In Zeiten des Anthropozäns ist die Künstlichkeit überall. Ihr Gegenteil, die einstmals als Gegenwelt inszenierte Natürlichkeit, gibt es nicht mehr – weder materiell geschieden als ein menschenfreier Raum, noch ideell als eine Vorstellung frei von kulturellen Voraussetzungen und Sehnsüchten. Die gegenwärtige Anrufung und Beschwörung der Natur ist offenbar nur ein Ausdruck dieses Verlusts. Auch im Anderen der Natur finden wir doch vor allem uns selbst: »Das Draußen ist zu einem einzigen Drinnen geworden.«[1] Wenn unser Drinnen aber universal geworden ist, wir als Menschen in allem stecken, sind mit der Aufhebung der polaren Gegenüberstellung von Kunst und Natur auch diese Pole selbst verschwunden.

Realisiert haben diesen Verlust (von etwas, das vielleicht nie existierte) selbst die professionellen Advokaten und Administratoren der Natur, die Vertreterinnen und Vertreter des ›Naturschutzes‹. Es ist in der Restoration Eco­logy längst gängige Praxis, die Schutzobjekte künstlich zu erzeugen – als ›renaturierte‹ Flüsse, wieder­vernässte Moore oder in Richtung einer poten­ziellen natürlichen Vegetation umgebaute Wälder. Mithilfe der Gentechnologie können Arten vor Krankheitserregern geschützt und so als naturkulturelle Hybri­de vor dem Aussterben bewahrt werden. Zum Schutz des Feuersalamanders wird beispielsweise diskutiert, ihn durch genetische Manipulation vor der Pilzerkrankung zu bewahren, die sein baldiges Aussterben bewirken könnte.

Diese technologischen Verfahren stellen nicht nur eine verbesserte, resistentere Natur her, sie treiben auch einen Keil in den Naturbegriff, weil die bisher miteinander verbundenen Aspekte der Eingriffsfreiheit und Ursprünglichkeit der Natur getrennt werden: In einem quasi vormenschlichen Zustand zu bewahren sind viele Teile der Natur nur, wenn wir sie gezielt verändern.[2] So gelangen wir zu einer neuen Einheit von Mensch und Natur, dem viel gepriesenen »konvivialen Naturschutz«,[3] für den die Natur auch als ein »ungestümer Garten« akzeptabel ist. In ihm kommt es nicht auf ›Natürlichkeit‹ im Sinne der Menschenfreiheit an, sondern auf die mit der Natur verbundenen Werte der Wildheit, Vielfalt und Eigengesetzlichkeit.[4]

II.

Jenseits der Praxis des Naturschutzes hat das 20. Jahrhundert die Künstlichkeit in drei große Wirklichkeitsdomänen hinein­getragen: ›Kunststoff‹, ›künstliches Leben‹, ›künstliche Intelligenz‹. Die Begriffe waren als technologische Verheißungen schon lange bevor die bezeichnete Sache Wirklichkeit wurde, in Gebrauch – mit einer zeit­lichen Kluft, die sich im Falle des »künst­lichen Lebens« über Jahrtausende erstreckt.[5] Es gehört auch zur Geschichte der Künstlichkeit, dass auf anfängliche techno­logische Euphorie regelmäßig eine begriffliche Scham folgte, die das Künstliche lieber versteckt als ausstellt. So nahm Theodor Heuss 1955 angesichts der Nachbarschaft der ›Kunst‹ zum ›Künstlichen‹ im Wort ›Kunststoff‹ ein »pein­liches Aroma« wahr.[6] Seit 1972 werden die Kunststoffe denn auch lieber ›natur­identisch‹ genannt, um sie so besser zu ver­markten.[7] Beim ›künstlichen Leben‹ wird die Künstlichkeit inzwischen verschwiegen; die Protagonisten des Feldes bevorzugen die christliche Rhetorik von Kreation und Genesis.[8]

Am hartnäckigsten hält sich Künstlichkeit bis heute in Bezug auf die Intelligenz. Ein Grund dafür mag sein, dass Intelligenz oder Geist, anders als Stoff und Leben, schon lange im Gegensatz zur Natur gedacht wurde. Weil Ausgrenzung und Abwertung in der Rede von der Künstlichkeit[9] aber auch vor der Intelligenz nicht Halt macht – und die »künstliche Intelligenz« begriffsgeschichtlich tatsächlich schon früh (1830), lange vor dem technologischen Optimismus der Dartmouth Conference (1956), in abwertender Bedeutung, nämlich angesichts der Maschinenwelt der englischen Industriereviere als »traurige« und wüstenhafte Verstellung der »Gegenwart des wirklichen Lebens« auftaucht[10] –, ist davon auszugehen, dass auch die KI begrifflich irgendwann zugunsten einer ›integrierten‹, ›konvivialen‹ oder ›konmentalen Intelligenz‹ verschwinden wird.

