Evald Vasilyevitch Ilyenkov (1924 - 1979) en Spinoza [2] - #spinoza

Vanochtend stuitte ik op een mooie aanvulling op mijn blog van 23-03-2009 “Evald Vasilyevitch Ilyenkov (1924 - 1979) en Spinoza”: het artikel namelijk van

Bill Bowring (Birkbeck College, University of London),

WHAT IF ILYENKOV HAD KNOWN MARX’S TRANSCRIPTION OF SPINOZA?

Het verscheen in een Russisch tijdschrift in 2014; de auteur bracht het onlangs naar Academia.edu.

Voor Ilyenkov verwijs ik naar dat blog; hier neem ik Bowring’s inleiding over.

 

Introduction. My own interest in Spinoza was sparked by reading, in the early 1980s, one of the later works of E.V. Ilyenkov (1924-1979), for me the most interesting of the philosophers working in the USSR. his Dialectical Logic, especially Essay Two, «Thought as an Attribute of Extension».* Ilyenkov also made extensive reference to Spinoza** in the first two sections of Chapter One of the revised version, for translation into German in 1979, of The Dialectics of the Abstract and Concrete in Marx's Capital (Abstract and Concrete), first published in Russian in 1960, and in English in 1982.*** It is a curious fact, to which I will return, that all llyenkov's references in Dialectical Logic but one are to Spinoza's Ethics, with one reference to On the Improvement of the Understanding (Improvement), while all the references in Abstract and Concrete are to Spinoza's Improvement. I wonder whether Ilyenkov only had Volume 1 of the two volume Selected Works.

* E.V. Ilyenkov (1977) Dialectical Logic (Moscow: Progress) - published in Russian by Politicheskaya Literature in 1974.

** llyenkov's engagement with Spinoza was through the Collected Works in two very handsome volumes, with a variety of translations, published in 1957 (Moscow: Politicheskaya Literature), in a large edition of 30 000. Vol 1 contained: an introduction by V. V. Sokolov; A Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being (translated by A. I. Rubin); The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (translated by V. V. Sokolov); Appendix on Metaphysical Thought (translated by V. V. Sokolov); On the Improvement of the Understanding (translated by Ya. M. Vorovskiy); Ethics (translated by N. A. I vantsov). Volume 2 contained: A Theologico-Political Treatise (translated by M. Lopaikina); Political Treatise (translated by S. M. Rogovin and V. V. Chredin); Correspondence (translated by V.K. Brushlinskiy).

*** —E.V. Ilyenkov (1982) The Dialectics of the Abstract and Concrete in Man's Capital (Moscow: Progress Publishers) revised edition for translation into German 1979, first published in Russia in 1960.