Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 20

Studies in East European Thought (2005) 57:319338  Springer 2005

DOI 10.1007/s11212-005-1408-0

VESA OITTINEN

EVALD ILENKOV AS AN INTERPRETER OF SPINOZA

ABSTRACT. E.V. Ilenkov is regarded as perhaps the most Spinozist of


Soviet philosophers. He used Spinozas ideas extensively, especially in
developing his concept of the ideal and in his attempts to give a more precise
philosophical formulation to the activity approach of the cultural-
historical school of Soviet psychology. A more detailed analysis reveals,
however, that Ilenkovs reception of Spinoza was highly selective, and that
there are substantial dierences between them.

KEY WORDS: activity theory, construction in geometry, Ilenkov


Spinoza, the ideal

The tricentenary of Spinozas birth in 1977 was barely noticed in


the Soviet Union,1 save with one remarkable exception: in the
Spring that year there appeared in Kommunist, the theoretical
and political journal of the Central Committee of the CPSU, an
article on Spinoza with the ambitious title Three Centuries of
Immortality.2 Two writers, I. Vasilev and L. Naumenko were
announced as its authors. Lev Naumenko belonged to the edi-
torial board of Kommunist and was known as a philosopher who
had written an original work on dialectical logic,3 while Vasilev
was entirely unknown. Only later was it revealed that the latter
name was but a pseudonym of Evald Vasilevich Ilenkov.4
At least to those readers of Kommunist who were better
versed in philosophy, the identication of the man behind the
pseudonym surely wasnt dicult, as the tricentennial article
did not contain anything new, only repeating views which
Ilenkov had put forth earlier elsewhere in part in his Dia-
lectical Logic of 1974, and in part already in his works of the
50s and 60s. The main reason to write on Spinoza in Kom-
munist, an inuential journal with many copies in circulation,
seems to have been pedagogical.
320 VESA OITTINEN

In every case, Spinoza was an important philosopher for


Ilenkov. Indeed, it seems that the role of Spinoza in his at-
tempts to develop a humanist, that is, an anti-positivistic and
anti-scientistic form of dialectics, was greater than hitherto has
been assumed. According to A. G. Novokhatko, Ilenkov had
been strongly inuenced by Spinoza and Fichte early in his
career as a philosopher.5
Especially interesting is the early work Kosmologija dukha,
written in the 50s, though published only in 1991, with a telling
sub-title A Philosophico-Poetical Phantasmagory Based on
the Principles of Dialectical Materialism. Here Ilenkov
stressed how Diamat of course, he did not mean the then
really existing Diamat, but rather the one he intended to de-
velop revives in a rational form the simple and profound
assertion of Bruno and Spinoza, that in matter, taken as a
totality, development is at every nite moment of time actually
consummated, in it all the stages and forms of its necessary
development are simultaneously actually realized.6 That is,
taken as a totality, matter does not develop. It cannot even for
a moment lose any one of its attributes, nor obtain any new
attributes.7 And because thinking is one of the attributes of
matter, it follows that thinking is as eternal as matter itself; it is
one of the stages in the circulation of cosmic matter.8
This is a Spinozistic theme, with intimations of Spinozas
doctrine of attributes and the concept of facies totius universi
(the famous picture of the Universe as a homeostasis, which as
a totality remains unchanged although all its constituent parts
incessantly move like pieces in a kaleidsocope).9 But there is a
pessimistic note, too: all thinking must sooner or later perish in
the great cosmic cycle, which goes through stages of caloric
death and rebirth. In a manner which is more like science-
ction than philosophy proper, Ilenkov imagines how
humanity, by sacricing itself at the peak moment of its
development, assists world matter to regain its vigorous youth
so that the cosmic circulation can begin anew.10
According to his biographer Novokhatko,

Thanks to his study of Spinozas philosophy Ilenkov proceeds to an area


of philosophical investigations which has been poorly researched in the
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 321

dialectical-materialistic tradition, an area which he characterizes in con-


densed form as the Problem of the Ideal. In 1962, he published an article of
fundamental importance, The Ideal [Idealnoe], in the second volume of the
Filosofskaja Enciklopedija without doubt, one of the most brilliant and
original works in the history of Soviet philosophy in general.11

Somewhat later, in 1965, Ilenkov held a series on lectures on


Spinoza. In the last, fth volume of the Filosofskaja enci-
klopedija from 1970 he published his article Substance, which
challenges in latent manner the concept of matter of established
diamat, despite the fact that Ilenkov always presented himself
as a protagonist of true Leninist dialectics. These ideas
concerning the importance of Spinozas heritage for Marxist
philosophy, developed in their mature form in the 1960s, were
then put forward once more in systematic form in 1974 in
Dialekticheskaja logika, the last work of Ilenkov to appear in
the philosophers lifetime.

