Vadym Ivanov: Ontology of Soviet Marxism (Article 1)

Abstract

A concept of metaphysics had been considered alien for philosophy of Marxism since the time of Soviet reception of Marx and Engels. However in conditions of “Khrushchov’s thaw” of the 1960’s there appeared a metaphysical demand of the late Soviet Marxism. Immanent criticism of Marxism philosophy still remains a problem for the home philosophical thought, since the latest principles of the Marxist type of thinking have not been found out. A critical search of the limit principles of thinking and being, revealing the ontology of the social, thorough study of philosophic theory requires the reconstruction of authentic sources. The appeal to authentic Hegel’s sources in 1960-1970 set a metaphysical prospect of a search of “reality” as such. A series of questions which late Soviet Marxism just tried to answer was as follows: which are human’s notions, his “being for himself”, his subjectivity; what is essence of activities, what is the world, or has it to be, what is being? Vadym Ivanov has given one of the most profound answers to these questions in the framework of late Soviet practice of Marxist philosophy. Meditating in the tradition of so-called activity approach, the philosopher concludes: the historical origin of a man and human history is a “timeless peculiarity” that defines criteria of humaneness in evolution between “still” an anthropoid and “already” a man. Ivanov is originally constructing philosophy of inexplicit material; this philosophy metaphysics rest on the admission of communal organization as a special existence of a man — the latest principle of creating a human sense and subject relations in the world.