Intelligent Materialism. Essays on Hegel and Dialectics

Evald Ilyenkov

Editor / Translator: Evgeni Pavlov
Evald Ilyenkov is a unique figure among the many interesting (and many dull) Soviet thinkers that have recently been introduced to English-speaking readers. Although a thoroughly academic philosopher (both in the choice of his subject matter and in his institutional locations), Ilyenkov’s ideas are presented in a manner that one does not often find among academics. Texts selected for this collection are not the only texts dedicated to Hegel and dialectics but they are representative of Ilyenkov’s main themes and interests. It is hoped that this collection will continue to draw interest to the Soviet engagement with Hegel and dialectics.

Biographical Note

Evald Ilyenkov (1924–1979) was an important Soviet Marxist thinker who worked on a number of topics related to materialist dialectics and philosophy as a science of laws and categories of thinking. In 1953 Ilyenkov defended his dissertation on the issues of materialist dialectics in Marx’s Grundrisse where he investigated matters that gave rise to a new direction in Marxist philosophy – dialectical logic. In the 1960s Ilyenkov published several original studies dedicated to the categories of ‘the abstract and the concrete’ in Marx’s Capital as well as works related to dialectics, nature of thinking, art and communist ideal.
Evgeni V. Pavlov, Ph.D. (2009), University of Denver, teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Readership

All interested in the perception of Hegel in the Soviet Union and in the overall Soviet Marxist interpretation of dialectics.

Table of Contents

Editor’s Note  Evgeni V. Pavlov
Hegel Today
Hegel and the Problem of the Subject Matter of Logic
The Peak, the End and the New Life of Dialectics (Hegel and the End of Old Philosophy)
Hegel’s Science of Logic
Hegel and Hermeneutics: the Problem of the Relationship between Language and Thinking in Hegel
The Problem of the Ideal in Philosophy
Understanding of the Abstract and the Concrete in Dialectics and Formal Logic
The Logical and the Historical
Lenin’s Idea of the Coincidence of Logic, Theory of Cognition and Dialectics
10 Materialism Is Militant and Therefore Dialectical
Bibliography Index