The development of Soviet philosophical thought went a rather complicated way. Scientists had to work only on those issues that would not go beyond the communist framework. Any dissent was subjected to persecution and persecution, and therefore rare daredevils decided to devote their lives to those ideals that did not coincide with the opinion of the Soviet elite. The personality of the philosopher Evald Ilyenkov in the middle of the last century aroused suspicion and bewilderment among the scientific community. His ideas, which were enthusiastically accepted in the West, in his native institute tried by all possible means not to let go of it. The books of Evald Ilyenkov can be purchased today in any real or online store, but at one time the philosopher’s works were reluctant to print, and many of them never saw the light during the author’s lifetime. All this causes great interest among our contemporaries to the scientist and his scientific ideas. From our article you will learn the biography of Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov, and we will also briefly describe his main scientific theories.
Curriculum Vitae: childhood and adolescence
The biography of Evald Ilyenkov up to a certain point is quite typical of Soviet people. The future scientist was born in an intelligent family. His mother worked as a teacher, and his father was a writer. His books even won recognition in higher circles, for which Vasily Ilyenkov was nominated for the Stalin Prize.
In the twenty-fourth year, when Ewald was born, the family lived in Smolensk. However, in four years in the life of the future scientist, great changes occurred - he moved with his parents to the Soviet capital. A few years later, the family moved to a new district of Moscow in a house where only the writers’elite lived.
The year of graduation by Evald Ilyenkov of the school coincided with the start of World War II. But the young man was not taken to the front immediately after the educational institution, so he entered the philosophical faculty of Moscow University. However, literally a few months later all students and the teaching staff were evacuated to Ashgabat, a year later the institute was transferred to Sverdlovsk. Young E.V. Ilyenkov also moved with him from place to place.
War years
Upon reaching the eighteenth birthday, Evald Ilyenkov was drafted into the army. He was sent to training in Sukhoi Log. There, during the war years, the Odessa Artillery School was based. Within his walls, the young man spent almost a year.
Having passed the final exams at the school, the future scientist received the rank of junior lieutenant and was transferred to the war zone. It is worth noting that Ilyenkov went through the whole war to the very end. He fought on the Western Front, then commanded a platoon on the Belarusian Front, in which he reached Berlin. There he was still three and a half months after the end of the war.
However, even after this, Ilyenkov’s service in the army did not end. Almost a whole year the young man worked in the capital as a literary employee. The high command sent him to the editorial office of the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda. It was here that his literary talent was fully revealed. A little later, this experience helped the scientist write his works. The books of the author Evald Ilyenkov, according to our contemporaries, have not lost their relevance today. Its texts are presented in simple language, which was highly appreciated by specialists from Germany, England, Norway and other countries where they are published.
Studying at the university and starting teaching
During the war years, the university where Ewald Vasilievich studied, became part of Moscow State University. Therefore, after the service, the young man continued his studies already within its walls. Over the four years of study, the young man not only studied books and textbooks, but also acquired his own view of philosophical science. Many, even in those years, believed that in the presentation of Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov, philosophy appears in the form of special creativity, which should be far from other scientific disciplines. His main task is, according to the scientist, the study of the essence and mechanism of human thinking. He believed that the main thing for a person is to think.
Ilyenkov's philosophical ideas were born under the influence of Soviet scientists such as B. S. Chenyshev, P. V. Kopnin, B. M. Kedrov, and A. N. Leontyev. In the middle of the last century, a talented philosopher graduated and received a diploma with honors. According to the thesis, he was recommended for graduate school. Its main focus was the history of foreign philosophy.
After three years of graduate school, Ilyenkov defended his thesis and was accepted to the position of junior research assistant. His place of work was the Institute of Philosophy, where he worked all his life. It is noteworthy that despite the abundance of scientific works by Evald Ilyenkov, his position remained unchanged. This indicates that the ideas of the philosopher of power were treated with great prejudice and suspicion.
Especially during his studies, the scientist belonged to the "Capital" of Karl Marx. He studied this work and laid it at the basis of some philosophical theories of the scientist. Therefore, he began to teach a special seminar in his own educational institution.
Ideas and theories of a scientist in the context of his professional activity
At MSU, Evald Ilyenkov did not work long. A year later, a real scandal erupted in the university, leading to the dismissal of the scientist. The stumbling block was one of his works, co-authored with V.I. Korovikov (we cited the photo of this book above). But it was this controversial work that resonated among the Italian Communists. It was almost immediately translated into Italian and a year later published in this country.
The sixties of the last century can be called the most productive period in the life of the philosopher. He actively wrote articles, co-authored the Philosophical Encyclopedia, and published several books. However, most of them underwent significant changes. Some works were even reduced during the editing process by almost thirty percent.
By the seventies, the Soviet philosopher Ilyenkov Evald Vasilyevich became widely known to foreign scientists. He took part in congresses and conferences in Prague and Berlin, and even received a State Prize for a series of works on dialectics.
However, despite the fame and popularity abroad, in the Soviet Union, the scientist was often subjected to persecution. At the same time, his works in various fields were actively used in scientific works. Interestingly, Ilyenkov paid special attention to pedagogy in his activity. In a number of his works, this discipline was exhibited in a distant light from the usual. His theories were new and fresh, and therefore were an excellent alternative to the prevailing ideas about philosophy and pedagogy. Many books of Evald Vasilievich could be used as educational material in higher educational institutions.
The last years of the scientist’s life
Until the end of the seventies, the philosopher worked on the topic of knowledge in art. He was keenly interested in the issues of transforming creative imagination into something tangible. The scientist was interested in the process of transforming the imagination into a final product.