Dass diese technologischen Transforma­tionen des natürlich Gegebenen zu weit­reichenden epistemischen Verschiebungen führen werden, wird seit über 30 Jahren umfassend reflektiert. Die neue Welt der gentechnischen Veränderung von Menschen und anderen Lebewesen werde eine neue Einheit der »Biosozialität« produzieren und die Natur-Kultur-Spaltung aufheben, mutmaßte Paul Rabinow 1992.[11] Mit der Natürlichkeit wäre damit auch die Künstlichkeit an ihr Ende gekommen, und wir müssten nur noch anerkennen, dass unsere Verfassung und die der von uns geprägten Welt die »natürliche Künstlichkeit« ist, wie es die philosophische Anthropologie der 1920er Jahre behauptete.[12] Der mit der Rede von der Künstlichkeit transportierte metaphysische Dualismus wäre damit überwunden und wir bedürften des Wortes nicht mehr. Damit wären allerdings noch nicht alle Unterscheidungen aufgehoben: Wie sehr unser Mikroplastik und unsere radioaktiven Isotope in die ent­legensten Weltregionen gelangen und wie sehr wir uns selbst und unsere Mitlebewesen pharmakologisch und genetisch auch präparieren, so sehr bleiben ›wir‹ (einschließlich unserer künstlichen Intelligenz) als Spezies der Überlegensfähigen und Andershandelnkönnenden doch unterschieden von einem Gegenüber, das aufgrund des Mangels an diesen Fähigkeiten Gegenwelt bleibt und unsere Transformationen nur er­tragen kann oder verschwindet – während ›wir‹ diese zu verantworten haben.

III.

Die neue Verschränkung von Natürlichkeit und Künstlichkeit beendet also nicht alle Dua­lismen und vielleicht nicht den entscheidenden, aber doch einen zweihundertjährigen, tief verwurzelten. Dieser konstituierte sich im frühen 19. Jahrhundert sowohl land­schafts­geographisch-real in der Auseinanderentwicklung von urban-industriellen Zentren und ruralen Peripherien als auch sprachlich-begrifflich in der deutlichen ästhetischen Abwertung der ›Künstlichkeit‹ im Kontrast zur aufstrebenden ›Natürlichkeit‹. Die im 21. Jahr­hundert entstehende neue Konzeption einer Natur-Kultur-Einheit muss dahinter zurückgehen und kann an den Sprachgebrauch der Frühen Neuzeit anschließen, in dem die höchste Künstlichkeit (artificialitas) in den Gestaltungen der Natur verortet wurde: Der »künstliche Bau des menschlichen Körpers« (Corporis humani fabricam) übertreffe an »Künstlichkeit« (artificio) bei Weitem alles das, was von menschlicher Kunst (ars) gebaut worden sei, so Spinoza 1677.[13] Und noch Herder konnte ein Jahrhundert später fragen: »Gehet etwas über die Künstlichkeit eines Schneckenhauses?«[14]

Die Künstlichkeit steckte damals aber nicht nur in der Natur. Die Natur war auch umgekehrt überhaupt nur zugänglich über die Künstlichkeit. In der beschreibenden Naturkunde des 18. Jahrhunderts war künstlerische Könnerschaft vonseiten der Wissenschaft vielfältig nachgefragt. Die »Kunst-Regeln« wurden dabei von den Wissenschaftlern vorgegeben: Sie unterrichteten die Künstler genau darin, wie das Natürliche der Formen abzubilden sei, nämlich indem sie das individuell Variable, Zufällige, bloß den Umständen Geschuldete wegzulassen hätten, um die natürlichen Objekte in ihrer wahren Natur zur Darstellung zu bringen.[15] Künstlichkeit wurde hier zu dem Medium, in dem das Natürliche überhaupt erst erkannt, festgehalten und bestimmt werden konnte. Diese Inanspruchnahme des Künstlichen für die Naturerkenntnis galt für die beschreibende Naturgeschichte wie auch für die erklärenden Naturwissenschaften: Als wahr erkannt sei nur das, was zuvor (künstlich) hergestellt worden sei – verum factum –, wie das auf Vico zurückgeführte Diktum lautet. Zudem gilt gerade für die Naturwissenschaften, dass alle ihre zentralen erklärenden Konzepte – von den ausdehnungslosen Masse­punkten über die idealen Gase bis zu den ökologischen Kreisläufen – keine Naturnachbildungen darstellen, sondern Idealisierungen, und sie andere künstlich-fiktionale Elemente enthalten und insofern »lügen«.[16]