SPINOZA AS THE REFEREE OF THE CONCEPT OF THE IDEAL

Undoubtedly, the importance of Spinoza for a Marxist dia-


lectics lies in the concept of the ideal, the kernel of Ilenkovs
own philosophical commitment. At the same time, however, it
becomes soon clear for those who take a closer look at Ilenkov,
that he is interpreting the Amsterdam philosopher in an origi-
nal manner.
In the Enciklopedija article of 1962, the ideal is rst dened
in terms of Marxist philosophy as neither an individual psy-
chological nor physiological fact, but as a social-historical
fact, which exists only as a form (manner, shape) of activity
of social man.12 Then Ilenkov shifts to Spinoza who,
according to him, dened thinking as an activity of the
thinking body, a body in contact with other real bodies in real
space.13 Spinoza, writes Ilenkov,

connected adequate ideas, which are expressed by the words of language,


with the ability, the capacity to reproduce in real space the form the
geometrical contours of the object of this idea, given with these words.
322 VESA OITTINEN

Starting explicitly with this standpoint, he stated his reasons for the dier-
entiation between the denition, which expresses the essence of the thing,
that is, the ideal shape [obraz] of the object, and the nominal-formal de-
nition, which expresses the more or less contingently grasped property of
this object, its external characteristic. He explained the dierence using the
example of a circle. The circle can be dened as a gure, where all the lines
drawn from the center to the circumference are equal. [] However, such a
denition does not at all dene the essence of the circle, but only some
of its properties(ibid.), and, moreover, a secondary, derived property.
Matters are dierent when the denition contains in itself the proximate
cause of the thing. In that case, the circle should be dened in the following
manner: a gure, produced by a line, one end of which is xed and the
other end moves (ibid.). This latter denition gives the manner in which the
thing is constructed in real space. There the nominal denition is brought
forth together with the real activity of the thinking body in accordance with
the real spatial contours of the object of the idea. In this case man has the
adequate idea, that is, the ideal shape [obraz] of the thing, and not only
signs, characteristics which are expressed in words 14

I have cited the passage in extenso, because it contains the core


of the Ilenkovian interpretation of Spinoza, which is original
indeed; I do not know any other interpretations like it in the
vast Spinoza literature.

In Ilenkovs late work, Dialectical Logic of 1974, one


chapter (Ocherk 2) is dedicated to Spinoza. The treatment of
Spinozas concept of the idea remains almost completely
unaltered in fact Ilenkov cites the same passages from
Spinoza but now he adds some important new elements to
his interpretation. He stresses the signicance of Spinozas
legacy for dialectical thought: Like Leibniz, Spinoza rose
high above the mechanistic limitations of the natural science
of his time. Any tendency directly to universalize partial forms
and methods of thinking useful only within the bounds of
mechanistic, mathematical natural science was also foreign to
him.15 True, Spinozas main work, the Ethics, is decked out
in the solid armour of the constructions of formal logic and
deductive mathematics that constitute the shell of Spinozas
system, its (so to say) defensive coat of mail. In other words,
the real logic of Spinozas thinking by no means coincides
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 323

with the formal logic of the movement of his axioms, the-


orems, scholia, and their proofs.16
On the one hand, Ilenkov stresses the methodological value
of Spinozas monism, which means a change for the better
compared with the dualism of two substances in Descartes:

There are not two dierent and originally contrary objects of investigation,
body and thought, but only one single object, which is the thinking body of
living, real man (or other analogous being, if such exists anywhere in the
Universe), only considered from two dierent and even opposing aspects or
points of view [] It is not a special soul, installed by God in the human
body as in a temporary residence, that thinks, but the body of man itself.
Thought is a property, a mode of existence, of the body.17

The Cartesians had posed the whole question of the psycho-


physical problem in a wrong way: they desperately sought to
establish some kind of a causal relation between thought and
extension, although such a relation simply doesnt exist.
Thought and extension are simply the two sides of the one and
same matter. So Spinoza cut the Gordian knot of the psy-
chophysical problem, the mystic insolubility of which still
torments the mass of theoreticians, by a simple turn of
thought.18

SPINOZA AND THE CULTURAL-HISTORICAL SCHOOL


OF SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY

On the other hand, Spinoza becomes, thanks to his monistic


approach, an important forerunner of the Leontev school of
Soviet psychology, the so-called cultural-historical school. In
the 70s, Ilenkov tried to establish himself as the court phi-
losopher of Soviet psychologists. He followed with keen
interest the experiments with deaf-mute children carried out by
the psychologist A. S. Meshcherjakov, interpreting the often
spectacular results of the therapy as a conrmation of his own
theory of the ideal as a form of human activity. In fact, Ilen-
kovs inuence on the methodological discourses of Soviet
psychology remains an unexplored question, although it may
324 VESA OITTINEN