However, the scientific community rejected these ideas, considering them unworthy of the Soviet scientist as a whole. As a result, Ilyenkov was persecuted. His work was not published, many of his colleagues turned away, and at the institute his employment was gradually reduced to a minimum. All this led to the fact that the philosopher fell into depression. She had a protracted character, and he could no longer leave it on his own without the help of drugs. On one of the March days of the seventy-ninth year of the last century, Evald Ilyenkov committed suicide. Strange enough, but in those years few spoke of such an outcome. Not all colleagues and friends of the scientist knew that he cut his carotid artery. This gave rise to a number of rumors about the violent death of the philosopher.
Today, many believe that the philosophy of Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov is ahead of his time. And today, this talented person could make a dizzying career for himself.
Ideas and theories of the philosopher: talk about cosmology
Many contemporaries of Ilyenkov claimed that he was a very versatile person. He was interested not only in philosophy, but also in art, music and literature. He was inspired by Hegel, Wagner and Spinoza. Under the influence of the works of these famous figures, the young scientist at that time gave birth to new theories based on already known dogmas, ideas and quotes. Evald Ilyenkov was especially passionate about Spinoza. His disclosure of the essence, mechanism and meaning of thinking as such was a real discovery for the Soviet scientist. Later he used these theories in his scientific works.
The philosopher published his first serious work around the middle of the last century. It was called Cosmology of the Spirit and was perceived by the author as a creative experiment. In his work, the scientist tried to determine the meaning of the presence and existence of reason in the universe. He talked about such concepts as “thinking spirit”, “the birth of new worlds” and “the rebirth of the Universe”. According to Evald Vasilyevich, only a thinking and rational creature is capable of sacrificing itself so that a new one appears on the ashes of the old world. Moreover, the same thinking spirit will remain its part and the most important component.
In the future, he will again turn to this topic, but take the teachings of Spinoza as a basis. In it, thought processes are considered as one of the properties of nature. Moreover, it is an indispensable part of it.
Dialectical logic in the works of the philosopher
The entire biography and books of Evald Ilyenkov in one way or another address the theme of dialectical logic. It seemed to the scientist as a peculiar key to understanding the essence of scientific knowledge. This topic worried many philosophers, but none of them managed to create a theory and prove its viability. The only one who used a similar methodology was Karl Marx. In the process of writing his main work - “Capital” - he works on the transition from the abstract to the concrete. However, Marx gives some generalized concepts, in his book the theory is not brought to perfection. It is just one of the methods for cognition. However, Ilyenkov brought it almost to the ideal, thereby reversing all the traditional ideas on this issue.
In his work, the Soviet philosopher used not only the theories of Karl Marx, but also some ideas of Hegel so respected by him. As a result, he was able to generalize and systematize them, which made it possible to form a completely new and previously not used method of cognition. And the very attitude to thinking as a whole in it seemed almost a leading activity.
The theory of the dialectic of the abstract to the concrete turned out to be revolutionary for the minds of Soviet scientists. Before Ilyenkov, no one dealt with this problem. Even the Western scientific world considered it so new that only after several decades, leading foreign scientists began to deal with it.
It was the philosopher’s work on dialectics that deprived him of his work at Moscow State University. Despite the fact that it got into print in an abridged version, this work was not accepted by the scientific Soviet community. However, in the seventies of the last century, it was translated into several languages of the world and reprinted.
The problem of the ideal through the eyes of a scientist
At all times, philosophy has addressed this topic. Moreover, many considered it even a key problem of science. The philosopher outlined his thoughts on this subject in several works:
- "The problem of the ideal in philosophy."
- "The problem of the ideal."
- "The dialectic of the ideal."
The last book of Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov never saw the light during the life of the author. Some time before the scientist's suicide, his final work on the ideal was translated into English. At the same time, the text was significantly reduced and only in this form was published.
Work on this issue greatly fascinated Ilyenkov. He led it for many years, each time more and more delving into the concepts of the ideal. He managed to prove that Hegel and Plato, who attached great importance to idealism, were not mistaken in their theories.
Pedagogical ideas
In his pedagogical theories, the author turned primarily to the individual. The philosopher believed that the school should take care of the comprehensive development of the individual. However, he supports the idea of a certain universality of the educational process. According to the works of Ilyenkov, a person proves himself to be one hundred percent only in those situations when it is placed in the conditions for making decisions in a team. On the one hand, a person can even express thoughts and ideas that are different from most. At the same time, a new path opens up for the collective, sweeping out already obsolete dogmas. All this can be achieved only with harmonious education. Moreover, the philosopher could not imagine a person without such concepts as “freedom”, “creativity” and “talent”.
A talented scientist believed that with different initial components, with proper upbringing and mental development, individuals can achieve the same level of development. Ilyenkov worked with blind and deaf children for many years. Moreover, his wards showed very high results, and one of them even graduated from the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University.
M. Lifshits, “Dialogue with Ewald Ilyenkov”
This book stands apart, as it was written by an associate and friend Mikhail Lifshits. Unfortunately, he did not manage to finish his work to death and he went to press in an unfinished version. However, in this form, the book made a splash in certain circles.
Experts attribute this to topical issues and the unusual presentation of their ideas. Lifshits, like Ilyenkov, paid much attention to the ideal and had a lot of groundwork on this issue. Therefore, in his book, he considered the reality of the ideal. For a complete study of the issue, he resorted to the theory of identities and other techniques.
In order for the material to be presented freshly and interestingly, Livshits built it in the form of a dialogue. In the book he enters into conversation with Ilyenkov and many other representatives of modern philosophical thought.
The main idea in this work is a return to rethinking the traditional foundations of philosophy. Processing them on a new level, but not rejecting, but incorporating them into modern reality, is what, according to Livshits, is available to a free person. Only she can ascend to a new stage of development thanks to her mental abilities.