Die Opposition von Natürlichkeit und Künstlichkeit machte also lange keinen Sinn und ihre Verschlingung musste nicht behauptet werden. Dies erfolgte erst in dem historischen Moment, in dem das Zerwürfnis nicht mehr zu übersehen war, als die Natur nicht mehr als eine vom Menschlichen und Nichtmenschlichen geteilte, gemeinsame, aus einer Hand geschaffene Welt verstanden wurde, sondern als ›Gegenwelt‹ erschien, als niedrigere oder auch höhere, bessere, vielfältigere und freiere Welt als die Zivilisation – wie bei Rousseau.[17] Die Einheit konnte dann nur noch beschworen und für das eigene Schaffen reklamiert werden, wie von Novalis um 1800, der zum Vorwurf der »Künstlichkeit der Shakespearschen Werke« vollmundig konstatierte, »daß die Kunst zur Natur gehört, und gleichsam die sich selbst beschauende, sich selbst nachahmende, sich selbst bildende Natur ist«.[18] Erst jetzt, nach einem Umweg der zweihundertjährigen Spaltung, sind wir dort wieder angekommen, allerdings wohl unter umgekehrtem Vorzeichen: Nicht die Kunst gehört zur Natur, sondern die Natur zur Kunst. Vorstellungen, Bilder, Sehnsüchte gibt es von der Natur nur in einer jeweiligen Kultur, vermittelt durch deren Künstlichkeit.

Der Philosoph Georg Toepfer leitet am ZfL gemeinsam mit Eva Axer den Programmbereich Lebenswissen. Sein Beitrag erschien erstmals auf dem Faltplakat zum Jahresthema des ZfL 2024/25, »Abschied von der Künstlichkeit«.

[1] Godela Unseld: »Naturliebe – und was sonst noch alles so darunter zum Vorschein kommt«, in: Scheidewege 33 (2003/04), S. 206–224, hier S. 214.

[2] Gregory H. Aplet / David N. Cole (Hg.): Beyond Naturalness. Re­thinking Park and Wilderness Stewardship in an Era of Rapid Change, Washington, D.C. 2010; vgl. auch Georg Toepfer: »Artenschutz durch Gentechnik? Vom Dilemma zur Tragik des Naturschutzes im Anthropozän«, in: Natur und Landschaft 95 (2020), S. 220–225.

[3] Bram Büscher / Robert Fletcher: The Conservation Revolution. Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond the Anthropocene, London 2020.

[4] Vgl. Emma Marris: Rambunctious Garden. Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, London 2011.

[5] Vgl. Georg Toepfer: »Künstliches Leben«, in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Biologie, Bd. 2, Stuttgart 2011, S. 399–408.

[6] Theodor Heuss: [Rede anlässlich des fünfjährigen Bestehens des Fonds der Chemischen Industrie], in: Chemische Industrie 7 (1955), S. 386.

[7] Edy Stucki: »Kreation von Aromen«, in: DRAGOCO-Bericht für Geschmackstoffe verarbeitende Industrien 17 (1972), S. 27–30, hier S. 28.

[8] George M. Church: Regenesis. How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves, New York 2012.

[9] »l’épithète d’artificiel est souvent péjorative«; Étienne Souriau: [Art.] »artificiel«, in: Vocabulaire d’esthétique, Paris 1990, S. 173–175, hier S. 174.

[10] Cüstine: »Ueber die Wirkungen des Maschinenwesens und der Dämpfe in England«, in: Der Aufmerksame 19.111 (1830), S. 3–4, hier S. 3.

[11] Paul Rabinow: »Artificiality and enlightenment. From sociobiology to biosociality« (1992), in: Essays on the Anthropology of Reason, Princeton, NJ 1996, S. 91–111, hier S. 99.

[12] Helmuth Plessner: Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, Berlin 1928, S. 309.

[13] Baruch de Spinoza: Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata, [Amsterdam] 1677, S. 99.

[14] Johann Gottfried Herder: Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Bd. 1, Riga 1784, S. 137.

[15] Vgl. Lorraine Daston: »Epistemic images«, in: Alina Payne (Hg.): Vision and Its Instruments. Art, Science, and Technology in Early Modern Europe, University Park, PA 2015, S. 13–35.

[16] Nancy Cartwright: How the Laws of Physics Lie, Oxford 1983.

[17] Vgl. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Émile ou de l’éducation, Bd. 3, Paris 1762, S. 67.

