Soviet philosopher Ilyenkov Evald Vasilyevich: biography, creativity and interesting facts

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

The development of Soviet philosophical thought followed a rather complicated path. Scientists had to work only on those problems 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 received in the West, were tried by all possible means not to let them out of his native institute. Evald Ilyenkov's books can now be purchased at any real or online store, but at one time the philosopher's works were reluctantly published, and many of them never saw the light of day during the author's lifetime. All this arouses great interest among our contemporaries in the scientist and his scientific ideas. From our article you will learn the biography of Evald Vasilievich Ilyenkov, and we will also briefly describe his main scientifictheory.

Biography: childhood and adolescence

Evald Ilyenkov's biography up to a certain point is quite typical for a Soviet person. The future scientist was born in an intelligent family. His mother was a teacher and his father was a writer. His books even gained recognition in the highest 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, at the age of four, big changes took place in the life of the future scientist - 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 Evald Ilyenkov graduated from school coincided with the beginning of the Patriotic War. 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, just a few months later, all students and teaching staff were evacuated to Ashgabat, and a year later the institute was transferred to Sverdlovsk. With him moved from place to place and young E. V. Ilyenkov.

War years

After reaching the eighteenth birthday, Evald Ilyenkov was drafted into the army. He was sent to study at Sukhoi Log. During the war years, the Odessa Artillery School was based there. Within its walls, the young man spent almost a whole 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 thatIlyenkov went through the whole war to the very end. He fought on the Western Front, then commanded a platoon on the Belorussian Front, in which he reached Berlin. He stayed there for another three and a half months after the end of the war.

However, even after that, Ilyenkov's service in the army did not end. For almost a year, the young man worked in the capital as a literary collaborator. The high command sent him to the editorial office of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. 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 a simple language, which was highly appreciated by specialists from Germany, England, Norway and other countries where they were published.

Studying at university and starting teaching

During the war years, the university where Evald Vasilievich studied became part of Moscow State University. Therefore, after the service, the young man continued his studies already within its walls. During 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 as a special creativity, which should be far from other scientific disciplines. Its main task, according to the scientist, is to study 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 such Sovietscientists such as B. S. Chenyshev, P. V. Kopnin, B. M. Kedrov and A. N. Leontiev. In the middle of the last century, a talented philosopher completed his studies and received a diploma with honors. Based on the results of his thesis, he was recommended for graduate school. His main focus was the history of foreign philosophy.

After three years of postgraduate studies, Ilyenkov defended his dissertation and was hired as a junior researcher. 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 in the years of study, the scientist treated the "Capital" of Karl Marx. He studied this work and put it at the basis of some of the philosophical theories of the scientist. So he began teaching a special seminar at his home school.

Ideas and theories of a scientist in the context of his professional activity

Ewald Ilyenkov did not work long at Moscow State University. A year later, a real scandal erupted within the walls of the university, which led to the dismissal of the scientist. The topic of stumbling was one of his works, written in collaboration with V. I. Korovikov (we have given a photo of this book above). But it was this controversial work that received a response among the Italian communists. It was translated into Italian almost immediately and published in that country a year later.

The sixties of the last century can be called the most productive period inthe life of a philosopher. He actively wrote articles, was a co-author of the "Philosophical Encyclopedia" and published several books. However, most of them have undergone significant revisions. Some works were even reduced during the editing process by almost thirty percent.

By the 1970s, the Soviet philosopher Evald Vasilievich Ilyenkov became widely known to foreign scientists. He took part in congresses and conferences in Prague and Berlin, and even received the State Prize for a series of works on dialectics.

However, despite his fame and popularity abroad, the scientist was often harassed in the Soviet Union. At the same time, his works in various areas were actively used in scientific works. Interestingly, Ilyenkov paid special attention to pedagogy in his work. In a number of his works, this discipline was exhibited in a light far from the usual one. His theories were new and fresh, and therefore they were an excellent alternative to the prevailing ideas about philosophy and pedagogy. Many books by Evald Vasilievich could be used as teaching material in higher educational institutions.

The last years of the scientist's life

Until the end of the seventies, the philosopher worked on the theme of knowledge in art. He was keenly interested in the questions of transforming creative imagination into something tangible. The scientist was interested in the process of transforming the imagination into the final product.

