Re: (OPE-L) Evald Ilyenkov

From: Andrew Brown (Andrew@LUBS.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Tue Mar 23 2004 - 11:14:09 EST


Hi Jerry,

> In any event, why are you surprised that a Soviet philosopher
> from the 1970's isn't generally taken seriously?

Not 'generally', but 'generally in Western academia'. He is revered
in Russia, as far as I know. Not 'surprised' but 'disappointed'. It is a
bit of a pain to find oneself stuck trying to develop a theory which is
relatively obscure! It took me a while to work out that this was
perhaps the main problem with my paper which we were originally
discussing

>
> Wasn't Ilyenkov an advocate of dialectical materialism (sometimes
> called 'diamat')?  If so, why then do you invert the expression by
> saying "materialist dialectics"?
>

He directly opposed 'DIAMAT' as in orthodox Marxism-Leinism.
This maybe why he referred to 'materialist dialectics' rather than
'dialectical materialism'.  I don't really care what name is used as
long as there is no conflation with Stalin's work and the like.

Many thanks,

Andy


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