[18] Novalis: [Fragment], in: Novalis Schriften, hg. von Friedrich Schlegel und Ludwig Tieck, Berlin 1802, S. 373.

VORGESCHLAGENE ZITIERWEISE: Georg Toepfer: Künstlichkeit und Natürlichkeit. Das Ende einer Entzweiung, in: ZfL Blog, 5.5.2025, [https://www.zflprojekte.de/zfl-blog/2025/05/05/georg-toepfer-kuenstlichkeit-und-natuerlichkeit-das-ende-einer-entzweiung/].
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13151/zfl-blog/20250505-01

Der Beitrag Georg Toepfer: KÜNSTLICHKEIT UND NATÜRLICHKEIT. Das Ende einer Entzweiung erschien zuerst auf ZfL BLOG.

February 18th 2024 marked the centenary of the birth of Evald Ilyenkov (1924–1979) – a brilliant and influential Soviet philosopher whose most important early works remained unpublished during his lifetime (fig. 1). Two days before Ilyenkov’s 100th birthday, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was found dead in a Siberian prison colony; that news overshadowed the little attention given to Ilyenkov’s anniversary in Russia. The manner in which Ilyenkov’s centenary and Navalny’s death were treated reflects memory culture in Putin’s Russia, where the legacies of Soviet Marxism are often suppressed by ultra-nationalist propaganda. Abroad, Ilyenkov’s prestige has seen a remarkable rise in recent years, accompanied by translations and new scholarship in, for example, Sweden, Ukraine, Peru, Turkey, Canada and Cuba.

On his 100th birthday, Ilyenkov continues to shape Marxist philosophy, radical pedagogy and psychology around the world. His philosophical interests included political economy, logic, cybernetics, science fiction, epistemology and aesthetics. His radical fusion of Spinoza, Hegel and Marx transformed Soviet intellectual life from the 1950s to the 1970s. Best known for his analysis of Marx’s dialectical method, he reinvented the study of materialist dialectics in the Soviet Union. The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital (1960) made him famous both at home and abroad. Swiftly translated into Italian, Spanish, German and English, his succinct reading of Marx’s Capital significantly influenced Italian and Latin American leftist thought.

Ilyenkov’s philosophy emphasizes the importance of connecting philosophy, pedagogy and psychology to promote the emancipation of the individual. Various notions, among them the idea of tacit knowledge, are very much indebted to him. His warnings against the dangers posed by quantification measures, artificial intelligence and unrestrained capital accumulation amount to a socialist humanism that has great relevance today.

Born in Smolensk, Ilyenkov grew up in Moscow. His mother was the teacher Yelizaveta Ilyinichna (Ilyenkova), his father the novelist Vasily Ilyenkov (1897–1967). The family lived in a commune house, a progressive form of early Soviet housing popular with the intelligentsia. Shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Ilyenkov began studying philosophy at the famous Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature (IFLI). There, his teacher Boris Chernyshev (1896–1944) sparked Ilyenkov’s interest in classical German philosophy. An expert in Greek philosophy, Chernyshev also introduced him to the history and study of dialectics, which he considered essential for forming philosophical arguments.

In Moscow, during the height of Soviet war propaganda against fascism and German culture, Ilyenkov read Hegel and listened to Wagner. In 1942, being drafted into the Red Army, he interrupted his studies. He marched to Berlin as an artillery lieutenant with his camera, and photographs from that time show him posing in uniform. At Dorotheenstadt cemetery, he visited the graves of Hegel and Fichte. Upon his return to the Soviet Union in 1946, he continued his studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Moscow, graduating with honours in 1950.

Communist Cosmology

The late 1950s saw a renaissance of philosophy in the Soviet Union. Previously banned thinkers and ideas briefly gained popularity. Hegel and the Romantics weere now seen as forerunners of Marxism-Leninism. Ilyenkov organized a private reading group in his apartment to discuss Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which had just been published in Russian. Still, despite de-Stalinization, he was unable to publish his first philosophical works. In Notes on Wagner (Zametki o Vagnere), published posthumously, Ilyenkov interprets Wagner as a radical socialist and a Romantic counter-figure to Marx, detecting in his music traces of an anti-capitalist cosmology.^[1]

Ilyenkov’s most important text, Cosmology of the Spirit (Kosmologiia dukha), also remained unpublished during his life. Drawing on Engels’s Dialectics of Nature, Ilyenkov argues that in communism, the act of thinking materially manifests itself as a cosmic event – a crucial stage in the circular evolution of the solar system which, according to the laws of thermodynamics, can only end in thermal death. To defy the law of entropy in the solar system, he suggested that humanity would commit collective suicide, as “a gesture of self-destruction on the part of communist reason.”^[2]

According to Ilyenkov, matter gains consciousness in certain parts of the universe. The “thinking brain appears as one of the necessary links, locking together the universal [vseobshchee] big circle of universal [mirovoi] matter.”^[3] Cosmology of the Spirit draws on scientific theories and innovations, such as thermodynamics, the Soviet space program and the construction of the first nuclear power plant near Moscow in 1954. It is a reflection on technology and materialism and was Ilyenkov’s first attempt to develop a theory that can avoid both crude materialism and idealism.

