Intelligent Materialism: Essays on Hegel and Dialectics

Historical Materialism #181

by Evald Ilyenkov, Evgeni Pavlov (Translation)

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory

268 pages, ebook

Published December 3, 2018

Reviews

[cafe_expresso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book. Took me nearly a year to read it. Was very difficult at times, I could nearly say I've read it twice with the amount of times I had to go back and re-read previous sections. I'm a beginner with Hegel, and have no business reading him myself but wanted to learn how Marx, Engels, and Lenin used his philosophy to develop their versions of dialectics and materialism, or dialectical materialism (or whatever you wanna call it); and then to try and understand that itself more clearly. Ilyenkov trace's those steps from pre-Hegel, to Hegel and his effect, to the criticisms of Hegel, and on to Marx with extreme depth. Ilyenkov's lucid writing was often leading me to ask "WTF is his he on about, where is he going with all this" and at times almost giving up, but only to stick to it and have everything revealed to me with such an effect that I at least thought I understood with clarity. However, with the nature of the book and his writing the confusion wasn't long before returning and the process starting again. But thats the charm it, I always felt I was learning alot and felt my perspective changing as I got through it.

I will say that as I was reading this book I also read Bertell Ollman's book Alienation, which only took me a week or so to get through. For anyone in my same position I'd recommend reading Ollman's book before reading this as he offers a way more direct and clear, although much briefer, explanation of some of the topics of this book, as Ollman explicitly wrote his book (especially the first half) to clear up some easily misunderstood aspects of the "dialectical method of analysis" which I found extremely helpful.

[Jooseppi Räikkönen]

Stuff around p.40 on "deification" slaps.