have been quite pronounced; for instance, it is known that the


educational psychologist Vasilij Davydov explicitly relied on
Ilenkov.19 However, the so-called activity approach
(dejatelnostnyj podkhod), which stresses the role of activity in
the development of the psyche and is the hallmark of the cul-
tural-historical school, was sketched by A. N. Leontev already
in the 1930s and 1940s, such that the priority for the idea seems
thus to belong to him, not to Ilenkov although Ilenkov lifted
the activity paradigm from the specic context of methodology
of psychology and developed it into a general philosophical
doctrine.20
The main idea behind Leontevs activity theory was that
the psychic [] is seen as the result of the process of
assimilating social-historical production []. This process
consists of an activity focusing on the products to be assim-
ilated, an activity which responds adequately to the activity
with whom those objects were produced and which is
embodied in them, and in which the human psyche has be-
come objectivated.21 In sum, Leontevs activity approach
is an application of the Marxist concept of practice to the eld
of psychology.
Here Spinoza steps in again. The (allegedly) Spinozistic
idea of the real denition of the circle involving constructive
activity in geometric space, which Ilenkov had already pre-
sented in his 1962 article to the Filosofskaja enciklopedija, is
now put forth as foreshadowing the fundamental idea of the
theory of cognition behind the dejatelnostnyj podkhod. In the
Dialectical Logic of 1974, Ilenkov expands the geometrical
example found in Spinoza to embrace all elds of human
activity. For Spinoza, argued Ilenkov, [t]hinking is not the
product of an action, but the action itself [] just as walking,
for example, is the mode of the action of the legs.22
However, a general appeal to action does not yet suce,
because all bodies must, according to Spinoza, be active at least
in some degree, because total inactivity (that is, passio) is
equivalent to the destruction of the body. Thus, Ilenkov has to
show in what exactly the specic traits of human activity con-
sist. He formulates his Spinozistic discovery as follows:
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 325

Man, however, the thinking body, builds his movement on the shape of any
other body. He does not wait until the insurmountable resistance of other
bodies forces him to turn o from his path; the thinking body goes freely
round any obstacle of the most complicated form. The capacity of a thinking
body to mould its own action actively to the shape of any other body []
Spinoza considered to be its distinguishing sign and the specic feature of
that activity that we call thinking or reason.23
In a like manner, Ilenkov interprets Spinozas theory of truth
as a version of the activity theory. Activity forms the basis of
the process of cognition, just as in Leontevs psychology. Even
when man errs, he is active in a way, which corresponds strictly
to the form of the external thing. But in that case the question is

what the thing was . If it were trivial, imperfect in itself, i.e. fortuitous,
the mode of action adapted to it would also be imperfect. And if a person
transferred this mode of action to another thing, he would slip up. Error,
consequently, only began when a mode of action that was limitedly true was
given universal signicance, when the relative was taken for absolute.24

The Spinozistic concept of the idea adaequata is to be inter-


preted precisely from this point of view proper to the activity
approach:

[T]he activity of the thinking body was in direct proportion to the


adequatedness of its ideas. The more passive the person, the greater was the
power of the nearest, purely external circumstances over him, and the more
his mode of action was determined by the chance form of things25

Consequently, Ilenkov denes the adequate idea as only the


conscious state [osoznannoe sostojanie] of our body identical in
form with the thing outside the body.26 If man could conform
his actions with the innite aggregate of things in interaction
and all their combinations, so would his thinking achieve the
maximum of perfection, i.e. it would be identical with thought
as the attribute of substance.27
In the subsequent chapters of the Dialectical Logic Ilenkov
reviews Marxs analyses of human labour activity in production
process. Marxism adds to the activity paradigma an important
dimension, namely the social character of human life, and thus
even ideality must be seen in this light. To the concept of the
ideal as a form of things, but existing outside things28 must
326 VESA OITTINEN

be added the social dimension, which is not yet clearly present


in Spinoza. Thus, the ideal is [i]n itself [] the socially
determined form of mans life activity corresponding to the
form of its object and product, and to try to explain the ideal
from the physiological properties of the brain is as unfruitful as
to try to explain the money form of the product of labour from
the physico-chemical features of gold.29
But although Spinoza lacked the social dimension available
in Marxism, he was, however, a materialist who understood
[] beautifully30 the character of the ideal and how the ideal is
created by human activity:

With good reason he linked adequate ideas, expressed in the words of a


language, precisely with the ability to reproduce given verbal forms in real
space. It was just there that he drew the distinction between a determination
expressing the essence of the matter, i.e. the ideal image of the object, and
nominal, formal denitions that xed a more or less accidentally chosen
property of the object 31

We have come back to the geometrical example of the 1962


Enciklopedija essay. In fact, in the subsequent pages of his
Dialectical Logic of 1974, Ilenkov reproduces almost without
emendations the text of his earlier essay.

Although Ilenkov stresses how Spinoza had played [a]n


immense role in the development of logic [], a role far from
fully appreciated,32 he has, actually, little more to say about
the dialectics of Spinoza in addition to the remarks covered
above. It can be said that Ilenkovs reception of Spinoza is
highly selective. As a matter of fact, he takes from the Dutch
philosopher only two moments: the idea of monism and the
concept of activity (the concept of an active body).
Ilenkovs interpretation of Spinoza is most original here, in
his attempt to present Spinoza as a precursor of the ideas of
the cultural-historical school of psychology, and through it, of
the Marxist concept of practice in general. True, this
Spinozistic link had already been tried in the formative
phase of Soviet psychology. In the early 1930s Lev Vygotskij
wrote an extensive study on the methodological problems of
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 327

