Isabel Jacobs: Ilyenkov’s 'On the Dialectic of the Abstract and the Concrete in Scientific Thought'
In my paper, I offer a fresh reading of Ilyenkov’s transitional essay On the Dialectic of the Abstract and the Concrete in Scientific Thought, first published in Voprosy filosofii in 1955. My talk is based on a commentary, co-written with Trevor Wilson, that accompanies a forthcoming English translation of the essay. Ilyenkov’s first major publication, this text served as a stepping board for future work on logic and abstraction in Marxist philosophy, culminating in Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital several years later. I first contextualise the essay in Soviet Marxist scholarship of the 1950s, then give a brief overview on some of its major discourses, such as the dialectic of concreteness, Ilyenkov’s notion of “conscious materialism,” and his analysis of social interconnectivity. Finally, I emphasise that the essay’s radical potential can only be grasped when read in dialogue with four of Ilyenkov’s crucial interlocutors: Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Lukács. A particularly interesting document of Ilyenkov’s intellectual trajectory, the article contains both the essential seeds of his mature philosophy and the fecund ambivalence of an early work.
Isabel Jacobs is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. Her dissertation explores Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève’s aesthetics. Her research interests include Soviet and Russian philosophy, global intellectual history, and cinema. She holds a MA in Russian and East European Literature and Culture from UCL and a BA in Philosophy and Slavic Studies from Heidelberg University. She is an Editor at the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog. Her writings appeared in Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, Calvert Journal, Phenomenological Reviews, Apparatus, and the East European Film Bulletin.