Vesa Oittinen

Mit Spinoza in Frankreich legt der finnische Marxist und Spinozakenner Vesa Oittinen eine fulminant verfasste Kritik an der Spinoza-Rezeption des französischen Poststrukturalismus und Neomarxismus vor. Während Spinoza bei Louis Althusser und seiner Schule herangezogen wird, um Marx als Anti-Dialektiker zu präsentieren, mündet Gilles Deleuzes Spinoza-Lektüre in einen Linksnietzscheanismus, der von Herrschaft und Knechtschaft – und damit auch von Befreiung – nichts mehr wissen will. Spinoza wird so als Anti-Dialektiker fehlinterpretiert. Dagegen wirft Oittinen ein gänzlich neues Licht auf die Philosophie Spinozas: Denn in ihr ist eine andere, nämlich positive Form der Dialektik am Werk, die uns zwingt, das Verhältnis Spinozas zu Hegel und Hegels zu Spinoza grundlegend zu überdenken.

The paper deals with the character of Lenin’s ‘dialectics,’ of which there has, until recently, been many erroneous interpretations. I attempt to show that Lenin’s idea of a dialectical method in most cases boils down to the demand of a “concrete analysis of a concrete situation.” This demand Lenin turned against the un-dialectical and dogmatic interpretations of Marxism of the Second International. Actually, Lenin’s idea of dialectics as, above all, a method of a concrete analysis is not borrowed from Plekhanov or other Marxist theoreticians, but from the Narodnik writer Alexander Herzen. As to the claim that Lenin changed his mind after 1914 when he began to study Hegel’s ‘Logic’, there is no evidence to support the thesis. Lenin did not abandon the positions he had taken earlier, in 1907, in his ‘Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.’ This is obvious from his writings after the October Revolution of 1917; for example, in the notes he criticizes Bukharin’s inability to use dialectics correctly (i.e. to make a concrete analysis).

The article analyzes Lev Vygotsky’s attempts to utilize Spinoza’s philosophical ideas in solving the methodological crisis of psychology in the 1920s and 1930s. Vygotsky had a manuscript, Uchenie ob emocijakh, where he scrutinized the doctrines of the effects on Descartes and Spinoza. Whilst Descartes’ doctrine built on a dualistic soul versus body premise, Spinoza’s starting point was monistic. Despite his clear sympathies for Spinoza’s solution, which according to him was more compatible with Marxism, too, Vygotsky did not manage to finish his study. One may, indeed, doubt whether Spinoza was able to deliver the decisive key for the solution of the dualism problem, since his philosophy built on metaphysical postulates that were unacceptable to Vygotsky.

This is an extended version of the interview of Prof. Andrey D. Maidansky given to Em. Prof. Vesa Oittinen for Monthly Review journal (New York, USA) in January 2020. The interview was dedicated to the works of the Soviet philosopher Evald Vassilyevich Ilyenkov (1924-1979) which have recently received increasing international attention. The interview sheds light on the reasons for such an interest and outlines the key focus topics of both Ilyenkov’s philosophy and his Cultural-Historical Psychology works.

This paper deals with the ontological foundations of the Soviet interpretation of dialectical materialism as exemplified by one of its “founding fathers,” Abram Deborin, in his works of the late 1920s. It has been claimed that the “ontologizing” tendency in Soviet philosophy is due to the influence of Friedrich Engels and his ideas pertaining to the dialectics of nature. However, a more plausible interpretation is that the ontologism of Soviet philosophy is connected with the rejection of the Kantian Copernican turn in philosophy and the idea of the primacy of gnoseology it implies. In this article, I argue in favor of the latter thesis. Ontologism, i.e., the tendency to give priority in philosophy to questions concerning Being, and anti-Kantianism are but two sides of the same coin.

The Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki organized in 25–26 of September 2009 a special symposium Northern Lights — Facets of Enlightenment Culture with the aim to discuss form of Enlightenment thought in Sweden/Finland and Russia. The symposium, which was opened by Prof. Emeritus Matti Klinge, a renowned historian of 18th- and 19th-century Finland, had four participants from Russia, five from Finland and one from Germany; thus, it was yet a quite small event, but we hope that with it the foundations of a fruitful co-operation, with annual symposia on questions of Enlightenment culture, will be laid. Of the speakers, Prof. Tatiana Artemyeva, Dr. Oili Pulkkinen and Prof. Vesa Oittinen focused on more general problems of study of Enlightenment ideas, while the other contributions dealt with different ―case studies‖ either in Sweden/Finland (Dr. Kimmo Sarje, Dr. Johan Sten), Russia (Prof. Mikhail Mikeshin, Dr. Johannes Remy, Dr. Larisa Agamalian), in France (Dr. Alla Zlatopolskaya) or Germany (Dr. Carola Häntsch).

The article focuses on one highly idiosyncratic trait of Lifshits’ reading of Hegel, namely his assertion that the epoch of Restoration during which Hegel produced his main works was analogous to the period of the 1930s in the USSR. In both cases, “constructive” tasks came to the fore as the fermentation of the revolutionary era waned. On this assumption, Lifshits built up his idea of a Restauratio magna, which should serve as the guiding star of cultural politics. In fact, Lifshits came very near to rehabilitating of Edmund Burke’s views about the conservation of cultural heritage, which is highly problematic in light of his initial Marxist convictions.

Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979) was an outstanding philosopher, whose ideas not only influenced profoundly the Soviet philosophy, but even left their mark on the discussions concerning the role of the dialectical method, the theoretical foundations of psychology and the philosophy of Marxism in general. This volume is based on the selected materials presented twenty years after the death of Ilyenkov at an international congress in Helsinki. The contributions focus on several areas of Ilyenkov's influence: on psychology, on semiotics, on the logic of Marx's Capital. The volume also includes a previously unpublished foreword by Ilyenkov to the Russian edition of Hegel's Science of Logic.