psychology, which, however, remained unnished and was not


published until 1984, when a six-volume edition of his
collected works appeared. The manuscript was known among
his disciples as the Spinoza book,33 and because copies
circulated we can be rather sure that Ilenkov knew the study
or at least knew of its existence. But Vygotskijs main concern
there was the methodological problem of body-mind-dualism,
which according to him was of Cartesian provenance and had
to be overcome. Thus Spinozas monism proved helpful in
working out a new kind of psychological science in the USSR,
whether or not it should be Marxian. This concern for a
monistic viewpoint is shared by both Vygotskij and Ilenkov.
However, in his manuscript Vygotskij did not stress Spinozas
ideas with regard to the activity of the subject in the same
manner as Ilenkov. This should not be surprising as we now
know that Vygotskij can be counted among the founding
fathers of the cultural-historical school only with reserva-
tions,34 his attitude to the concept of human activity being
one of the watersheds separating him from the Leontevians,
amongst whom Ilenkov places himself.

SPINOZISTIC MARXISM OR PHILOSOPHY OF IDENTITY?

At rst sight, Ilenkovs Spinoza interpretation seems rather


convincing. In fact, is it not very much to the point to link the
Marxist concept of practice (on which the activity theory relies)
with the old tradition of actio and passio with its Aristotelian
roots? This is the tradition that was revived in the 17th century
by Descartes and Spinoza. At the beginning of the third part of
the Ethics Spinoza writes:

I say that we are acting (Nos tum agere dico), when anything takes place,
either within us or externally to us, whereof we are the adequate cause; that
is [] when through our nature something takes place within us or exter-
nally to us, which can through our nature alone be clearly and distinctly
understood. On the other hand, I say that we are passive (pati) as regards
something when that something takes place within us [], we being only the
partial cause (Eth. III. def. 2).
328 VESA OITTINEN

When Spinoza then goes on to develop his doctrine of human


activity, he indeed is using expressions which seem to come very
near to the activity approach of Leontev and Ilenkov: [I]n
proportion as any given body is more t than others for doing
many actions or receiving more impressions at once (aptius est
ad plura simul agendum, vel patiendum), so also is the mind, of
which it is the object, more t than others for forming many
simultaneous perceptions (Eth. II. prop. 13 schol.); The hu-
man mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things,
and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a
great number of impressions (II.14); [W]e only act, in so far
as we understand (nos eatenus tantummodo agimus, quatenus
intelligimus; IV.24 dem.).
But a more accurate inspection soon reveals the superciality
of these resemblances. The dierences between Ilenkov and
Spinoza can be discerned both with regard to the respective
concepts of ideality as well as in their versions of philosophical
monism.

(a) The Spinozistic vs. the Ilenkovian Concept of the Ideal


Above all, it is futile to try to nd in Spinoza a denition of
thought which would correspond to Ilenkovs, namely as the
ability of the body to move according to the form of another
body.35 In fact, such a denition would have contradicted the
whole spirit of Spinozas philosophy, which emphasizes the
strict parallelism as well as the radical dierence of the attri-
butes of Thought and Extension (cf. Eth. II.7 et seqq.). There
cannot be any correspondence between ideas as forms of
thought and the external forms of things, and Spinoza says this
so clearly and expressly that there is no room for any misin-
terpretations: Body cannot determine mind to think, neither
can mind determine body to motion or rest or any state dif-
ferent from these (III. 2). This is not possible for the simple
reason that the modes of thought have God as their cause
insofar as he is a thinking thing; [t]hat, therefore, which
determines the mind to thought is a mode of thought and not a
mode of extension (III.2 dem.). In other words, ideas in the
human mind are generated, according to Spinoza, by Gods
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 329

attribute of Thought and not by the impressions caused by the


forms of external things.
The point is that, according to Spinoza, ideas as modes of
thought are immaterial, that is, totally non-corporeal,36 and
thus it would be absurd to assert that ideas should in some way
reproduce the corporeal forms of external bodies. Quite on
the contrary: the essence of the idea is that it is a Mentis con-
ceptus, which Spinoza explains as follows:

I [] warn my readers to make an accurate distinction between an idea, or


conception of the mind, and the images of things which we imagine
(Lectoresque moneo, ut accurate distinguant inter ideam, sive Mentis con-
ceptum, & inter imagines rerum, quas imaginamur) [] Those who think that
ideas consist in images which are formed in us by contact with external
bodies [] regard ideas as though they were inanimate pictures on a panel,
and, lled with this misconception, do not see that an idea, inasmuch it is an
idea, involves an armation or negation (Eth. II.49 schol.).

