Despite its advanced age of about 375 years, the mind–body problem is alive and well, in part because it is anchored so well institutionally in schools and in research. This continued presence is astonishing in the light of the fact that the seed for its solution, sown in Spinoza’s Ethics, is almost as old. The solution rests on the position that there is only one substance, which, invisible, manifests itself in two attributes, thought and extension. By thinking with Spinoza, especially (...) by following the ways in which Vygotsky and Marx think with Spinoza, we arrive at an approach suitable for a social psychological theory of learning that does not separate knowing from doing and emoting. A classroom fragment from a 10th-grade physics curriculum is used as the starting point for overcoming the body–mind problem by thinking with Spinoza. (shrink)

This article aims to introduce E.V. Ilyenkov’s ‘Dialectics of the Ideal’, first published in unabridged form in 2009, to an English-speaking readership. It does this in three ways: First, it contextualises his intervention in the history of Soviet and post-Soviet philosophy, offering a window into the subterranean tradition of creative theory that existed on the margins and in opposition to official Diamat. It explains what distinguishes Ilyenkov’s philosophy from the crude materialism of Diamat, and examines his relationship to four central (...) figures from the pre-Diamat period: Deborin, Lukács, Vygotsky, and Lenin. Second, it situates his concept of the ideal in relation to the history of Western philosophy, noting Ilyenkov’s original reading of Marx through both Hegel and Spinoza, his criticism of Western theorists who identify the ideal with language, and his effort to articulate an anti-dualist conception of subjectivity. Third, it examines Ilyenkov’s reception in the West, previous efforts to publish his work in the West, including the so-called ‘Italian Affair’, as well as existing scholarship on Ilyenkov in English. (shrink)

Enactive cognitive science combines questions in epistemology, ontology, and ethics by conceiving of bodies as open-ended and mutually transforming through activity. While enaction is not a theory of ethics, it can contribute to its foundations. We present a schematization of enactive ideas that underlie traditional distinctions between Being, Knowing, and Doing. Ethics in this scheme begins in the relation between knowing and becoming. Critical of dichotomous thinking, we approach the questions of alterity and ethical reality. Alterity is relevant to the (...) enactive approach, but not in the radical sense of transcendental arguments. We propose difference, instead, as a more generative concept. Following Simondon, we see norms and values manifest in webs of past and future acts together with their potentialities for becoming. We propose a transindividual concept of moral attunement that includes ethical know-how and consciousness raising. Through generative difference and attunement to configurations of becoming, enaction underpins an ethics of participation linking virtue ethics and ethics of care. (shrink)

Within the current resurgence of interest in E.V. Ilyenkov, the influence of Engels on Ilyenkov’s work is either overlooked or denied, making Ilyenkov seem closer to Western Marxism than he actually is. In this paper, by considering Engels’s place in his philosophy, I show that Ilyenkov’s approach is fundamentally hostile to many of Western Marxism’s main views. Ilyenkov, like Engels, conceives philosophy as Logic and affirms the ‘alliance’ between philosophy and the natural sciences against speculative metaphysics. In this regard, he (...) develops an original cosmological hypothesis based on Engels’s insights on the hierarchy of matter’s forms of movement and provides a remarkable account of the ideal as an attribute of nature that reproduces its concrete universality through social labour, the active transformation of nature’s phenomena into objects stamped with the seal of our subjectivity. (shrink)

Education for Sustainable Development supports processes of change in complex socio-ecological systems. Where and how this change takes place are important considerations as we seek to enhance our capacity to challenge existing systems and thus produce and reproduce our life activities in more sustainable ways. This paper considers the possibilities for change in a system as deeply embedded in our social and material existence as capitalism. It rejects the notion that there is no alternative and considers the implications of Evald (...) Ilyenkov’s exploration and development of the Dialectic of the Ideal as the basis for change. I reflect on Ilyenkov’s work in relation to a recent national study into the potential for creating a more sustainable banking sector and the associated education and skills development requirements. The individualising response to sustainability challenges is rejected through the opening up of a more nuanced understanding of the role of contradictions evident in the reciprocal movement and mutual transformations between society and the material structures, both natural and built, within which society exists. (shrink)