Philosophy as the Science of Thinking

Ilyenkov’s official career had begun in 1953 when he completed his thesis on Marx’s materialist dialectics. He soon became a popular lecturer in philosophy. After Stalin’s death in 1952, philosophy in the Soviet Union shifted towards scientification, circumvening political or ideological questions. In 1954, Ilyenkov and Valentin Korovikov (1924–2010) were commissioned to write a paper on the status of philosophy. They argued that the categories of logic are the forms in which human practice embodies scientific knowledge, and that their historical development belongs to the domain of philosophy. Philosophy is therefore not a meta-science, but, they claimed, rather the science of thinking, analyzing its general laws and historical development. For Ilyenkov and Korovikov, this renewal of philosophy would need to be accompanied by a transformation of the entire system of science. Each scientific discipline would have to develop its subject matter and methodology without the interference of other scientific disciplines. Philosophy’s task would be to generalize and interpret the results of the natural sciences, devoting itself to each science with its own categories and concepts. Their 15 Theses provoked fierce resistance among the philosophical establishment. After a general meeting at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow’s State University in the spring of 1955, during which Ilyenkov and Korovikov clashed with members of the conservative establishment, a decision was taken to ban both scholars from teaching. While Korovikov left academia and became a successful journalist for Pravda in Africa, Ilyenkov took up a position at the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences. There he was supported by Bonifaty Kedrov (1903–1985), who had been one of the founders and the first editor-in-chief of Voprosy Filosofii [Problems of Philosophy], the leading philosophy journal in the Soviet Union.

The Ideal in Dialectical Materialism

Having posited philosophy as the science of thinking, Ilyenkov sought to further develop Marxist epistemology. Of course, the very notion of thinking poses a challenge for every materialism, including dialectical materialism. It asks whether thought is just a function of the material brain best explained by physiology. Popular theories by the physician and physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) led many philosophers to believe that physiology would provide all the answers. Ilyenkov strongly opposed the view that thinking could be reduced to a measurable product of the brain. Instead, he insisted that only philosophy would be up to the task of understanding what thought and thinking are. He therefore introduced the concept of “the ideal” into Soviet Marxist philosophy, arguing that philosophy should attempt to explain in on a material basis. The ideal is the idea that the foundation of thinking should be sought in the historical development and social practices of humans, rather than in their biological makeup. In 1962, in an important article in the Soviet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ilyenkov explained his position:

“The ideal is not an individual-psychological, even less a physiological fact, but a social-historical fact […] realized in the manifold forms of social consciousness and the will of the human being as a subject of the social production of material and spiritual life.”^[4]

For Ilyenkov, the ideal encompasses feeling, thinking and the psyche, but also culture and theory. According to him, all these phenomena possess a special kind of objectivity, distinct from that of physical-material matter. The ideal, he suggests, exists independently of any particular individual human being. However, it depends on humanity’s material reproduction processes. The ideal is essentially the social interactivity of all people. It assumes form as a relationship between material things, processes and events, whereby an object remains what it is while simultaneously representing another object, just as a coin remains a coin but at the same time functions as a means of payment in society, thus representing a social relationship.

Ilyenkov opposed attempts to limit the ideal to the psyche or to locate it within the brain. He defends this view in the sci-fi parable On Idols and Ideals (1968), an intense critique of cybernetics, automation and artificial intelligence. From the mid-1950s onwards, cybernetics had been discussed in the Soviet Union as a potential break-through in overcoming economic and social stagnation. Ilyenkov was sceptical of such visions of “machine communism” and insisted that human thinking possessed unique strengths.

According to Ilyenkov, a conscious human being is not a thinking machine. He or she is an embodied, social being with different organs of thinking: brain, hands, and eyes. What distinguishes a human being from a machine is its ability to deal with contradictions and to comprehend alterity. Whereas a machine can only process information according to its own logic “through rubber-stamped actions encoded into the hand or mind,”^[5] humans have the ability to interact with many things that are not themselves. To create artificial intelligence, Ilyenkov argues, it is not enough to create a “model brain.” The brain on its own is as incapable of thinking as legs removed from the body are of walking. Organs can only work when connected to what Ilyenkov, with reference to Spinoza, calls a “thinking body.” This body is not necessarily an individual’s body, but rather the totality of social activity.