Ideas on the one hand and pictures formed in the imagination,


on the other, are thus entirely dierent which is not under-
stood by those who imaginationem pro intellectu capiunt (Eth. I.,
appendix). The way Spinoza separates ideas from corporeal
imagination closely resembles, in fact, the manner in which
Kant later distinguished the intellectual and sensual abilities of
the mind, even to the extent that he spoke about the two stems
of human knowledge which cannot be reduced to each other.
For Spinoza, too, the imagination is but a kind of phantasia
corporea, that is, it consists of pictures in parte aliqua cerebri
depictae37 and is the sole source of inadequacy of our knowl-
edge.
Thus, when Ilenkov connects ideality with the ability of the
thinking body to reproduce the contours of external things,
he tacitly equates the idea with the products of imagination. In
doing this he clearly sins against one of the cardinal principles
of Spinozas doctrine. Although this puts his alleged Spino-
zism into suspicion, I think, however, that the subrepticious
slip from pure thought to the material pictures of imagination is
explained by Ilenkovs overall tendency to a philosophy of
identity: if Spirit and Matter are to be reconciled in the
330 VESA OITTINEN

Hegelian manner, then the immateriality of the ideal must, of


course, be sublated.

(b) Spinozistic vs. Ilenkovian monism


In a similar way, it can be said that Ilenkovs concept of
monism diers from Spinozas by accentuating the identity of
thought and matter. Spinozas monism was a substance
monism: Thought and Extension are, for him, not two dierent
substances as in Descartes, but only attributes of the one and
same substance. By this move Spinoza could eliminate the real
distinction between thought and extension, which was the
source of annoyance in Cartesianism. But this does not mean
that thought and extension become identical in Spinozas sys-
tem. On the contrary, even the attributes must be conceived
through themselves (Eth. I. prop. 10),38 and although there is a
strict parallelism between them there are no causal relations
between modes of thought and modes of extension. As already
stated, thought cannot determine the body nor vice versa.
Accordingly, the Ilenkovian expression the thinking body
(myshljashchee telo) is not Spinozistic. In fact, it does not occur
at all in Spinoza, although Ilenkovs use of it in connection
with his analysis of Spinozas texts seems to suggest that it does.
For Spinoza, man of course consists of mind and body, and the
mind is idea corporis but the human mind is constituted as a
part of the innite intellect of God (II.11 coroll.), which means
that when man is thinking or having ideas, God himself is
having that thought or idea through the nature of human
mind. In other words, the origin of thinking is not, according
to Spinoza, to be explained by the thinking body of a certain
human individual, but by God, insofar he is a res cogitans.
Ilenkovs theory of the thinking body completely ignores
this parallelism in Spinoza, which stresses the reciprocity of
ordo et connexio idearum and ordo et connexio rerum (II.7).
Instead of a unied thinking body as in Ilenkov, there is in
Spinoza a dualism, or rather a parallelism: on the one hand,
determinatio corporis, on the other, decretum mentis, and they
do not coincide except in the substance which guarantees their
unity (Eth. III.2 schol. ad n.).
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 331

These dierences in Ilenkovs and Spinozas monisms are


important. Actually, Ilenkov reads Spinoza as a philosopher
of identity, as a kind of Schelling before Schelling. His is a
reading in which the dierence between mind and body,
thought and matter tends to disappear. He writes, for example,
that [t]hinking is not the product of action [of the body],
but the action itself,39 which amounts to the claim that the
action of the body is, considered in itself, nothing but thought.
Bodily i.e. spatial movements thus generate thought and
ideas. This reading does not nd support in Spinoza, for whom
the corporis actio and mentis actio were, though parallel, clearly
dierent forms of action without inuence on each other in the
modal world.

ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF GEOMETRICAL FIGURES

The dierences between Ilenkov and Spinoza can be further


elucidated by analyzing Ilenkovs example of geometrical
construction in his 1962 encyclopedia entry that reappears in
the Dialectical Logic. I have already cited the relevant passage.
Ilenkov pointed to the distinction Spinoza drew between the
denition of the essence of a thing, and the nominal-formal
denition only. Ilenkov is here referring to Spinozas early
methodological work Tractatus de intellectus emendatione in
which Spinoza discussed the denitions of a circle. Formally, a
circle can be dened as a gure such that all straight lines
drawn from the centre to the circumference are equal. This is
undoubtely right, but it does not give the essence of the circle,
only one of its properties. The essence of the circle is grasped
only by a genetic denition, which gives the proximate cause
of the deniendum. Such would be the denition of the circle as
the gure described by any line whereof one end is xed and
the other free.40
The latter denition stipulates the mode of construction of
the thing in real space, asserts Ilenkov:

Here the nominal denition arose together with the real action of the thinking
body along the spatial contour of the object of the idea. In that case man also
possessed an adequate idea, i.e. an ideal image, of the thing, and not just
332 VESA OITTINEN