However, the scientific community rejected these ideas, considering them unworthy of the Soviet scientist as a whole. As a result, Ilyenkov was harassed. Hishis 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. It had a protracted character, and he could no longer get out of 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. Strangely enough, few spoke of such an outcome in those years. 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 was ahead of its 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. Hegel, Wagner and Spinoza were his inspirations. Under the influence of the works of these well-known figures, the young scientist at that time developed new theories based on already known dogmas, ideas and quotations. Evald Ilyenkov was especially fascinated by 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 writings.

The philosopher published his first serious work around the middle of the last century. It was called "Cosmology of the Spirit" andthe author was perceived as a creative experiment. In his work, the scientist tried to determine the meaning of the presence and existence of intelligence in the universe. He talked about such concepts as "the thinking spirit", "the birth of new worlds" and "the revival of the Universe." According to Evald Vasilyevich, only a thinking and rational being is able to sacrifice himself in order for a new world to arise on the ashes of the old world. Moreover, the same thinking spirit will remain a part of it and the most important component.

In the future, he will once again turn to this topic, but will take the teachings of Spinoza as a basis. In it, thought processes are considered as one of the properties of nature. At the same time, it is an indispensable part of it.

Dialectical logic in the works of the philosopher

All the biography and books of Evald Ilyenkov in one way or another refer to the topic of dialectical logic. It seemed to the scientist a kind of 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 is working 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 knowing. However, Ilyenkov brought it almost to the ideal, thereby overturning all traditional ideas on this issue.

In his work, the Soviet philosopherused not only the theories of Karl Marx, but also some of the ideas of Hegel, so respected by him. As a result, he managed to generalize and systematize them, which made it possible to form a completely new and previously unused method of cognition. And the very attitude to thinking as a whole seemed to him almost a leading activity.

The theory of the dialectics of the abstract to the concrete turned out to be revolutionary for the minds of Soviet scientists. Before Ilyenkov, no one de alt with this problem. Even the Western scientific world considered it so new that only a few decades later, leading foreign scientists began to study it.

It was the work of the philosopher on the topic of dialectics that deprived him of his job at Moscow State University. Despite the fact that it was published 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 republished.

The problem of the ideal through the eyes of a scientist

At all times, philosophy has addressed this topic. Moreover, many considered it even the key problem of science. The philosopher outlined his thoughts on this topic in several works:

• “The problem of the ideal in philosophy.”
• “The Problem of the Perfect.”
• "Dialectics of the ideal".

The last book by Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov never saw the light of day during the author's lifetime. 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 formreleased to print.

The work on this issue was very fascinated by Ilyenkov. He led it for many years, each time more and more delving into the concept 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 primarily addressed the individual. The philosopher believed that the school should take care of the all-round development of the individual. However, he supports the idea of a certain universality of the educational process. According to the works of Ilyenkov, a personality manifests itself one hundred percent only in situations where it is placed in the conditions of decision-making in a team. On the one hand, a person can even express thoughts and ideas different from the majority. At the same time, a new path opens up for the collective, sweeping aside already outdated 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”.

The talented scientist believed that with different initial components, with proper upbringing and mental development, individuals can reach the same level of development. Ilyenkov worked with blind and deaf children for many years. At the same time, his wards showed very good results, and one of them even graduated from the psychological faculty of Moscow State University.

M. Lifshits, "Dialogue with Evald Ilyenkov"

This book stands apart as it was written by a colleague and friendMikhail Lifshitz. Unfortunately, he did not have time to finish his work before his death, and he went to print in an unfinished version. However, even in this form, the book made a splash in certain circles.

Specialists attribute this to topical issues and an unusual presentation of their ideas. Lifshitz, like Ilyenkov, paid much attention to the ideal and had a lot of developments 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 methods.

In order for the material to be fresh and interesting, Livshits built it in the form of a dialogue. In the book, he enters into a conversation with Ilyenkov and many other representatives of modern philosophical thought.

The main idea in this work is a return to the rethinking of the traditional foundations of philosophy. Processing them on a new level, but not rejecting them, but embedding them into modern reality, this is what, according to Livshits, is available to a free person. Only she can rise to a new level of development thanks to her thinking abilities.

A few words in conclusion

In Soviet times, most of the works of Evald Ilyenkov were inaccessible to the general mass of those interested. Today absolutely anyone can read them. Students of philosophical faculties consider the works of this scientist as simple as possible to understand. Therefore, they comprehend science through his books.

Moreover, many scientists believe that only now society has come to understand the problems that Ilyenkov once raised. Perhaps our contemporarieslook at him a little differently, and he will take his rightful place in the galaxy of talented and recognized scientists of the Soviet period.