The Zagorsk Experiment

The idea that the foundation of thinking should be sought in the historical development and social practices of humans, rather than in their biological makeup, is referred to as the “ideal.” The concept of the ideal can be explained with reference to the sensory activity of “thinking bodies” in space and in their interactions with others. This position was not a central belief to Soviet Marxism because it defied experimental verification, but Ilyenkov found like-minded thinkers within cultural-historical psychology, such as Alexander Luria (1902–1977) and Alexei Leontiev (1903–1979), who also wanted to break the dominance of physiology in this matter. His closest ally at the time was the psychologist Alexander Meshcheriakov (1923–1974), temporarily a colleague of Luria, who headed the laboratory for deaf-blind education at the Institute of Defectology in Moscow. Later on, Mescheriakov headed a school for blind and deaf children that was located in Zagorsk (today Sergiyev Posad) in the suburbs of Moscow. Known as the “Zagorsk Experiment,” the innovative education of deaf-blind people under his aegis made history. After Meshcheriakov’s death in 1974, Ilyenkov continued his work until his suicide in 1979 (fig. 2).

While Meshcheriakov primarily tried to clarify what distinguished deaf-blind people from those who can see and hear, Ilyenkov was more interested in exploring where the human mind begins and how it works. With his work, he challenged Western Enlightenment’s idea that the mind forms a self-contained, interior world accessible only through language. Meshcheriakov and Ilyenkov’s work with deaf-blind children suggested that learning to speak through tactile sign language is a social, embodied process that cannot be reduced to an individual’s acquisition of language. The development of the mind begins when a child engages in an elementary activity, such as initiating a coordinated movement in space. If the child is deaf-blind from birth, and if unassisted, they cannot satisfy its need to eat. Through interactions with parents or teacher, a child learns the actions they require to satisfy their basic needs. In the case of learning to use a spoon a child has to adapt their hand movements to the shape of the spoon and learn the necessary physical motions. Initially, they resist this motion because they do not know that a spoon can be used to eat soup. Only with practice is a mark left on the child’s thinking body. Ilyenkov drew a provocative conclusion from his work in Zagorsk. All expressions of the human mind are socially determined:

“The whole of the human mind (all 100 percent of it and not 80 percent or even 99 percent) emerges and develops as a function of the work of the hand in an external space filled with such objects as a spoon, a potty, a towel, a pair of pants, socks, tables and chairs, boots, stairs, windowpanes, and so on. The brain is merely the natural material that turns into an organ of specifically human life activity and the mind only as a result of the actively formative influence of active work by external organs of the body in an external space filled not with natural but with artificially created things.”^[6]

Some of Ilyenkov’s pupils at Zargosk went on to graduate from the Faculty of Psychology at Moscow University, such as Alexander Suvorov, who earned a doctorate in psychology. Could it be said that such success stories proved correct the ideas of Ilyenkov and his colleagues? His critics thought not, and the Zagorsk Experiment was heavily criticized from the start. It was argued that being deaf-blind automatically limits a child’s development. By contrast, Ilyenkov’s inclusive, anti-ableist vision for the human being pointed to what was achievable in a socialist society.

On his 100th anniversary, Ilyenkov may teach us that philosophy, psychology and pedagogy are not three different disciplines but one science dedicated to the same ideal: the development of human personalities, in harmony with their environment and with each other.

Isabel Jacobs is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London, Martin Küpper is a PhD student at Kiel University and doctorand at the project “Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis” at Babeș-Bolyai University. Together with Zaal Andronikashvili and Matthias Schwartz (both ZfL), they organize the International Conference Images of the Ideal. Evald Ilyenkov at 100, taking place at the ZfL from the 15th to the 17th of May 2024.

^[1] Evald Ilyenkov: “Notes on Wagner,” translated by Isabel Jacobs, in: Studies in East European Thought (2024).

^[2] Alexei Penzin: “Contingency and Necessity in Evald Ilyenkov’s Communist Cosmology,” in: e-flux Journal 88 (February 2018).

^[3] Evald Ilyenkov: “Cosmology of the Spirit,” in: Stasis 5.2 (2017), 164–190.