signs expressed in words. That is also a materialist conception of the nature


of the ideal. The ideal exists there where there is a capacity to recreate the
object in space 41
At a rst glance, Ilenkov seems to have found an ingenious
example to illustrate his theory of the ideal. But, as Karl
Schuhmann has shown in an analysis of the Tractatus passage,
there is nothing especially Spinozistic in this example. The
genetic denition of the circle was widespread in Antiquity
already and its locus classicus like that of all genetic and non-
genetic dentions of Euclidean elementary geometry is to be
found in the Denitions of Hero of Alexandria.42
The same denition can be found in the commentary on
Euclid by Proclus, and there is indeed a similarity between
Spinoza and Proclus in that both assert that geometrical gures
are produced in and by the imagination. Spinoza stresses this
very explicitly in another geometrical example in his Tractatus
(which Ilenkov does not cite). Now it is the construction of the
sphere which is under consideration. Having at rst remarked
that the reality (forma) of a true thought must be sought in the
thought itself, Spinoza explains this by investigating a true
idea whose object we know for certain to be dependent on our
power of thinking, and to have nothing corresponding to it in
nature. The geometrical sphere is such an object. So, in order
to form the conception of a sphere, I invent a cause at my
pleasure (ad libitum causam) namely, a semicircle revolving
round its centre and thus producing a sphere. This is indis-
putably a true idea; and, although we know that no sphere in
nature has ever been actually so formed, the perception remains
true.43
Spinoza calls this conception of sphere a vera perceptio,
that is, something like an image. As such the image of a
rotating semicircle is false, but when it is associated with
the concept of a sphere, or of some cause determining such a
motion, that is, with an adequate idea (which is no longer an
image), it becomes true. In other words, Spinoza admits that
the images formed by the senses can assist thought they are,
as he writes elsewhere in the Tractatus, auxilia intellectus. Why
does the intellect need the assistance of imagination in
producing ctitious geometrical gures? The answer is simple:
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 333

The gures are denite and discernible from each other only in
the imagination, because only in imagination is extension given
as nite and divisible [] In pure thought, on the other hand,
the geometrical relations have no parts nor distances.44 Even
Spinoza pointed to this, remarking in the corollarium and
scholium to Eth. II. prop. 8 how the geometrical gures exist
eternally as contained in the innite idea of God, but receive
their concrete geometrical properties only when they come into
the existence and thus pass from eternity to duration.
Thus, the geometrical ideas (which, as ideas, are immaterial
and have no extension) must become objectivated in a medium.
The idea of a circle in the mind has no spatial properties; it
must rst receive a perspicuous expression in an imaginary
space before it is possible to apply it in geometrical operations.
As much was true in Proclus who in his commentary to Euclid
called this indispensable medium the intelligible matter (h^ e
no^et^ e), a matter in which thought construes geometrical
e hyl^
gures by an imaginative movement (fantastik^ esis) of
e kin^
the point. The imaginative construction thus mediates between
thought and matter in a manner recalling Kants later sche-
matism.45

PHILOSOPHY OF GEOMETRY AND THE DEJATELNOSTNYJ


PODKHOD

It is easier now to see where and how the older philosophers of


geometry dier from the dejatelnostnyj podkhod of Ilenkov
and the Leontev school. While Spinoza (and even Proclus)
thought that the idea (in our example, the idea of the circle or
of the sphere) diers to such an extent from material objects
that its application to the latter requires a special mediating
instance, the imagination, Ilenkov recognizes no mediating
factor between thought and matter. As a consequence, the
mediatory role shifts to thought itself. In order to be able to
reproduce the spacial contours of the external objects,
thought itself must have something in common with these ob-
jects. Because thought must do even the job of the imagination,
ideality for Ilenkov cannot be purely immaterial that is, an
334 VESA OITTINEN

Ilenkovian idea is not Spinozas Mentis conceptus, for which


reason it is subject to Spinozas warning to his readers, viz., not
to misconstrue ideas as a kind of picture.
This lack of the mediating factor in Ilenkovs interpretation
of Spinoza becomes especially palpable, when he describes his
view on the adequate idea:

When I describe a circle with my hand on a piece of paper (in real


space), my body, according to Spinoza, comes into a state fully identical
with the form of the circle outside my body, into a state of real action in
the form of a circle. My body (my hand) really describes a circle, and the
awareness of this state [] is also the idea, which is, moreover, ade-
quate.46

This passage seems to describe Spinozas point quite perti-


nently. After all, had not Spinoza himself stressed in a well-
known proposition, in the second part of the Ethics, in which he
establishes the parallelism between modes of thought and
modes of extension, that, according to this principle, a circle
existing in nature, and the idea of an existing circle [] are one
and the same thing (II.7 schol.)? Ilenkov seems to refer just to
this formulation of Spinoza. The misinterpretation, however,
consists in Ilenkovs failure to note that this idea circuli exis-
tentis of which Spinoza speaks here is precisely the idea of one
single circle existing in nature. It is not the idea of the essence of
the circle. The essences of the modes are independent of their
existence (cf. Eth. I.24), and we can thus have an idea of the
circles essence even in case no circles exist in nature. To make
the circle perspicuous we do not need to revert to real circles in
nature, but we can construct it in our imagination ad libitum
causam, as Spinoza stressed in the Tractatus. The adequate idea
of the circle does not arise from the correspondence of my
bodily action with the form of external circle(s) in nature, as
Ilenkov claims, but from the fact that I can freely construct it
in my imagination.
Even here, Spinoza dierentiates strictly between thought
and matter: the geometrical gures constructed in the imagi-
nation are in the last instance but expressions of the non-
spatial products of our minds, that is, of ideas. The intellect
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 335

resorts to the imagination only as a medium in order to de-


scribe something which ultimately is non-material. In Ilen-
kovs conception, this medium drops away and, consequently,
thought must cope immediately with matter and is thus bur-
dened with it.

