Evald Ilyenkov


Evald Vassilievich Ilyenkov was a Marxist author and Soviet philosopher.

Biography

Evald Ilyenkov did original work on the materialist development of Hegel's dialectics, notable for his account of concrete universals. His works include Dialectical Logic, Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism and The Dialectics of the Abstract and Concrete in Marx's Capital. Ilyenkov committed suicide in 1979.
David Bakhurst wrote in his article; "Meaning, Normativity and the Life of Mind":
An abridged version of his article, "Marx and the Western World," was published in English in a book of the same name in 1967, but this work is little known.
On the other hand, Ilyenkov's work deeply influenced the reception of Marx' economic writings from the 1960s onwards, in the Soviet Union and the GDR as well as in the West. His influence can be witnessed in the international research effort concerned with the publication of Marx' economic manuscripts. His influence is also evident in the intense debates on economic reform that was going on in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
Ilyenkov's works have been published in about 20 languages. His Dialectical Logic was published in English by Progress Publishers in Moscow in 1977. A German translation of his Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital, was published by the same publisher in 1979 ; an English translation of the book was published by Progress Publishers in Moscow in 1982. Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism was published by New Park Publications in 1982.