^[4] Evald Ilyenkov: “Ideal’noe” [1962], translated by Isabel Jacobs, in: Kul’turno-istoricheskaia Psikhologia 2 (2006), 18.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] Evald Ilyenkov: “A Contribution to a Conversation About Meshcheriakov” (1975), in: Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 45.4 (2007), 85–94, p. 93.

VORGESCHLAGENE ZITIERWEISE: Isabel Jacobs/Martin Küpper: Philosopher of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov at 100, in: ZfL Blog, 8.5.2024, [https://www.zflprojekte.de/zfl-blog/2024/05/08/isabel-jacobs-martin-kuepper-philosopher-of-the-ideal-evald-ilyenkov-at-100/].
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13151/zfl-blog/20240508-01

Der Beitrag Isabel Jacobs/Martin Küpper: Philosopher of the Ideal: EVALD ILYENKOV AT 100 erschien zuerst auf ZfL BLOG.

As stated in the introduction, the author considers his work to be “an intellectual biography“ that “seeks to identify and explicate the ‘key concepts’ or the ‘fundamental ideas’“ (3) of the philosopher. More precisely, Salmon’s book “aims to set out the intellectual development of Jacques Derrida; to situate it in events both private and public; and to argue for its importance as an event in the history of philosophy and of thought more generally” (4). The book can probably best be understood against the background of a common misrepresentation of deconstruction, especially in the English speaking world: While Derrida is usually depicted as a ‘post-modern’ or ‘post-structuralist’ enfant terrible, aiming at violently destroying the distinction between nature and culture and hence the possibility of political philosophy (or even of the polis itself), Salmon wants to give a more nuanced account of the “event in the history of philosophy” that is associated with both the notion of deconstruction and the name Jacques Derrida. More precisely, he tries to picture the appearance of Derrida not as a mere spectacle or an episode in the history of philosophy but as an “Ereignis” in the philosophical sense of the word, as something that would radically transform and maybe even transcend philosophy itself. For this purpose, he neither attempts to gather new biographical material, nor does he want to give a comprehensive account of Derrida’s personal life. While he devotes lengthy digressing passages to Derrida’s philosophical influences (such as an exhaustive portrait of Edmund Husserl or seven consecutive pages on the life and thought of Emmanuel Levinas), Derrida’s teenage and university years and in fact his entire life up until the event in 1966 (the philosopher’s famous appearance at a conference on structuralism at John Hopkins University in Baltimore that serves as the opening scene of the book) are given surprisingly little attention.

Derrida himself stated that his “intellectual biography” began in 1942, with his traumatic expulsion from school due to the Vichy government’s anti-Semitic measures. “From that point on,” Derrida claims, “it is no longer possible—for me or for anybody else—to distinguish the biographical from the intellectual, the non-intellectual from the intellectual biography.”^[2] And it is precisely the biographical material from the period between 1942 and the aforementioned conference in Baltimore in 1966 that proved to be the most illuminating for the philosophical and political nature of Derrida’s entire project. His Algerian youth with its profound experiences of racism, anti-Semitism and colonialism, his early involvement with existentialist philosophy, his first years in Paris at the preparatory Lycée Louis-le-Grand, his defining years at the École normale supérieure, his opposition to the Algerian War; all these experiences shed a light on his deep roots in the philosophical tradition and on his understanding of the political that would come to shape his writing and thinking.^[3]

Peter Salmon makes little effort to investigate these formative years. He does not so much write the biography of the philosopher, he rather paints a portrait of the event of his philosophy. In this sense, the main title of the book is quite accurate, which is to say that Salmon portrays Derrida’s philosophy as something unexpected, something radically new, a bolt from the blue, an event in the Heideggerian sense. In his effort to do so, Salmon might remind the reader of the main character in Céline Sciamma’s 2019 movie Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Portrait of a Lady on fire). In the film, the young painter Marianne sets out to paint a portrait of Héloïse, a young lady who is to be married to a nobleman from Milan even though they have never met. The portrait is commissioned by Héloïse’s mother to convince the nobleman of the union. Marianne’s mission is a difficult one. She has to travel to a remote island to undertake the work, to a place that seems strangely detached from society and history. But more so, Héloïse resists not only to the idea of becoming married to a stranger, but also to having her portrait painted at all. Her mother has therefore instructed Marianne to paint her in secret. The outcome is an accurate, but conventional portrait.