NOTES
1
The last Soviet Spinoza edition was published in 1957 (B. Spinoza, Iz-
brannye proizvedenija 12). Newer editions are already from the post-Soviet
period (e.g. Sochinenija, 12, St. Peterburg: Nauka 1999). This silence of
late Soviet philosophy regarding Spinoza stands in noteworthy contrast to
the 1920s when Spinoza and Spinozism were important discussion points
amongst Marxists. In fact, one could say that the doctrine of dialectical
materialism was to a large extent forged of the results of this Spinoza dis-
cussion. For details, see George L. Klines Spinoza in Soviet Philosophy,
London: Routledge and Kegan 1952, still an indispensable source on the
subject. Later, V.V. Sokolov seems to have acquired a virtually monopo-
listic position in the eld of Soviet Spinoza studies with his book Filosoja
Spinozy i sovremennost, 1964.
2
I. Vasilev, L. K. Naumenko, Tri veka bessmertija, in: Kommunist 5/
1977, pp. 6373. Ilenkov later published another popular article on Spinoza
(Operedivshij svoe vremja, in: Kurer JuNESKO, June 1977; reprinted in
Ilenkov 1991, p. 102 sqq.)
3
L.K. Naumenko, Monizm kak princip dialekticheskoj logiki, Alma-Ata
1968.
4
The pseudonym was revealed in the bibliography of Ilenkovs works,
which was attached to the posthumous collection of Ilenkovs articles,
Iskusstvo i kommunisticheskij ideal, Moskva: Iskusstvo 1984.
5
A.G. Novokhatko, Fenomen Ilenkova, in E.V. Ilenkov, Filosoja i
kultura, Moskva: Izd. politich. literatury 1991, p. 13.
6
E.V. Ilenkov, Kosmologiia dukha, in: Ilenkov, Filosoja i kultura, p.
415.
7
Ibidem, p. 416.
8
Ibidem, p. 430.
9
Spinoza explained this concept in his letter to G. H. Schuller of 29th of
July, 1675: facies totius Universi, quae quamvis innitis modis variet,
manet tamen semper eadem (B. de Spinoza, Opera, ed. by Carl Gebhardt,
Heidelberg: Carl Winter 1972 ., vol. IV, p. 278; Ep. lxiv).
10
Kosmologija dukha, ibidem, p. 431. Spinoza was, of course, not the sole
source of inspiration for Ilenkovs cosmological speculations; e.g. the
dialectics of Nature by F. Engels should be mentioned in this context as
well, as well as the tradition of the Russian cosmism.
336 VESA OITTINEN

