Abstract

This paper explores the materialist and the object-based dimension of “the ideal” in Evald Ilyenkov’s thought and, consequently, his speculative technique of converging matter and idea. The philosophic figures that Ilyenkov relies on to legitimate such a convergence are Hegel, Spinoza, and Marx. The paper reveals the complexities in Ilyenkov’s task to reconcile his dialectics of the ideal with Spinoza’s studies of Substance, tracing the discrepancies in Ilyenkov’s attempt to conjoin Hegelian and Marxian dialectics and Spinoza’s nonidealist immanentism. The reference to the researchers of Spinozism, such as Macherey, Deleuze, Badiou, Della Rocca, Oittinen, and Maidansky, confirms the difficulties in discerning dialectics in Spinoza’s thought. Ilyenkov managed to reveal that Hegel’s idealism was grounded in an objective materialism conditioned by the other-determined self, and merely needed Marx’s thought to complete the socialization of Subject; whereas Spinoza never truly needed to theorize the concept of the ideal. The key finding of the paper is in tracing how—due to developing Marxist epistemology out of Marxist political economy—Ilyenkov manages to consider social being and labor through noumenal parameters, proving that any material activity can be seen as thought-oriented.