The theory of knowledge objectification, initially presented and developed by Luis Radford, has gained some traction in the field of mathematics education. As with any developing theory, its presentation contains statements that may contradict its stated intents; and these problems are exacerbated in its uptake into the work of other scholars. The purpose of this study is to articulate a Spinozist-Marxian approach, in which the objectification exists not in things—semiotic means that mediate interactions—but as real relation between people. As a (...) consequence, the concept of mediation is unnecessary and can be abandoned. A concrete classroom example from Radford’s own studies is used to exemplify and develop pertinent issues. In particular, the societal nature of the ideal—a synecdoche of relations between objects that reflect relations between people—should be added and the notion of mediation no longer is required. (shrink)

Purpose. The article aimed at comprehending the phenomenon of education in its anthropological content, by comparing two versions for the analytics of the crisis state in education, given by Hannah Arendt and Evald Ilyenkov. Theoretical basis. For implementing this task, the method of in-depth reflexive reading of texts is used, when traditional academic concepts are considered in a new context determined by the analytics of real social problems. In this case, we are talking about the development of thinking not only (...) as a cognitive ability but as an ethical and ontological feature of a human being. In that event, thinking arises through its invisible belonging of one person to many others that both Arendt and Ilyenkov ascertain. Originality. Originality of the article is to identify the anthropological dimension of education and to establish the negative influence of such ways in organizing the educational process while it is under the dictation of current circumstances. The justification for this thesis is presented by identifying the consonance of the educational concepts from Hannah Arendt and Evald Ilyenkov. Conclusions. The opposition between action and thinking, revealed by Hannah Arendt, cannot be understood as a divorcement of thinking from reality, since another man appears to be the original reality for a person, namely, in thinking a person enters the space of a meeting with another man, put himself into another person’s mind and with this firstly attains his place in the world, becoming himself, acquiring the image of a man. So perceived education does not become manipulative training, but it is a real birth of a subject as creating himself. Undermining of the authority in the modern world is accompanied by the searching new forms in structuring the common space of human endeavor, which is possible when the educational status is determined by its attitude to the world rather than by the social environment. The authority of a teacher is effective when he relies on his responsibility for the world into which he introduces the child and which opens to him. Responsibility for peace and the resulting authority is associated with love for the world. Only with sufficient love for the world, a person is capable of taking responsibility for it. (shrink)

The article examines the system-methodological and conceptual foundations of the psychological activity theory that arose in the Soviet Union under the influence of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. The author demonstrates the process of incorporation of Marxism-Leninism dogmas into the canonical form of the activity theory as a scientific knowledge that does not need any scientific confirmation. The pseudoscientific discourse that arose at the same time served to strengthen the position of the ideologists of the bureaucratic system, who found “objective confirmations” (...) of the truth of Marx’s teachings in the data of psychological science. The scientific community, subjected to ideological transformation, tried to defend itself from the destructive influence of ideology, giving rise to special forms of relations in the scientific and psychological environment, which led to the struggle and confrontation of scientific schools and groups. As a result of ideological expansion, psychological knowledge has become to some extent a tool for the bureaucratic system to overpower scientific dissent. That was clearly manifested in the discussion on the results of the Zagorsk experiment, in which an incorrect, partially falsified, attempt was made to prove the development of the human psyche of children born deaf and blind. The influence of ideology can also be traced in the confrontation of scientific schools in physics, genetics, biology and physiology. The article discusses prospects and new trends in the development of the activity theory after exclusion of the ideological concepts of Soviet socialism from its systemconceptual foundations. We observe the formation of new psychological concepts that reflect non-classical and post-non-classical forms of scientific rationality. Attempts are made to create and study the models of the psyche developed within the framework of the theory of organized complexity and the concepts of autopoietic self-organization and evolution. (shrink)

The problem of ‘applicability’ of mathematics to modern physical sciences has been labeled as an ‘unreasonably effective’ and unexplainable ‘miracle’ by prominent physicists such as Eugene Wigner a...