The same can be said of Salmon’s portrait: with a few firm strokes, he carefully sketches the event that began to unfold in 1966. In eleven chapters and less than 300 pages, he paints an accurate and conventional picture that is dearly needed both within and beyond the realm of academic philosophy.^[4] As opposed to many other commentators, Salmon has taken on the task of working through most of Derrida’s oeuvre. He remains equally distant to Derrida’s overly mimetic disciples and to his often unfair and sometimes embarrassingly ill-informed critics who accuse him of “dangerous relativism” (9). His distant but sympathetic perspective allows for a balanced account of the most complicated and misunderstood subjects, such as Derrida’s relation to women and to feminism (chapter 7), his involvement in the affair following the killing of Hélène Rytmann by her husband Louis Althusser (177–81), or the controversies surrounding Martin Heidegger’s and Paul de Man’s political entanglement (212–22). Unfortunately, Salmon does not dismiss the myth of the ‘ethical turn’ in Derrida. Although he points out that Derrida himself argued that the “new concern with law, and friendship, the gift, and hospitality” which informed his writings from the early 1980s onward “were not in fact new, but grew logically from his earlier thinking,” Salmon holds that “this dimension of his thinking need not have occurred to him” before (222).

Derrida can be portrayed in a different way, perhaps a bit less Olympian, a little rougher and more militant. But Salmon’s entertaining intellectual biography paints a recognizable portrait of the event that connects Derrida to so many crucial moments of the 20^th century, to fundamental philosophical problems, and to countless pressing issues of our time. While the Derrida-scholar will likely stick to Benoît Peeters’ extensive study, Salmon’s elegant and concise style appeals to a much broader audience. Thirty years after the intervention against Derrida’s honorary degree at Cambridge University, this portrait may serve as an introduction for many different readers from various backgrounds, both within and outside of academia. In this sense, Salmon’s accurate portrayal is a valuable achievement. And yet, the reader might feel a bit like Héloïse in Portrait of a Lady on fire when she gets to see Marianne’s first attempt at her portrait. It is conventional, the model is recognizable, and the future husband will be satisfied. It will do the job, but something is missing: the fire.

Oliver Precht is a research associate at the ZfL, currently working on his project “Marx in France. The Self-Determination of French Theory (1945–1995)”.

^[1] Cf. “Circumfession”, transl. Geoffrey Bennington, in: Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1993, pp. 3–315 [French: “Circonfession”, in: Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida, Paris: Seuil 1991, pp. 7–291; German: “Zirkumfession”, in: Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida. Ein Porträt, transl. Stefan Lorenzer, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1994, pp. 11–323]; Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1999 [French: Le Monolinguisme de l’autre. Ou la prothèse d’origine, Paris: Galilée 1996; German: Die Einsprachigkeit des Anderen. Oder die ursprüngliche Prothese, transl. Michael Wetzel, München: Fink 2003], to mention but the two most important texts. 

^[2] Jacques Derrida, “I Have a Taste for the Secret”, in: Jacques Derrida and Maurizio Ferraris, A Taste for the Secret, transl. Giacomo Donis, ed. Giacomo Donis and David Webb, Cambridge: Polity Press 2001, p. 37.

^[3] Aside from a range of interviews in which Derrida speaks extensively on this period of his life, Benoît Peeters’ biography and Edward Baring’s excellent study provide a great amount of valuable material and analysis, cf. Jacques Derrida, “Politics and Friendship: An Interview with Jacques Derrida”, trans. Robert Harvey, in: The Althusserian Legacy, ed. E. Ann Kaplan and Michael Sprinkler, London / New York: Verso 1993, pp. 183–231; Benoît Peeters, Derrida. A biography, transl. Andrew Brown, Cambridge: Polity Press 2013 [French: Politique et amitié. Entretien avec Michael Sprinker autour de Marx et d’Althusser, Paris: Galilée 2011; German: Politik und Freundschaft: Gespräch über Marx und Althusser, transl. Noe Tessmann, Wien: Passagen 2014]; Edward Baring, The Young Derrida and French Philosophy (1945–1968), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011.

^[4] While using a similar format, David Mikics’ “story of Derrida’s skepticism” fails at this task, and his depiction does not bear much resemblance to the actual event, cf. David Mikics, Who was Jacques Derrida? An intellectual Biography, New Haven: Yale University Press 2009, p. xiii.

VORGESCHLAGENE ZITIERWEISE: Oliver Precht: Portrait of a Philosopher (Notes on a New Biography of Jacques Derrida), in: ZfL BLOG, 7.5.2021, [https://www.zflprojekte.de/zfl-blog/2021/05/07/oliver-precht-portrait-of-a-philosopher-notes-on-a-new-biography-of-jacques-derrida/].
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13151/zfl-blog/20210507-01

Der Beitrag Oliver Precht: PORTRAIT OF A PHILOSOPHER (Notes on a New Biography of Jacques Derrida) erschien zuerst auf ZfL BLOG.