Ideal Dialectical, Event and Mind Structure

The Dialectics of the Ideal, Activity, and the Structure of the Mind is a selection that lays bare the core of Illyenkov's Marxist philosophical thought. The texts in the selection form a coherence, revealing the surprising subtlety, rationality, originality, and depth of Illyenkov's thinking. Illyenkov showcases the "formative roots" of the concepts that form the focus of the book, centering on Marx's concept of human activity to demonstrate the concrete reality of conceptual thinking. According to him, "universal" does not imply a common feature among the members of a set or the similarity or identity of assumed singularity, but rather the expression of a common formative root, a unity of different or even contradictory elements. The "ideal" is the actual, object-oriented form of human activity that is in harmony with the form outside the head or the brain. The "concept" is not the mental image of an individual, but a specific, historical mediator of human activity that fills all the presumed gaps between thinking and reality in social nature.

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