11
Novokhatko ibidem, p. 13.
12
E.V. Ilenkov Idealnoe, in: Filosofskaja enciklopedija, tom 2, Moskva
1962, pp. 219, 220.
13
ibidem, p. 221.
14
ibidem, p. 222.
15
E.V. Ilyenkov, Dialectical Logic, Moscow: Progress Publishers 1977, p.
27; E.V. Ilenkov, Dialekticheskaja logika, Moskva: Politizdat, izd. 2-oe,
1984, p. 26 (hereafter the page numbers of the Russian second edition are
given in brackets).
16
Dialectical Logic, p. 29 [p. 27].
17
Ibid., p. 31 [p. 29].
18
Ibid., p. 33 [p. 30].
19
See Alex Kozulin, Psychology in Utopia, Cambridge/London: MIT Press
1984, p. 146 sqq.
20
On Ilenkov and Leontev as activity theorists cf. Janette Friedrich,
Der Gehalt der Sprachform. Paradigmen von Bachtin bis Vygotskij, Berlin:
Akademie Vlg. 1993, p. 17 sqq. According to Friedrich, Ilenkov explicates
the philosophical background of the psychology of Leontev.
21
J.A. Budilowa, Philosophische Probleme in der sowjetischen Psychologie,
Berlin: Deutscher Vlg. d. Wiss., 1975, p. 225.
22
Dialectical Logic, p. 35 [p. 31].
23
Ibid., p. 47 [3839]. The rst sentence of the citation reads in original:
Chelovek mysljashchee telo stroit svoe dvizhenie po forme ljubogo
drugogo tela.
24
Ibid., p. 58 [pp. 4445].
25
Ibid., p. 58 [p. 45].
26
Ibid., p. 69 [p. 51].
27
Ibid., p. 59 [p. 45].
28
Ibid., p. 260 [the locus does not appear in the second Russian edition]
29
Ibid., p. 261 [p. 170].
30
Ibid., p. 263 [p. 172].
31
Ibid., p. 263 [p. 172].
32
Ibid., p. 27 [p. 26].
33
Actually, its title was Uchenye ob emocijakh; published for the rst time in
L. S. Vygotskij, Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh, vol. 6, Moskva: Peda-
gogika 1984, pp. 91365.
34
It can be disputed, whether the Leontev school should be seen as a
continuation of Vygotskijs ideas. Indeed Vygotskijs last work on the
interconnections of thought and language seems to indicate that he had
begun to search for new path and left the Marxist-inspired activity par-
adigma behind but this question need not concern us here. On Vygotskij
and Leontev, see for example Janette Friedrich, Die Legende einer ein-
heitlichen kulturhistorischen Schule in der sowjetischen Psychologie L.S.
Vygotskij versus A.N. Leontev, in : Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Philosophie
5/1991, pp. 536546.
EVALD ILENKOV AND SPINOZA 337
35
Cf. for example the citation from Ilenkov given in Footnote 23 above!
36
Spinoza uses Descartes concepts of Thought and Extension: they are
reciprocally dened as negations of each other. Thought is non-extensional,
Extension is not Thought.
37
Spinoza in Principia philosophiae Cartesianae, pars I, def. 2.
38
The proposition states: Unumquodque unius substantiae attributum per se
concipi debet. In the scholium Spinoza explains that as the attributes ex-
press the reality or being of the substance and none could be produced by
any other, they must be conceived in the same manner as the substance is
conceived, and each is independent of the others.
39
Dialectical Logic, p. 35 [p. 31].
40
Ex. gr. circulus [] sic esset deniendus: eum esse guram, quae de-
scribitur a linea quacunque, cujus alia extremitas est xa, alia mobilis, quae
denitio clare comprehendit causam proximam; B. de Spinoza, Tractatus de
intellectus emendatione, in: Opera, ed. Carl Gebhardt, Heidelberg: Carl
Winter 1972 ., vol. II, p. 35.
41
Dialectical Logic, p. 264 [p. 172].
42
Karl Schuhmann, Methodenfragen bei Spinoza und Hobbes: Zum
Problem des Einusses, in: Studia Spinozana, vol. 3, 1987, p. 72.
43
B. de Spinoza, Tractatus de intellectus emendatione, in: Opera, vol. II, p.
37.
44
Schuhmann, op. cit., p. 70.
45
The principle of the geometrical imagination in Proclus and Spinoza and
schematism in Kant are the same: where there are two totally dierent
principles, there has to be a mediating instance. Kant expressed the task
thus: Nun ist klar, dass es ein Drittes geben musse, was einerseits mit der
Kategorie, andererseits mit der Erscheinung in Gleichartigkeit stehen muss
und die Anwendung der ersteren auf die letzte moglich macht. Diese ver-
mittelnde Vorstellung muss rein (ohne alles Empirische) und doch einerseits
intellectuell, andererseits sinnlich sein (KrV B 177).
46
Dialectical Logic, p. 69 [p. 51].

REFERENCES

Budilowa. J.A. Philosophische Probleme in der sowjetischen Psychologie,


Deutscher Vlg. d. Wiss, Berlin, 1975 .
Friedrich, Janette. 1991, Die Legende einer einheitlichen kulturhistorischen
Schule in der sowjetischen Psychologie L.S. Vygotskij versus A.N.
Leontev, in Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Philosophie 5, pp. 536546.
Janette. Friedrich. Der Gehalt der Sprachform. Paradigmen von Bachtin bis
Vygotskij, Akademie Vlg, Berlin, 1993.
Ilenkov, E.V.: 1962, Idealnoe, in Filosofskaja enciklopedija, tom 2,
Moskva, sub verbo.
338 VESA OITTINEN

Ilenkov E.V. Iskusstvo i kommunisticheskij ideal, Iskusstvo, Moskva, 1984.


Ilenkov E.V. Dialekticheskaja logika, Politizdat, izd. 2-oe, Moskva, 1984.
Ilenkov E.V. Filosoja i kultura, Izd. politich. Literatury, Moskva, 1991.
Ilyenkov E.V. Dialectical Logic, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977.
Kant I. Werke (Akademie-Ausgabe), De Gruyter, Berlin, 1968.
Alex. Kozulin. Psychology in Utopia, MIT Press, Cambridge/London, 1984.
Naumenko L.K.: 1968, Monizm kak princip dialekticheskoj logiki,
Alma-Ata.
Novokhatko A.G. Fenomen Ilenkova, in: E.V. Ilenkov, Filosoja i kultura,
Izd. politich. literatury, Moskva, 1991.
Schuhmann, Karl: 1987, Methodenfragen bei Spinoza und Hobbes: Zum
Problem des Einusses, in Studia Spinozana, vol. 3.
de Spinoza, B.: 1972 sqq, Opera, ed. by Carl Gebhardt, Heidelberg: Carl
Winter. English translations from Spinoza follow the edition of R.H. M.
Elwes (The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, III, New York: Dover
Publications 1955).
Vasilev, I., L.K. Naumenko: 1977, Tri veka bessmertiia, in Kommunist 5,
pp. 6373.
L.S. Vygotskij. Uchenye ob emocijakh, in L.S.Vygotskij L.S. (ed.)
Sobranie sochinenij v shesti tomakh, vol. 6, Pedagogika, Moskva, 1984.

Aleksanteri Institute
University of Helinski
Toolonkatu 3 A
P.O. Box 42
FIN-00014, Helinski
Finland
E-mail: vesa.oittinen@helsinki.

Вам также может понравиться