at the universal (the general—obshchii), where the universal refers to the common generic root of diverse phenomena—concepts. Concept is the “ideal” reconstruction of necessary essential interrelations between phenomena; hence, philosophy appears as the science of the ideal, that is, philosophy is the science or the method of analyzing concept-formation and conceptual thinking; in this sense philosophy is the science or the theory of knowledge (in general). Since concepts are producible only in thinking/thought, philosophy turns to be the science of the method of thinking—what Ilyenkov refers to as materialist dialectics.
In his battle against vulgar materialism that then was represented by official diamat, Machism, and positivism, Ilyenkov persistently elaborated a concept of thought as something objective and real, irreducible to physiology, that is, to the activity in the brain/mind. Ilyenkov is a genuine Marxist philosopher that aims at rejuvenating the revolutionary essence of Marxism with reference to the concept of praxis as a philosophical category (as presented in Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”) and the central role of human activity as the middle term relating thinking and being, i.e., to conceive of praxis as the source of reality and the “this-sidedness” of thought. His subsequent defence of Lenin against neo-positivism and mechanism is also rooted in the former’s attributing an epistemological meaning to praxis, in contrast to something “practical”, commonsensically understood, or pragmatic, and his conceiving of Marxist materialist philosophy a domain independent of sciences—opposite to positivistic scientism.
We contend that Ilyenkov’s philosophical-theoretical heritage can contribute to many of the contemporary debates concerning AI, “thinking” machines, deep “learning”, automation, rise of digital technology and the debates around automation, autonomy, and emergent forms of subjectivity, (crisis in) education and pedagogy, epistemology, knowledge-production and envisioning a communist future."